"Cannon" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... room he used to lift iron bars, cannon-balls, heave dumb-bells, and haul himself up to the ceiling with his teeth. You could hear the thumps half ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock
... have allowed you to remain in uncertainty concerning a dispatch which arrived this morning from Hanover. You shall now hear my formal answer to it. Prince, poet, do not be alarmed. Our festivities will take place for all that, our cannon will thunder, our lanterns will blaze through the night. Prince, do you want to put me ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... North would disregard the sneers of the press and of ambitious orators who would declaim while cannon thundered, she also knew that his impassive exterior hid a sense of humiliating defeat, and that the moment in which he was obliged to utter his aye for war would be the bitterest of his life. She fancied that ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... a Basque, and a soldier to his fingertips. When the French army invaded Spain he was given command of the fortress of Pampeluna. Defending it bravely against desperate odds he was wounded [Sidenote: May 23, 1521] in the leg with a cannon ball and forced to yield. The leg was badly set and the bone knit crooked. With indomitable courage he had it broken and reset, stretched on racks and the protruding bone sawed off, but all the torture, in the age before anaesthetics, was in vain. ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... a divine poem, of which the history of every nation is a canto and every man a word. Its strains have been pealing along down the centuries, and though there have been mingled the discords of warring cannon and dying men, yet to the Christian, philosopher, and historian—the humble listener—there has been a divine melody running through the song which speaks of hope and halcyon days ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... When he had finished, Chief Justice Marshall administered the oath, and as the President, bending over the sacred Book, touched it with his lips, there arose such a shout as was never before heard in Washington, followed by the thunder of cannons, from two light batteries near by, echoed by the cannon at the Navy Yard and at the Arsenal. The crowd surged toward the platform, and had it not been that a ship's cable had been stretched across the portico steps would have captured their beloved leader. As it was, he shook hands with hundreds, and ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... station; for a moment a wild-boar appeared behind the trees; at length the bursting crash of falling underwood was heard, and immediately a boar of uncommon size darted across the field like a ball fired from a cannon. The Colonel took his aim, the bullet whistled, and the wounded monster suddenly halted, as if in surprise—but this was but for an instant—he dashed furiously in the direction whence came the shot. The froth smoked from his red-hot tusks, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... town outspoke the cannon, ere the dawn charged on the night, Not of peace and joy and amity, but of hatred and despair, And a thousand blatant bugles proved it waiting for their spite; And we heard the rasp of bullets in ...
— Stories in Verse • Henry Abbey
... the heat in your face; the dust in the public gardens, ground to atoms beneath the tread of many feet, rises in clouds from under the water-cart to fall, a little farther on, in white showers upon the passers-by. I wonder that, as a finishing stroke, the cannon in the Palais Royal does not detonate all ...
— The Ink-Stain, Complete • Rene Bazin
... upon the rear of the retreating Russians, but failed to bring on a battle, while they themselves suffered from an incessant downpour of rain which made the roads well-nigh impassable. The commissariat train broke down, and a hundred pieces of cannon and 5000 ammunition waggons had to be abandoned. The rain, and a bitterly cold wind that accompanied it, brought on an epidemic among the horses, which were forced to depend solely upon the green rye growing in the fields. Several thousands ...
— Through Russian Snows - A Story of Napoleon's Retreat from Moscow • G. A Henty
... articles in the magazine, showing what had happened over a period of years, the criminality of allowing so many young lives to be snuffed out, and suggested how parents could help by prohibiting the deadly firecrackers and cannon, and how organizations could assist by influencing the passing of city ordinances. Each recurring January, The Journal returned to the subject, looking forward to the coming Fourth. It was a deep-rooted custom ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)
... advanced with a score of men under the English batteries to reconnoitre their position. His aide-de-camp, struck by a ball, fell at his side. The officers and orderly dragoons fled precipitately. The general, though under the fire of the cannon, approached the wounded man to see whether any help could be afforded him. Finding the wound had been mortal, he slowly rejoined the group which had got out of the reach of the cannon. This instance of courage ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... joked with the farmers, and the crowd began to disperse, when a burst of musical laughter, bitter mocking in its tones, was heard in the apartment. It came from no one there. All stood aghast. Many a stout-hearted countryman who would have faced a cannon without shrinking, trembled and turned pale. The women shrieked; ...
— Edward Barnett; a Neglected Child of South Carolina, Who Rose to Be a Peer of Great Britain,—and the Stormy Life of His Grandfather, Captain Williams • Tobias Aconite
... with distinguished courage himself, and has borne witness to that of his unfortunate admiral, James Duke of York. His intrepid coolness appears from a passage in his Memoirs, containing the observations he made during the action, on the motion of cannon bullets in the recoil, and their effect when passing near the human body. His bravery was rewarded by his promotion to command the Katharine, the second best ship in the fleet. This vessel had been captured by the Dutch during the action, but was retaken by the English ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden
... queer donkey. I call him a jack rabbit because he's so different. He wouldn't jump if you fired a cannon off right ...
— The Young Treasure Hunter - or, Fred Stanley's Trip to Alaska • Frank V. Webster
... fought like a young Paladin. When they were marching into the very mouths of the cannon they were vomiting fire upon them, and when the young ensign of his company was struck down before him, Traverse Rocke took the colors from his falling hand, and crying "Victory!" pressed onward and upward over the dead and ...
— Capitola's Peril - A Sequel to 'The Hidden Hand' • Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth
... he had made for her. Petruchio, whose intent was that she should have neither cap nor gown, found as much fault with that. 'O mercy, Heaven!' said he, 'what stuff is here! What, do you call this a sleeve? it is like a demi-cannon, carved up and down like an apple tart.' The tailor said: 'You bid me make it according to the fashion of the times'; and Katharine said, she never saw a better fashioned gown. This was enough for Petruchio, and privately desiring these people might ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... so when Joan of Arc follows God and leads the army; when the Maid of Saragossa loads and fires the cannon; when Mrs. Stowe makes her pen the heaven-appealing tongue of an outraged race; when Grace Darling and Ida Lewis, pulling their boats through the pitiless waves, save fellow-creatures from drowning; when Mrs. Patten, the captain's wife, at sea—her husband lying helplessly ill in his cabin—puts ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... crowded thoroughfare of London one would not see so many teams. From this neighborhood the great army of the Potomac drew the most of its supplies. The ninth army corps was moving this day to its camp, two or three miles northward; and part of its cannon, their brazen throats still tarnished by sulphurous smoke, added to the throng. It is surprising how large a portion of the army is composed of these baggage trains, and of the camp followers, teamsters, servants, and sutlers. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... established from the start that the war should be fought out in France and not in England.[20] Then, in 1346, he won his famous victory of Crecy against overwhelming numbers of his enemies. It has been said that cannon were effectively used for the first time at Crecy, and it was certainly about this time that gunpowder began to assume a definite though as yet subordinate importance in warfare. But we need not go so far afield to ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... distant beating of the military drums in the Palace Courtyard, as the women sat knitting, knitting. Darkness encompassed them. Another darkness was closing in as surely, when the church bells, then ringing pleasantly in many an airy steeple over France, should be melted into thundering cannon; when the military drums should be beating to drown a wretched voice, that night all potent as the voice of Power and Plenty, Freedom and Life. So much was closing in about the women who sat knitting, knitting, that they their very selves were closing in around a structure yet unbuilt, ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... who wanted to could turn in, while the rest were enjoined to keep quiet, doing their talking in whispers, so as not to disturb the sleepers; just as if the discharge of a six pound cannon close by would bother those weary scouts, once they lost themselves in the dreamland ...
— Boy Scouts on a Long Hike - Or, To the Rescue in the Black Water Swamps • Archibald Lee Fletcher
... able-bodied men, who were trying to save themselves by swimming, the Dutch, "making way with sails set on the foremast, across the heads which were to be seen in the water, pierced some with lances, and also discharged their cannon over them." After this bloody and fruitless victory, De Noort went to recruit at Borneo, captured a rich cargo of spices at Java, and having doubled the Cape of Good Hope, landed at Rotterdam on the 26th of August, having only one ship and forty-eight men remaining. ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... five other hardy ones were well enough to get about. At first they were crowded under a single roof, and as glimpses were caught of dusky savages skulking among the trees, a platform was built on the nearest hill and a few cannon were placed there in such wise as to command the neighbouring valleys and plains. By the end of the first summer the platform had grown to a fortress, down from which to the harbour led a village street with seven houses finished and others going up. Twenty-six acres had been cleared, and ...
— The Beginnings of New England - Or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty • John Fiske
... been in Malta, and in stranger places yet. He had been a sailor: he had seen the landing in Egypt, and heard the French cannon thundering vainly from the sand-hills on the English boats. He had himself helped to lift Abercrombie up the ship's side to the death-bed of the brave. He had seen Caraccioli hanging at his own yard-arm, and heard (so he said, I know not how correctly) Lady Hamilton order ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... was far behind in the game. It was his turn to play; the balls were placed in the most awkward position for him. Graham himself was a fair billiard-player, both in the English and the French game. He said to himself, "No man who can make a cannon there should accept odds." The bearded man made a cannon; the bearded man continued to make cannons; the bearded man did not stop till he had won the game. The gallery of spectators was enthusiastic. ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the Belgian officers and of the British, French and Russian military attaches, combining to form a wonderfully brilliant picture. Looking on that scene, it was hard to believe that by ascending to the roof of the hotel you could see the glare of burning villages and hear the boom of German cannon. ...
— Fighting in Flanders • E. Alexander Powell
... but to use our last means to enforce our will. With a whistling sound, a shell flew from the muzzle of our cannon and a few seconds later fell with a loud crash in a cloud of smoke on the rear deck of the steamer. This ...
— The Journal of Submarine Commander von Forstner • Georg-Guenther von Forstner
... of her assurance that she had no intention of increasing her navy or enlarging her store of war materials, she has placed an order for one hundred and fifty large cannon with Krupp, the ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 58, December 16, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... for Jerry was pointing at a big schooner that was coming down the harbor. We all lay down flat behind the rock until she had gone slowly around the point. We could see the sun winking on something that might have been a cannon in her waist—that's the place where cannon always are—and of course the captain must have been keeping a sharp lookout ...
— Us and the Bottleman • Edith Ballinger Price
... submit. So he allowed them to have the ground, charging a small ground-rent as was the custom. But no sooner had the Fulanghis got the ground than they put up houses and ramparts and arranged their fire-weapons (cannon) and engines of attack. Then, seizing their opportunity, they killed the king, drove out the people, and took possession ...
— China and the Chinese • Herbert Allen Giles
... place to pieces. The ordnance consists of four ancient brass guns; two of them about 9-pounders and the others 32-pounders, but I did not see a spot from which either of them could be safely fired; and even if there were bastions strong enough, I doubt if cannon could be depressed sufficiently to sweep the precipitous sides of the hill. On my way back to the boat, I turned aside to visit the Jumma Musjid, or chief Mosque, a large quadrangular wooden building, the roof of which is supported ...
— Three Months of My Life • J. F. Foster
... self-setting refractory compound with which the rocket tubes would be lined, with the solid fuel filling the center. The tubes themselves were thin steel—absurdly thin—but wound with wire under tension to provide strength against bursting, like old-fashioned rifle cannon. ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster
... therewith the bacchanalian nose of my subject, I stepped back a few paces to contemplate the effect. So ludicrous was the resemblance, that I laughed outright in the pride of my success,—a transient hilarity, nipped suddenly in the bud by the loud boom of a cannon, accompanied rather than followed by a rushing sound a few feet above my head, and a thundering bump and splutter upon the ice some thirty or forty yards beyond me, as the heavy shot skipped and ricochetted away with receding bounds to its vanishing-point somewhere ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... Early this morning was waked by the roar of a cannon; learned that it was the anniversary of the present Pope's election. Went to the Vatican; the colonnade was filled with the carriages of the cardinals; that of the new English cardinal, Weld, ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... sputtering of reports, then a settled, heavy fire. The noise of so many soldiers firing at will was like that made on Fourth of July by a hundred packs of cannon crackers all going off ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys in the Philippines - or, Following the Flag against the Moros • H. Irving Hancock
... their legs would carry them toward the thick of the town. They stopped at the new pine bill-board, and did not leave the man with the paste bucket until they had seen "Zazell" flying out of the cannon's mouth, the iron-jawed woman performing her marvels, the red-mouthed rhinoceros with the bleeding native impaled upon its horn and the fleeing hunters near by, "the largest elephant in captivity," carrying the ten-thousand dollar beauty, the acrobats whirling through space, James Robinson ...
— The Court of Boyville • William Allen White
... pointed out to me, at another place on the road, near Ballinagar, the deserted burying-ground in which, after much trouble, a grave was found for the brave old soldier who had escaped the Russian cannon-balls to be so foully done to death by felons of his own race. There the last rites were performed by Father Callaghy, a priest who was himself "boycotted" for resigning the presidency of the League ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (2 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... Religion. This will appear more plain, if those Artists in Murder will give themselves leave cooly to consider, and answer me this Question, Why he that had ran so many Risques at his Sword's Point, should be so shamefully intimidated at the Whiz of a Cannon Ball? ...
— Military Memoirs of Capt. George Carleton • Daniel Defoe
... the saint. The brightly-illuminated bridge leading to the square of Santa Chiara was decked with a colonnade of pasteboard and stiffened linen cunningly painted, and a classical portico masked the entrance gate. A flourish of trumpets and hautboys, and the firing of miniature cannon, greeted the arrival of the guests, who were escorted to the parlour, which was hung with tapestries and glowing with lights like a Lady Chapel. Here they were received by the abbess, who, on the arrival ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... swept the Germans off the sea. But the best guns Drake used against the Spanish Armada in 1588 were not at all bad compared with those that Nelson used at Trafalgar in 1805. There is more change in twenty years now than there was in two hundred years then. The chief improvements were in making the cannon balls fit better, in putting the powder into canvas bags, instead of ladling it in loose, and in fitting the guns with tackle, so that they could be much more easily handled, fired, ...
— Flag and Fleet - How the British Navy Won the Freedom of the Seas • William Wood
... choice between using brains or brawn as cannon-fodder," he used to say. "I'm serving with my brain ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... sparkling waters were seen through masses of tropical vegetation. Here and there enormous warlike trophies reminded the spectator that he was the guest of a great army. The artillery had supplied groups of heavy cannon, stacked on end, and huge piles of cannon-balls, while at intervals trophies of flags and drums, of guns and bayonets, tastefully grouped about the French and the Mexican coats of arms, broke with striking effect the expanse of wall above ...
— Maximilian in Mexico - A Woman's Reminiscences of the French Intervention 1862-1867 • Sara Yorke Stevenson
... freedom for Ireland. For once in her life Ireland was too strong to be coerced. Punishment like that applied to Massachusetts was physically impossible. The bitter protests of English merchants passed unheeded, and the fiscal claims of the Volunteers, with their cannon labelled "Free Trade or this," were granted in full early in 1780. The moral was to persist. From 40,000 the numbers of the Volunteers rose in the two succeeding years to 80,000, and they stood firm for ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers
... set its rattle to quivering. The triangular head flattened back for the delayed stroke at the ashen face of the man. The billowing coils stiffened—the stroke started. In the same instant came a report that to the strained ears of the man sounded like the crashing roar of a cannon. ...
— Out of the Depths - A Romance of Reclamation • Robert Ames Bennet
... we be, but that here comes a thunder storm, fit conclusion for an intense day, and very like the sudden and terrific blowings up which terminate the most ferocious kind of friendships. Thick clouds, shaped like piles of cannon balls, have slowly peered up from behind the horizon, and rolled themselves hither and thither, spreading and gathering as they went. Now and then a thunder-whisper is heard, so faint, that if we were ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various
... invention of the great guns that will send a cannon ball through the side of a wooden ship as easily as you can pierce an egg-shell with a needle, all the warships have been fitted with strong steel armored hulls and water-tight compartments, such as we told you about on page 75 of Vol. I. of ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 26, May 6, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... is one of the greatest wars of the centuries. Indeed, it is a continuation of the same battle which has been waged almost since the world began but carried on with different tactics. It stands unique. No cannon is heard. No smoke tells of defeat or victory. No bloody battlefields lift their blushing faces to the heavens. It is a battle of ideas, a battle of prejudices, the right and the wrong, the new and the old, meeting in close contact. It ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... with her clothes and lay down to sleep with them at night; they haunted her like a favourite air, they clung about her like a favourite perfume. Their minister was a marrowy expounder of the law, and my lord sat under him with relish; but Mrs. Weir respected him from far off; heard him (like the cannon of a beleaguered city) usefully booming outside on the dogmatic ramparts; and meanwhile, within and out of shot, dwelt in her private garden which she watered with grateful tears. It seems strange to say of this colourless and ineffectual woman, but she was a true enthusiast, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... evening, when my friends and I Made happy music with our songs and cheers, A shout of triumph mounted up thus high, And distant cannon opened on our ears: We rise,—we join in the triumphant strain,— Napoleon conquers—Austerlitz is won— Tyrants shall never tread us down again, In the brave days when I ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... had furnished so fierce a month of winter, was going. The icy country was breaking up under swift thaws, and fields and destroyed roads were a vast sea of mud in which the feet of infantry, the hoofs of horses and the wheels of cannon would sink deep. ...
— The Scouts of Stonewall • Joseph A. Altsheler
... under water in communication with the air, and compares it with the trunk of an elephant wading a stream deeper than his height. In the presence of Charles V diving bells were used by the Greeks in 1540. In 1660 some of the cannon of the sunken ships of the Spanish Armada were raised by divers in diving bells. Since then various improvements in submarine armor have been made, gradually evolving into the present perfected diving apparatus of to-day, by which men work in the holds of vessels sunk in from 120 to 200 feet ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... therefore against light now is in the Christians, truly prefigured by that which was in the house of the forest of Lebanon. Witness the jars, the oppositions, the contentions, emulations, strifes, debates, whisperings, tumults, and condemnations that, like cannon-shot, have so frequently on all sides been let fly ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... exist in order to account for transmission of light and various other phenomena. If it were possible for us to live in a room from which the air had been exhausted we might speak at the top of our voices, we might ring the largest bell or we might even discharge a cannon close to our ear and we should hear no sound, for air is the medium which transmits sound vibrations to the tympanum of our ear, and that would be lacking. But if an electric light were lighted, we should at once perceive ...
— The Rosicrucian Mysteries • Max Heindel
... refer to the strange appearance in these islands of an American adventurer with a battery of cannon. The adventurer was long since gone, but his guns remained, and one of them was now to make fresh history. It had been cast overboard by Brandeis on the outer reef in the course of this retreat; and word of it coming to the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Cannon was the storekeeper for whom his brother-in-law clerked. He thought again, how monotonous, how everlastingly alike, life was. "You just let the amount run on and on," he continued; "you got this and that. Then, ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... vast staircase other gun crews stood watching. Nelson saw their weird, bluish goggles raised to that platform where, for all the world like a coast defense howitzer, the great cannon swung majestically about on the ponderous, brazen column which seemed to support it. Gradually the muzzle was elevated, then traversed a few feet, to finally come ...
— Astounding Stories, February, 1931 • Various
... lieutenancy to the grade of second in command of his far eastern regiment; had rendered faithful services in command of convalescent camps and the like, but developed none of that vain ambition which prompts the seeking of "the bubble reputation" at the cannon's mouth. All he ever knew of Southern men in ante-bellum days was what he heard from the lips of inspired orators or read from the pens of very earnest anti-slavery editors. Through lack of opportunity he had met no Southerner before the war, and carried ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King
... Austria, or fight single-handed in my cause or Thekla's. Next month, when I am out of sight, comes Trautbach, just when his head is full of keeping the French out of Italy, or reforming the Church, or beating the Turk, or parcelling the empire into circles, or, maybe, of a new touch-hole for a cannon—nay, of a flower-garden, or of walking into a lion's den. He just says, 'Yea, well,' to be rid of the importunity, and all is over with my poor little maiden. Hare- brained and bewildered with schemes has he been as Romish King—how will it be with ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... democratic character than that of 1793; the executive was vested in a directory of five and the legislative in two assemblies. An insurrection in Paris on October 5 was quelled mainly by the fire of a few cannon under the command of Bonaparte, and the revolution assumed an organised and settled form. Three years of war had brought Austria also to a state of exhaustion. Active operations, therefore, did not begin until late. Luxemburg surrendered after ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... you ever heard? Did you ever hear an immense cannon fired? Of course you have heard thunder. The loudest, most terrifying noise I ever heard was a boiler explosion. The town heating plant was only three doors from my home. The whole plant blew up ...
— The Children's Six Minutes • Bruce S. Wright
... evening before the glorious Fourth of July, and Tim Reardon was dragging an iron cannon along the street, by a small rope. It was a curious, clumsy piece of iron-mongery, about a foot and a half long, with a heavily moulded barrel mounted on a block of wood that ran on four wheels; a product of the local machine shop, designed for the purpose of being indestructible rather than ...
— The Rival Campers Ashore - The Mystery of the Mill • Ruel Perley Smith
... in the outraging of human instincts, in the debauching of ideals and the falsifying of hope, in hellish oppression and ghastly torture, that can never be adequately estimated. Her benevolent instruments of colonization were cannon and saintly relics. Her agents were swaggering soldiers and bigoted friars. Her system involved the impression of her language and her undemonstrable religious beliefs upon the harmless aborigines. The fruits of this system, which still linger after ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... armies the heavy cavalry was the principal arm. The musket was an unwieldy matchlock fired from a rest, and without a bayonet, so that in the infantry regiments it was necessary to combine pikemen with the musketeers. Cannon there were of all calibres and with a whole vocabulary of fantastic names, but none capable of advancing and manoeuvring with troops in battle. The Imperial troops were formed in heavy masses. Gustavus, taking his lesson from the Roman legion, had introduced ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... drew his chair to the hearth, and his mother began to question him; and her fine face grew finer as she listened to the details of the exploit. Bram looked at her proudly. "I wish only that a fort full of soldiers and cannon it had been," he said. "It does not seem such a fine thing to take a few barrels of rum ...
— The Bow of Orange Ribbon - A Romance of New York • Amelia E. Barr
... Americans knew no bounds. It awed and overpowered the enemy by its very eagerness. The Americans were having all they could do to keep up with the enemy. The artillerymen captured great numbers of enemy cannon, ammunition, food and other supplies, which the trucks gathered up and carried far to the front, where they were ready for the doughboys when they arrived. One of the greatest feats of engineering ever accomplished by the American Army was the bridging of the Meuse, in the region of Stenay, ...
— The War Romance of the Salvation Army • Evangeline Booth and Grace Livingston Hill
... adventurers had purchased a vessel of some five hundred tons, which they proposed to convert into a pirate by cutting portholes for cannon, and running three or four carronades across her main deck. The name of this ship, be it mentioned, was the Good Samaritan, as ill-fitting a name as could be for such a craft, which, instead of being designed for the healing of wounds, was intended to inflict such ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle
... sheer cliff, there then stood a very ancient tower, commanding this promontory on the side of the land. Between it and the water the Visconti, in more recent days, had built a square fort; and the headland had been further strengthened by the addition of connecting walls and bastions pierced for cannon. Combining precipitous cliffs, strong towers, and easy access from the lake below, this fortress of Musso was exactly the fit station for a pirate. So long as he kept the command of the lake, he had little ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... the west gable was blown clean away, and the very ground, on the side where the King's chamber had been, was torn as with a hundred ploughshares. Certain trees that grew hard by were cleft and riven as with a thunderbolt, and stones were sticking in their timber like wedges and the shot of cannon. ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... hasty resolve of quitting the ship by a hoy that should carry him to Dartmouth, he added threats of legal action. The 'most distant sound of law,' however, he tells us, "frightened a man, who had often, I am convinced, heard numbers of cannon roar round him with intrepidity. Nor did he sooner see the hoy approaching the vessel, than he ran down again into the cabin, and his rage being perfectly subsided, he tumbled on his knees, and a little too abjectly implored for mercy. I did not suffer a brave man and an old man, to ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... said to be waiting for the cannon and supplies that Roloff brings him, before he advances farther to the ...
— The Great Round World And What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 22, April 8, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... "Sebastopol falls, or we die!" Now the death-storm pours, and the smoke up-soars, And the battle rages with furious might, And the red blood streams, and the fire-flash gleams, And the writhing thousands—God! God! what a sight. The hoarse-throated cannon belch fiery breath, And hurl forth the murderous rain, Which dances along on its message of death, And sings o'er the dying and slain! Crash! Crash! Then a leap and a dash! Hand to hand—face to face, goes the fight; The bayonets plunge, and the red streams plash, And ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... rusts the cannon, and is apt to make it unfit for war. Our lack of imagination, and our present sense of comfort and well-being, tend to make us fancy that we shall go on for ever in the quiet jog-trot of settled life without any very great calamities ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... which Madame Pfeiffer records. In 1831, a certain M. Laborde, shipwrecked on the coast, was carried as a prisoner to the capital, where he was kept in an honorable captivity. He taught the natives the art of casting cannon and manufacturing gunpowder, and acquired a considerable property. In 1855, he was joined by M. Lambert, a Frenchman of wealth, and they became the favorites of the Prince Rakoto. This son of the queen was at the head of the liberal party, as his ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... formerly open to the air and sun, was now arched over by a light dome of lath-work covered with felt. But this dome was not fixed. At the line where its base descended to the parapet there were half a dozen iron balls, precisely like cannon-shot, standing loosely in a groove, and on these the dome rested its whole weight. In the side of the dome was a slit, through which the wind blew and the North Star beamed, and towards it the end of ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy
... construction of a ship, and the method of manoeuvring her. We are now coming to a very important epoch in naval matters, the reign of Edward the Third. 1327, when the mariner's compass was discovered, or rather became known in Europe, and cannon were first introduced on ...
— How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves - Updated to 1900 • W.H.G. Kingston
... everything I saw on that great ship, for it would take too long; but as soon as I could, I set to work to see if I could find the treasure that I hoped was on board of her. Here and there about the decks I saw swords and pistols and old cannon, but not a sign of any of the brave fellows that had fought the ship, for the fish had eaten them up long ago, ...
— John Gayther's Garden and the Stories Told Therein • Frank R. Stockton
... be a Christian without facing evil and conquering it than he can be a soldier without going to battle, facing the cannon's mouth, and encountering the enemy in ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... extent; but, as it is commanded by the heights from which I was descending, it appeared to want strength if approached from the south. The ramparts were built with great solidity; but rusty old dismounted cannon, obliterated embrasures, and palisades rotten from exposure to the weather, showed that to stand a siege it must undergo a considerable repair." Several days were devoted to a general reconnoissance of the place; but the result was not satisfactory—"I must say that Roustchouk ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... of military assistance extends to the nations in the Near East and the Far East which are trying to defend their freedom. Soviet communism is trying to make these nations into colonies, and to use their people as cannon fodder in new wars of conquest. We want their people to be free men ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... more striking phenomenon occurred in the Sea of Azof, on the 10th of May 1814. On that day a column of flame and very thick smoke arose out of the water, with a loud report like that of a cannon, and masses of earth with large stones were tossed high up into the air. Ten eruptions of this kind succeeded each other at intervals of about a quarter of an hour; and after they had ceased for a time, they began again during the night. Next morning it was found ...
— Wonders of Creation • Anonymous
... real and false sweetmeats, pamphlets, pasquinades, and puns. Throughout the mob, composed of the best and worst classes of Rome, liberty reigns supreme, and when twelve o'clock is announced by the third report of the cannon of St. Angelo the Corso begins to clear, and in five minutes you would look in vain for a carriage or a masker. The crowd disperses amongst the neighbouring streets, and fills the opera houses, the theatres, the rope-dancers' exhibitions, and even the puppet-shows. The restaurants and taverns ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... intently. It was a figure singularly absorbed, lost in study of some deep theme. Once his sword clanged against the chair as it slipped a little from its position, and he started almost violently, though the dull booming of a cannon in no wise seemed to break the quietness of the scene. He was dressed, as in the morning, in plain black, but now the star of Louis shone on his breast. His face was pale, but his eyes, with their swift-shifting lights, lived ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... he spoke almost wearily, but Harriet felt as if a cannon had exploded in the study. She turned white, looked toward Williams, whose mouth was pursed in a silent whistle, looked back at Richard, who was making idle pencil marks ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris
... into the boy's life and he would rather have owned it than the mechanical steamboat with real brass cannon for which he prayed to God so often, so earnestly, and with such faith. On his seventh birthday he preferred a curious request, which had ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... had been executed—when you said it was too late—it seemed that I was born again and all made over; that I was changed in the very texture of my nature by the shock, as they say the grain of the iron cannon is sometimes changed by too violent an explosion." And this proved to ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... breach in the walls with his cannon, and then entered the city through it, together with his whole army.—When he had made every necessary regulation here, he departed to subdue other places, leaving a strong garrison at once to overawe and defend, under the command of his lieutenant-general M. de Legal. This gentleman, though ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... deluged with English blood, on the heights of Quatre Bras, the eye of its gallant colonel saw a friendly battalion falling beneath the sabres of the enemy's cuirassiers. The word was passed, the column opens, the sounds of the quivering bugle were heard for a moment above the roar of the cannon and the shouts of the combatants; the charge, sweeping like a whirlwind, fell heavily on those treacherous Frenchmen, who to-day had sworn fidelity to Louis, and to-morrow intended lifting their hands in allegiance to ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper
... the North had pressed the army of the South back steadily day after day, until the Confederates were encamped less than four miles away from Jack's home. For two days the cannon-firing could be distinctly heard, and the women folks were filled with dread, thinking the invaders from the North were about to swoop down upon their homes ...
— Young Captain Jack - The Son of a Soldier • Horatio Alger and Arthur M. Winfield
... interfering with other peoples. When once the Americans had secured a constitution, they desired nothing so much as to be left alone to work out their own destiny. When once the French had evolved a system, with true propagandist spirit they wished to foist it on others. "With cannon for treaties and millions of freemen as ambassadors," they demanded that the feet of all nations should keep step with the march of what they deemed liberty. Hamilton, as usual, had proven a seer when he wrote ...
— The United States of America Part I • Ediwn Erle Sparks
... Teresa cannot discern which is the true lover, owing to the masks.—A fight ensues, in which Cellini stabs Pompeo. He is arrested and Teresa flies with the Capuchin Ascanio to Cellini's atelier. The enraged people are about to lynch the murderer, when three cannon shots are fired announcing that it is Ash-Wednesday; the lights are extinguished and Cellini escapes in ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... ditch all around it with a plank drawbridge. When he got home from the office in the evening he pulled up the drawbridge and ran up a flag on a flagstaff planted there. And exactly at nine every night he fired off a brass cannon that he kept in a ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives
... which he had the longest task to perform. It was at a ship-chandler's in Tower Street, a large and dingy house, the lower portion being filled with canvas, cordage, barrels of pitch and tar, candles, oil, and matters of all sorts needed by ship-masters, including many cannon of different sizes, piles of balls, anchors, and other heavy work, all of which were stowed away in a yard behind it. The owner of this store was a one-armed man. His father had kept it before him, but he himself, after working ...
— When London Burned • G. A. Henty
... Save of blown self-applause, they proudly mount To their spirit's perch, their being's high account, Their tiptop nothings, their dull skies, their thrones— Amid the fierce intoxicating tones Of trumpets, shoutings, and belabour'd drums, And sudden cannon. All! how all this hums, In wakeful ears, like uproar past and gone— Like thunder clouds that spake to Babylon, 20 And set those old Chaldeans to their tasks.— Are then regalities all gilded masks? No, there are throned seats unscalable But by a patient wing, a constant ...
— Endymion - A Poetic Romance • John Keats
... don't know th' reason, but it mus' be that th' betther gun a man has th' more he thrusts th' gun an' th' less he thrusts himsilf. He stays away an' shoots. He says to himsilf, he says: 'They'se nawthin' f'r me to do,' he says, 'but load up me little lyddite cannon with th' green goods,' he says, 'an' set here at the organ,' he says, 'pull out th' stops an' paint th' town iv Pretoria green,' he says. 'But,' he says, 'on sicond thought, suppose th' inimy shud hand it back to me,' he says. 'Twud be oncomfortable,' he says. ...
— Mr. Dooley's Philosophy • Finley Peter Dunne
... remaining in the hands of the Republicans being hastily evacuated on his approach. Here, however, he could give but slight aid to Cathelineau, for the bridge crossing the Loire could be defended by a comparatively small force, provided with cannon to sweep ...
— No Surrender! - A Tale of the Rising in La Vendee • G. A. Henty
... girl, like other girls, I presume; but, this old fool is only fit for the old days, when the kings of Oude flew kites and hunted with the cheetah; or, half drunken, dozed, lolling away their lives in these marble-screened zenanas, with the automatic beauties of the seraglio. Our English cannon have knocked all that nonsense silly. Here is a high-spirited, Christian English girl, shut up like a slave. It's only the unfairness of the thing that strikes me." Hawke eyed the blue-eyed, rosy young fellow of twenty-six with an evident interest. Stalwart and symmetrical in figure, Hardwicke's ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... The sudden clanging of every bell on the place, the explosion of twelve hundred mortars and the simultaneous booming of an enormous cannon—that far-famed gun whose wayward tricks had cost the lives of hundreds of its loaders in the days of the Good Duke—might have passed for an earthquake of the first magnitude, so far as noise and concussion were concerned. The island rocked to its foundations. It was the signal ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... Mr. Beauregard's cannon had not done battering the walls of Sumter, when Miss Badeau was packed up, labelled, and sent North, where she has remained ever since in a sort of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... because you are the fortunate messenger, the happy harbinger of a coming civilization that is looming already in the not-far-distant future, bringing in your hands the snowy and brilliant credentials of brotherhood and peace. Though you come here, Mr. Root, amid the cannon's roar, or the din of popular acclamations, the echo in its grand unanimity that these words awaken in the hearts of the Brazilian people throughout all the land, from north to south, from east to west, should convince you that we, ...
— Latin America and the United States - Addresses by Elihu Root • Elihu Root
... Oriental Railroad Company is not owned by Austria, but by Austrian citizens, and it was an unheard-of thing for a government to seek to collect the private debts of her citizens at the cannon's mouth. Europe has, however, been doing remarkable things to Turkey for ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 57, December 9, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... to help him, was ramming home a heavy charge of powder in the long "nine." On top of it he drove down the round-shot, then bent above the swivel-breach, swinging it back and forth as he brought the cannon's muzzle to bear on the topsails of the pirate schooner, whose black hull was now plainly visible. He sniffed the wind and measured the distance with his eye. When his calculations were complete he turned and held up his hand in signal to the helmsman. As the swivel allowed movement only ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader
... pirate was within range, having reconnoitred her antagonists, she ceased pulling and commenced firing from a small piece of cannon, which was mounted on her bows. The grape and langridge which she poured upon them wounded several of the men, although Philip had ordered them to lie down flat on the raft and in the boats. The pirate advanced nearer, and her fire became more destructive, without any opportunity ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... time than occupies this explanation Jane and Dozia and Janet reached the Town Hall. The ancient building of dingy brick filled a conspicuous spot facing the Square; its carriage stone was a revolutionary relic and two reliable cannon set off the much trampled green diamond in front with something of a stately significance. It was fast growing dark in the early autumn evening, but the excitement of an arrest had drawn a crowd from the few business offices and from the passersby at the supper hour, flanked and reinforced by ...
— Jane Allen: Junior • Edith Bancroft
... for others. Serpentines and cannon mostly. When the guns were cast, down would come the King's Officers, and take our plough-oxen to haul them to the coast. Look! Here's one of the first and ...
— Puck of Pook's Hill • Rudyard Kipling
... the building, and the cost to the King was L40,000. When complete she was manned by 300 sailors, 120 gunners, and 1000 "men of warre," besides officers. The dimensions of this leviathan were 240 feet long, 36 feet broad, and the sides 10 feet thick, "so that no cannon could doe at hir"; "and if any man believes that this schip was not as we have schowin, latt him pas to the place of Tullibardyne quhair he will find the breadth and length of hir sett with hawthorne."[3] Three of these thorn trees were standing in 1837; none of them exist ...
— Chronicles of Strathearn • Various
... Mr. Cannon of Utah moved that the memorial be referred to the Committee on the Judiciary with leave to report at any time. It was so referred. The Judiciary Committee of the Senate brought in a bill legitimatizing the offspring of plural marriages to a certain date; also authorizing the president to ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... shall not be able to retain our independence. We must fight for that. It is asked what prospects we had when we commenced the war, and it is answered: Faith. Yes, we must have faith, but the means must be there too. Then we had burghers, cannon, food, and war material, but now we lack all those means. It appears to me that the time for fighting is past, and that we must think about the people. I am a born son of the soil, and have once before fought for my ...
— The Peace Negotiations - Between the Governments of the South African Republic and - the Orange Free State, etc.... • J. D. Kestell
... resembling the scenery of California. We reached Teng-chou-fu at 3:15 and that the pirates were not imaginary was evident for as we entered the harbour, they made a dash and captured a junk less than a mile away. An alarm cannon was fired and soldiers were running to the beach ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN
... Garter in the Jewel Room at the Tower. It is made of copper, so that its intrinsic value won't have any weight with the man who gets it, but I bought this nevertheless for five pounds. The soldier to whom it belonged had loaded and fired a cannon all alone when the rest of the men about the battery had run away. He was captured by the enemy, but retaken immediately afterward by re-enforcements from his own side, and the general in command recommended him to the Queen for decoration. He sold his cross to the proprietor of a curiosity shop ...
— Gallegher and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... thing which I should have staked my head could never have happened in a war waged by the civilized English nation. And yet it happened. Laagers containing no one but women and children and decrepit old men, were fired upon with cannon and rifles in order to compel them to stop. I could append here hundreds of declarations in proof of what I say. I do not do so, as my object is not to write on this matter. I only touch upon it in passing. There are sufficiently many righteous pens in ...
— Three Years' War • Christiaan Rudolf de Wet
... verbiage in which it was enveloped. But a careful reading indicated that the French ministry and the nation were in sympathy with the Americans; that while the ministry wished to avoid war with England they would gladly, if it could be done secretly, send the Americans money and powder, cannon and muskets, and that many French generals of note were eager to join the American army, and confer upon it ...
— Benjamin Franklin, A Picture of the Struggles of Our Infant Nation One Hundred Years Ago - American Pioneers and Patriots Series • John S. C. Abbott
... by a fence of young birch logs, had been built for dancing amid the leafy lindens, and stood directly opposite to the imperial tent. Near the linden-shaded square at the shooting house were posted the cannon and howitzers, which were to receive the distinguished guests with loud volleys and lend fresh animation ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... besiegers constructed great engines, such as were used in those days, in the absence of cannon, for throwing rocks and heavy beams of wood, to batter the walls. These machines also threw a certain extraordinary combustible substance called Greek fire. It was this Greek fire that, in the end, turned the scale of victory, for it caught in the lower court of the castle, ...
— Richard II - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... some difficulty in deciphering your manuscript. Your grievance, however, seems to be that one of your boarders, an Alsatian, keeps a ten-pound brass cannon in his bedroom, and fires a grand salvo with it whenever a French victory is announced. This, of course, is very foolish. The best way of putting a stop to it would be for your German boarders to keep guns of even ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 2, No. 36, December 3, 1870 • Various
... was drawing in rapidly, and Gaston, ever expecting to see some object appear on the horizon, tried to pierce the obscurity with his bloodshot glances; on he went, as in a dream, thinking he heard the ringing of bells, the roar of cannon, and the roll of drums. His brain was full of mournful strains and inauspicious sounds; he lived no longer as a man, but his fever kept him up, he flew as it were ...
— The Regent's Daughter • Alexandre Dumas (Pere) |
