Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
"You will not have to wait long then, lad, before you find sufficient excuse for drawing your sword, and fighting away with as hearty good-will as any of old Noll's Ironsides ever did."
The terror of his siege-trains and Ironsides was spread over the greater part of three Provinces, and his well-reported successes had proved so many steps to the assumption of that sovereign power at which he already aimed. Of the spirit in which these several sieges were conducted, it is impossible to speak without a shudder.
Now, the Scottish men, being then as you will generally find them now mighty cautious, reflected that the troops they had were not used to war like the Ironsides, and would be beaten in an open fight.
The British naval officers made much sport of these new ships; but after "Old Ironsides" had destroyed two fine British frigates, and had outsailed a large British fleet, they went to work and made over some of their line of battle ships into large frigates. The Constitution was built of the best material, and with unusual care.
Ranny should have been born in lands of adventure, under the green light of a virgin forest, or on some illimitable prairie; he should have sailed with the vikings or fought with Cromwell's Ironsides; or, better still, he should have run, half-naked, splendidly pagan, bearing the torch of Marathon. And yet he bore his torch. From the very first his mother said that Ranny was that venturesome.
It probably saved the "Constitution," "Old Ironsides," from capture by the traitors. It probably saved Annapolis, and kept Maryland open without bloodshed. As soon as the Massachusetts Regiment had made prize of the ferry-boat, a call was made for engineers to run her. Some twenty men at once stepped to the front.
"And that purpose?" "Is to see and to judge calmly, if, despite his years, we may find in the descendant of the Ironsides such a prince as we may commend to our decaying King as his heir, and to the Witan as a chief fit to defend the land." "Thou speakest the cause of my own coming.
"We know by the date of the breastplate that it was when Cromwell sent his Ironsides to search La Sarthe that he must have escaped through the door and got to the coast; but he was drowned crossing to France, so no one guessed or ever knew how he had got away and I expect the secret of the passage died with him, and I was the first one to find it."
And in those wars of Creçy and Poitiers, the constancy, the dauntless heart, and the steady hand of the English archers, which broke the chivalry of France, what is it but the constancy of Waterloo, the squares, the charge, the Duke's words, spoken quietly as the words of fate, decreeing an empire's fall, "Stand up, Guards!"? And in 1381, the tramp of the feet of the hurrying peasants, sons and grandsons of the archers of Creçy, in the great Revolt, indignant at ingratitude and wrong, what is it but the prelude to the supremacy of the People of England, to the Petition of Right, to Cromwell's Ironsides, to Chartism and Reform Acts, and the Democracy, self-governing, imperial and warlike of the present hour?
The world will see; and see giant meet giant, I suspect. He and I proposed each of us in the mildest manner contrary schemes schemes to stiffen the hair of Europe! Enough that we parted with mutual respect. He is a fine fellow: and so was my friend the Emperor Tiberius, and so was Richelieu. Napoleon was a fine engine: there is a difference. Yes, Ironsides is a fine fellow! but he and I may cross.
Word Of The Day