"Earthwork" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... fancy it was like the celebrated "One Horse Shay"—every brick in the wall that surrounded the hole had been wearing away for years, and at the stroke of Fate all crumbled into dust. We were able to do without our old friend, as Fritz very kindly built up in the churchyard at Fromelles a large red earthwork that could be seen for miles, and which our big guns sought unsuccessfully to destroy but made the ...
— "Over There" with the Australians • R. Hugh Knyvett
... holds highest carnival. They keep in the Senate-chamber of the Capitol, nailed over the entrance doorway in full sight of the Speaker's chair, a drum, a musket, and a mitre-shaped soldier's hat-trophies of the fight fought in front of the low earthwork on Bunker's Hill. Thus the senators of Massachusetts have ever before them visible reminders of the glory of their fathers: and I am not sure that these former belongings of some long-waistcoated redcoat are not as valuable incentives to correct ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... as I approached through the growing darkness; for near where the lane reached the Delaware was a small earthwork, the last of those I needed to visit. I tried after viewing it to cross the double rows of grenadiers which guarded this road, but was rudely repulsed, and thus had need to go back of their line and around the rear of the mansion. ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... morning, and in the course of that day (the 28th) took the cars on what was then known as the Nashville and Chattanooga railroad, and went to Murfreesboro, about thirty miles southeast of Nashville. Here we went into camp inside of Fortress Rosecrans, a strong and extensive earthwork built under the direction of Gen. Rosecrans soon after the battle of ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell
... cameras photograph every foot of the battlefield covered by the enemy's lines. These photographs are developed and studied and diagrams drawn from them of the enemy's system of trenches. These diagrams are reproduced far behind the front in elaborately prepared earthwork and trenches which are an exact replica of the enemy's lines. The divisions which are to take part in the attack are sent back to rehearse their exact duties at just the point corresponding to that which they will have to take. Each officer knows every nook ...
— With Our Soldiers in France • Sherwood Eddy
... instructions to attack Fort Donelson, but he had none forbidding him to do it. He straightway moved nearly his whole force over the eleven miles of dreadful roads, and on the 12th began investing the stronghold, an earthwork inclosing about 100 acres, with outworks on the land and water sides, and defended by more than 20,000 men commanded by General Floyd, who had been President Buchanan's Secretary of War. The investing force had its right near the river above the fort. The weather ...
— Ulysses S. Grant • Walter Allen
... least detail. It was about 6 P. M., when we found ourselves in line, under cover of a long, thin row of scrubby trees, beyond which lay a gentle slope, from which, again, rose a hill rather more abrupt, and crowned with an earthwork. We received orders to cross this space and take the fort in front, while a brigade on our right was to make a like movement ...
— The Autobiography of a Quack And The Case Of George Dedlow • S. Weir Mitchell
... find it; well we knew who stood behind it, Though the earthwork hid them from us, and the stubborn walls were dumb Here were sister, wife, and mother, looking wild upon each other, And their lips were white with terror as they said, THE ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... beforehand to anyone in the city; and once outside the wall, he commanded his men in silence to dig the trench deeper. So they did as directed, and as they dug they kept putting the earth which they took out of the trench upon the side of it nearer the city-wall, and there it served them as an earthwork. And since they were unobserved for a long time by the enemy, who were sleeping, they soon made the trench both deep and sufficiently wide, at the place where the fortifications were especially vulnerable and where the barbarians were going to make the assault ...
— Procopius - History of the Wars, Books V. and VI. • Procopius
... church-town, where from the Vicarage windows you look through the trees southward upon ships moving up or down Channel in the blue distance and the white water girdling Menawhidden; northward upon downs where herds of ponies wander at will between the treeless farms, and a dun-coloured British earthwork tops the high sky-line. Dwellers among these uplands, wringing their livelihood from the obstinate soil by labour which never slackens, year in and year out, from Monday morning to Saturday night, are properly despised by the inhabitants of the Porth, who sit half their time mending ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... was covered by the Warwick Creek which he dammed up to make it unfordable, and erected batteries to guard the dams. Across the intervening ground a weak earthwork with trenches was constructed, there being no time to raise stronger works; but Magruder relied chiefly upon the swampy and difficult nature of the country, and the concealment afforded by the forest, which rendered it difficult for the ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... miles north of Green Bay, Wisconsin, on the eastern shore, and one hundred feet above the water, stands an earthwork that the first settlers found there when they went into that country. It was built by the Sauks and Outagamies, a family that ruled the land for many years, rousing the jealousy of neighboring tribes by their wealth ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... Aiken," said he, "was in the 60's. But that was no visit of pleasure. No, sir. Along the brow of this hill upon which we are standing was an earthwork. In the pines yonder, back of the first green, was a battery. In those days we did not fight it out with the pacific putter, but ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... against the greatest disadvantages. The country south of the Rappahannock was against him. The fact of Lee's acting ever on the defensive was against him. The woods and the rivers were against him. All Virginia, from the Rapidan to Richmond, was a rifle-pit and an earthwork. The Confederates knew every hill and ravine as though they were the orchard and the fishing creek of their own homes. The battlefield was theirs, to begin with; it must be taken from them or remain theirs forever. To take a battlefield of their own from Virginians has ...
— Notable Events of the Nineteenth Century - Great Deeds of Men and Nations and the Progress of the World • Various
... Romans, and the terminus of the ancient Icknield Way, so that an army landed there could easily march into the country beyond. Afterwards it became the capital of the West Saxons, Athelstan building his castle on an ancient earthwork known—from the colour of the earth or rock of which it was composed—as the "Red Mound." His fort, and the town as well, were partially destroyed in the year 1003 by the Danes under Sweyn, King ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... side of the bridge of boats was a tete de pont, redoubt or hornwork, a strong work of pentagonal shape, well portrayed in Tiffeny's plan of the Siege Operations before Quebec. This hornwork was-partly wood, defended by palisades, and towards Beauport, an earthwork—covering about twelve acres, the remains (the round or ring field), standing more than fifteen feet above the ground, may be seen to this day surrounded by a ditch, three thousand [289] men at least must ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... earthwork has the outline of gigantic men or animals. An embankment in Adams County, Ohio, represents very accurately a serpent 1000 feet long. Its body winds with graceful curves, and in its wide-extended jaws lies a figure which the animal seems about to swallow. In Mexico ...
— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.
... and almost obliterated it, but at intervals of two or three years, at a time when it was dry, quantities of earth were dug up from the bottom and thrown on the mound inside. It was in appearance something like a prehistoric earthwork. In winter as a rule it became full of water and was a favourite haunt, especially at night, of flocks of teal, also duck of a few other kinds—widgeon, pintail, and shoveller. In summer it gradually dried up, but a few pools of muddy ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... seemed, at the time, quite sufficient to defend the town. It was not till later that Gage began to consider the heights of Dorchester and Charlestown, which, to the south and north, threatened Boston. Now he set to work upon an earthwork at the Neck, brought cannon there, and began to build block-houses. It was reported that he was to cut a ditch across the Neck, and confine traffic to a narrow bridge; but at the objection of the selectmen such an idea, if he had considered it, was given up. Protest ...
— The Siege of Boston • Allen French
... top. The daring feat was seen by the whole Confederate line, and a yell went up from the men along the railroad, "Don't kill him! don't kill him!" But while the cry went up horse and rider fell in one limp mass across the earthwork, and the gallant Northerner was dragged under ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... it was the pistol that he waved to them as if bidding them follow, and he ran on some forty or fifty yards to where the entrance widened out and another heap of mine-rubbish offered itself upon the other side as a rough earthwork for defence, and where the two lads could find a temporary parapet which commanded the entry ...
— !Tention - A Story of Boy-Life during the Peninsular War • George Manville Fenn
... farther down. Here the men, the 200 bullocks, and the 50 pack-horses swam the Ohio, and just above the Big Hockhocking (the site of the present Hockingport) erected a blockhouse and stockade, which they called Fort Gower, in honor of the English earl of that name. A part of the earthwork can still (1894) be seen in the garden of a Hockingport residence. Dunmore's party, in 100 canoes and pirogues, arrived a few days later. While at Fort Gower, he was joined by the Delaware chiefs, White Eyes and John ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... There was nothing very thrilling about my trench; it was an old one and all that remained now of any life was the blackened ground where there had been cooking, the brown soiled cartridge-cases, and many empty tin cans. And then as I waited, leaning forward with my elbows on the earthwork, the frogs the only sound in the world, I was conscious that some one was watching me. In front of me I could see the red light flickering and turning a little as it seemed—behind me nothing but the starlight. ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... defences from the adjacent bastilles. All around the fight raged, and Joan was soon in the hottest of the engagement, encouraging her soldiers, her flag in her hand. Dismounting, she stood on the edge of the earthwork, beyond which the ...
— Joan of Arc • Ronald Sutherland Gower
... and half starved, a handful of men, not more than four hundred, but their bayonets gleamed and flashed in the sunlight. In the face of a murderous fire he charged and actually drove our men out of an entrenchment. We concentrated our guns on him as he crouched behind this earthwork. Our own men lay outside in scores, dead, dying, and wounded. When the fire slacked, we could hear ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon
... and flashed away beneath us. Men lying in pits rose up and aimed at us; or ran with cries to intercept us. A cannon-shot fired from the fort by Issy tore up the earth to one side; a knot of lancers sped from the shelter of an earthwork in the same quarter, and raced us for half a mile, with frantic shouts and threats of vengeance. But all such efforts were vanity. The Cid, fired by this sudden call upon his speed, and feeling himself loosed—rarest of events—to do his best, shook the foam ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... they kept on, somewhat disordered by the entanglement as well as by their losses, and came to the ditch. No doubt its depth and the high face of the parapet surprised them, for they had no scaling ladders. They jumped into the ditch and tried to scramble up the slope of the earthwork. Some got to the top, only to be shot down or captured. The guns flanking the ditch raked it with double charges of canister. Shells were lighted and thrown as hand-grenades into the practically helpless crowd below. Those who had not entered the ditch soon wavered and fell back, ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... formed, and involve less risks in construction than one of 30 ft. diameter; at the same time there is no difficulty in making the latter. The above shows the saving in the three tunnels of 23 per cent. in brickwork, and about 7 per cent. of earthwork, compared with one of 30 ft. With regard to ventilation, it is well known that the power required to force air along passages is practically as the cube of the velocity; and as the area of the air passages in the single tunnel is 106 ft. with speed ten miles per hour, and that of one of the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 430, March 29, 1884 • Various
... the earthwork where the British stood against the charge of the Tenth Legion, and first heard, sounding on their bronze, the arms of Caesar. Here the river was forded; here the little men of the South went up in formation; here the barbarian broke and took his way, as the opposing General has recorded, through ...
— Hilaire Belloc - The Man and His Work • C. Creighton Mandell
... particularly so taken in conjunction with the ancient city and the fertile valley threaded by numberless small streams. On the left side of the valley is St. Catherine's Hill, a bold and outstanding spur crowned with a small belt of trees surrounded by a circular earthwork. At one time a chapel dedicated to St. Catherine capped the hill, and slight traces of the building may yet be seen. Here is the interesting maze, said to have been made by a Winchester College boy who was obliged to remain behind ...
— Winchester • Sidney Heath
... menace. An army of workmen laboured for months with pick and spade and blasting-powder upon those vast fortifications; yet nothing but an upheaval of nature itself could obliterate all traces of earthwork, ditch, glacis, and casemate, which together made up the frowning fortress of Louisbourg. To-day grass grows on the Grand Parade, and daisies blow upon the turf-grown bastions; but who may pick his way over those historic mounds of earth ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... either till they were crossing the fallow, when he asked if his arm would help her. She did not take the offered support just then; but when they were ascending the prehistoric earthwork, under the heavy gloom of the fir-trees, she seized it, as if rather influenced by the ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy
... Wessex too was to fall into their hands. AElfred himself, with a little band, "withdrew to the woods and moor-fastnesses." He took refuge in the Somerset marshes, and there occupied a little island of dry land in the midst of the fens, by name Athelney. Here he threw up a rude earthwork, from which he made raids against the Danes, with a petty levy of the nearest Somerset men. But the mass of the West Saxons were not disposed to give in so easily. The long border warfare with Devon and Cornwall had probably kept up their organisation in a better state than that ...
— Early Britain - Anglo-Saxon Britain • Grant Allen
... but their homesteads were scattered about as was handy for water and shelter. Nevertheless they had their own stronghold; for amidmost of their country, on the highest of a certain down above a bottom where a willowy stream winded, was a great earthwork: the walls thereof were high and clean and overlapping at the entering in, and amidst of it was a deep well of water, so that it was a very defensible place: and thereto would they drive their flocks and herds when war was in the land, for nought but a very great host might ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris
... two hulks mounted with cannon. The bridge of boats that crossed the stream nearly a mile above, formed the chief communication between the city and the camp. Its head towards Beauport was protected by a strong and extensive earthwork; and the banks of the stream on the Quebec side were also intrenched, to form a second line of defence in case the position ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... a yard of it was to be seen without a shell hole. To say that the parapet had been riddled would not be correct. It is smashed here and there, and at intervals everywhere, but in no place between the two Gates I am referring to is the earthwork inside the parapet laid bare, nor has a breach, properly so called, been anywhere made. The doors and gate walls of both gates are smashed through, but all along, despite serious disfigurement, ...
— The Insurrection in Paris • An Englishman: Davy
... on a low marshy island near the mouth of the Schuylkill. Its very situation, surrounded as it was by mud and water, made it impregnable to any land attack. While the fort itself was a fairly strong earthwork, laid out upon approved principles of engineering, its outer works of defence added greatly to its strength. In the main channels of the river were sunk heavy, sharp-pointed chevaux de frise, or submarine palisades, with sharp points extending just above the surface of ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... was an elevated green spot surrounded by an ancient square earthwork—earthworks square and not square, were as common as blackberries hereabout—a spot whereon the Casterbridge people usually held any kind of merry-making, meeting, or sheep-fair that required more ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... at a big dam which an enterprising landowner was constructing. Three hundred women were consolidating the earthwork by means of round, flat blocks of granite about twice the size of a curling stone. Round each block was a groove in which was a leather belt with a number of rings threaded on it. To each ring a rope was attached. When these ropes ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... and stacked side by side and on top of each other, being almost impossible for a single man even to pick his way through, and next to impossible for a line of battle to cross over. All along the entire length of the fortifications were built great redoubts of earthwork in the form of squares, the earth being of sufficient thickness to turn any of our cannon balls, while all around was a ditch from twelve to fifteen feet deep—only one opening in the rear large enough to admit the teams drawing the batteries. Field pieces were posted at each angle, ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... vainly sprung the affrighted antelope, Beset by glittering eyes and hurrying feet. The dancing grouse at their insensate sport, Heard not the stealthy footstep of the fox; The gopher on his little earthwork stood, With folded arms, unconscious of the fate That wheeled in narrowing circles overhead, And the poor mouse, on heedless nibbling bent, Marked not the silent coiling of the snake. At length we heard a deep and solemn sound— Erupted moanings of the troubled earth Trembling beneath innumerable ...
— Tecumseh: A Drama • Charles Mair
... features of an ancient castle, and has a gallery of paintings by the old masters. The church of Lowick contains several monuments, brasses, and windows of stained glass. Near Oundle is to be found the earthwork of Fotheringay Castle, where Mary Queen of Scots was confined, tried, and executed. The castle itself was levelled to the ground by order of her son, James I. On leaving Oundle we pass a station appurtenant to Wansford in England, of which we shall ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney
... not leave the earthwork into which he was digging with rapidly moving forepaws. As Coristine remarked, it was a regular Forepaugh's circus. When the pedestrians came up to him, he had a large hole made in apparently fresh dug earth, and had uncovered a tin box, japanned above. This the pair disinterred with their ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... knew his voice, and, weakened, though not dispirited, they gallantly responded to the appeal. Once more the line pressed forward. The short space between them and the earthwork was quickly traversed. Before the artillery could deal out a second salvo, the Royal Picts were over the parapet and in the thick of the Russians, bayoneting them as they stood at ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... end of the town, erected a palisaded embankment with four bastions, a house for the garrison, and a place for a battery; later he leveled the hill on Castle Island in the harbor, and built there a similar palisade and earthwork and barracks for the soldiers. He took a survey of military stores, made application to England for guns and ammunition, endeavored to put the train-bands of the colony in as good shape as possible, and in 1688 went to Pemaquid to inspect the northern defenses ...
— The Fathers of New England - A Chronicle of the Puritan Commonwealths • Charles M. Andrews
... conspicuous from afar to voyagers coming up the river from Quebec. The city was inclosed by a stone wall and a shallow ditch, once useful as a defence against the Indians, but no protection in the face of serious assault. At the lower end of the city, covering the landing-place, rose a high earthwork ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... still traces of their camps over there on that side, and a little ways down the river is a place where they had a regular village. Over here on this side, quite a little ways farther down, is the remains of an old earthwork fort used by the French long before the Revolution, and afterwards by American soldiers about the time of the War of 1812. We'll go and look at it some day if you like. Most people are interested in it, but ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... two hundred yards from the river was a singular and sudden depression like a terrace, running straight across it. Behind this the men who were posted in the meadow were as well protected as if they had been behind an earthwork. On the left the ground was so rugged as well as so wooded that the position there was almost impregnable. There was, however, no adequate protection for the horses afforded at any point of the ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... were barraging the ground about Loos fiercely and continuously. They were covering a great stretch of country up to Hulluch, and north of it, with intense harassing fire. Later on that Saturday morning the 15th Division received orders to attack and capture the German earthwork redoubt on the crest of the hill. A brigade of the 21st Division was nominally in support of them, but only small groups of that brigade appeared on the scene, a few white-faced officers, savage with anger, ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... and when this hillock was of height sufficient to satisfy the young General, the great guns were brought and set upon it in such masterly fashion, and in such a commanding way, that La Hire, Dunois and Xantrailles, who came to see, marvelled at it, and we could note from the top of this earthwork that within the city great commotion reigned, and that it was as busy as a hive that has ...
— A Heroine of France • Evelyn Everett-Green
... meadow where deep trenches could be traced, green now, but clearly once a moat, but there was not even a tradition about it. On the Downs overlooking the Idovers was an earthwork or entrenchment, of which no one knew anything. Hilary believed there was an old book—a history of Overboro' town—which might perhaps contain some information, but where it could be found he did not know. After some consideration, however, he thought there might be a copy at the ...
— Round About a Great Estate • Richard Jefferies
... flaming contact upon the edge of the world, went out. The red sparks in the water vanished together with the stains of blood in the black mantle draping the sombre head of the Placid Gulf; a sudden breeze sprang up and died out after rustling heavily the growth of bushes on the ruined earthwork of the fort. Nostromo woke up from a fourteen hours' sleep, and arose full length from his lair in the long grass. He stood knee deep amongst the whispering undulations of the green blades with the lost air of a man just ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... earthwork, 50 m. long, passing S. from near Galashiels, through Selkirk and Roxburgh, or from the Cheviots; it is known by the ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... the same low red wall and iron railing and privet hedge; so indistinguishably, so maddeningly alike were all these diminutive houses. Each roof had the same purple slates, each roof tree the same red earthwork edging it like a lace; the same red tiles roofed each porch and faced each gable and the space between the stories. Only when your eyes became accustomed to the endless running pattern could you trace it clearly, grasp the detail, note ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... the west of the northerly building stood the old church, with walls of adobe from three to seven and a half feet in thickness. Outside of all, and having its northwest corner just beyond the church, ran an adobe wall, built for protection against hostile Indians and which now answered for an outer earthwork. The church was turned into a fortification, and was the point where the insurgents concentrated their strength; and against this Colonel Price directed his principal attack. The six-pounder and the howitzer were brought into position without delay, under the command of Lieutenant Dyer, then a ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... of Daux[654] contain, no doubt, a good deal that is fanciful; but they give, probably, a fair idea of the general character of the so-called "triple wall" of certain Phoenician cities. The outer line, or {proteikhisma}, was little more than an earthwork, consisting of a ditch, with the earth from it thrown up inwards, crowned perhaps at top with a breastwork of masonry. The second line was far more elaborate. There was first a ditch deeper than the outer ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... before the next day. Mr. Goodenough was unable to offer any suggestions for fresh defenses until they knew upon which side the enemy would attack. He advised, however, that the whole population should be set to work throwing up an earthwork just outside each gate, in order to shelter these as far as possible from the effect of the enemy's cannonballs. Orders were at once given to this effect, and in an hour the whole population were at ...
— By Sheer Pluck - A Tale of the Ashanti War • G. A. Henty
... crack, crack, half-a-dozen flashes and puffs of smoke came from over the ridge of the low earthwork in front, emptying four saddles, while one horse went down headlong, pierced from chest to haunch by a bullet, and the fleeing pair saw the rest of their pursuers open out right and left, to swing round and gallop away back, pursued by a crackling fire which brought down six more ...
— A Dash from Diamond City • George Manville Fenn
... 1903. Frost, gales, and abundant rains have more than half stripped the oaks of their yellow leaves. But the rain is over now, the sky once more a pure lucid blue above me—all around me, in fact, since I am standing high on the top of the ancient stupendous earthwork, grown over with oak wood and underwood of holly and thorn and hazel with tangle of ivy and bramble and briar. It is marvellously still; no sound from the village reaches me; I only hear the faint rustle of the dead leaves as they fall, and ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... a knoll, on three sides of which trenches had been dug. Within the entrenchment stood ten guns that were being fired through openings in the earthwork. ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... earliest Norman castle was a motte fortified by a stockade, an earthwork protected with timber palings. That is the latest theory amongst antiquaries, but there are not a few who maintain that the Normans, who proved themselves such admirable builders of the stoutest of stone churches, would not long content themselves ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield
... come at once, however, but delayed till the sun was well up. Then they began to pour a furious fire upon our defences, that reduced the shattered beams of the gates to powder, and even shook down the crest of the earthwork beyond them. Suddenly the firing ceased and again a trumpet called. Now they charged us in column, a thousand or more Tlascalans leading the van, followed by the Spanish force. In two minutes I, who awaited them beyond it together with some three ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard
... is situated on the right bank of the Dvina. Its houses are built of wood and it is dominated by a very large and splendid college, at that time occupied by the Jesuits, almost all of whom were French. It is surrounded by an earthwork fortification, having at one time undergone a siege during the war waged by Charles XII against Peter the Great. The corps commanded by Ney, Murat and Montbrun, in order to get from Drissa to Witepsk, had built a pontoon bridge across the Dvina, opposite Polotsk, which they ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... war, and one can imagine that when the river was low in summer, and perhaps fordable, the spit of land before it, which formed an exception to the marshes round about, needed to be protected as a sort of bastion beyond the stream. This theory will at least account for the two great ridges of earthwork going from one water to the other and completely cutting off the peninsula, since it is agreed these works are earlier than the Roman invasion. Whatever its origin, the part which Dorchester plays in the early history of ...
— The Historic Thames • Hilaire Belloc
... at the base of the levee, on his way, all un-prescient, to meet this signal, potential moment. Outside, he knew that the water was standing higher than his head, rippling against the thick turf of Bermuda grass with which the great earthwork was covered. For the river was bank-full and still rising—indeed, it was feared that an overflow impended. However, there was as yet no break; advices from up the river and down the river told only of extra precautions and constant ...
— The Crucial Moment - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... Cockburn; but such was their attachment to the place and their masters that but one availed himself of this opportunity to escape. At Point Peter, where the main land of Georgia terminates in the marshes of St. Mary's, a fight occurred, and there are yet the remains of an earthwork thrown up by the Americans to repulse the British fleet in its advance ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... some 95lbs., each shot. Anyhow, the shell is quite big enough, whatever its weight, and it bangs into shops, chapels, ladies' bedrooms without any nice distinctions. I could see "Tom's" ugly muzzle tilted up above a great earthwork which the Boers had heaped near a tree on the edge of that flat-topped hill, which we may call Pepworth, from a little farm ...
— Ladysmith - The Diary of a Siege • H. W. Nevinson
... closed his eyes, sniffed at the air, and again set to work. At last, the Jew squatted down on the grass, took off his slipper, and stuffed the paper in it; but he had not time to regain his legs, when suddenly, ten steps from him, there appeared from behind the slope of an earthwork the whiskered countenance of the sergeant Siliavka, and gradually the whole of his long clumsy figure rose up from the ground. The Jew stood with his back to him. Siliavka went quickly up to him and laid his heavy paw on his shoulder. Girshel seemed to shrink into himself. He shook like a leaf and ...
— The Jew And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... for years in Fort Clinton, which is an earthwork overlooking the Hudson River, and only about four hundred feet from the row of brick houses occupied by ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 31, June 10, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... the dirt cover has been washed away by the rain. I've seen defenses like this before. They used rocks as a base, filled in the cracks with clay, then put dirt on top and planted grass to hold it. That gave them a permanent earthwork." ...
— The Blue Ghost Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin
... quiet, out there with the sails on the river passing beyond the earthwork, and sometimes, when the tide was low, looking as if they belonged to sunken ships that were still sailing on at the bottom of the water. Whenever I watched the vessels standing out to sea with their white sails spread, I somehow ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... Americans, learning of Gage's intention to fortify the hills, sent a force of 1200 men, under Colonel Prescott, on the night of June 16, to take possession of Bunker Hill. By some mistake Prescott passed Bunker Hill, reached Breeds Hill, and before dawn had thrown up a large earthwork. The moment daylight enabled it to be seen, the British opened fire from their ships. But the Americans worked steadily on in spite of cannon shot, and by noon had constructed a line of intrenchments extending from the earthwork down the hill toward the water. Gage might easily have ...
— A School History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... the night of Saturday. On Sunday morning the contest was renewed, and kept up with great energy during the whole day, chiefly within the suburbs of the town of Winchester. In the afternoon a sudden and unexpected attack was made upon an unfinished earthwork on Flint Ridge, which, as it commanded the Pughtown and Romney roads, was occupied by Battery L of the 5th regular artillery, supported by the 110th and part of the 116th Ohio volunteer infantry, all under command of Colonel Keifer, of the former regiment. A reconnaissance had been previously ordered ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various
... turned his head, and grunted at a red blur very low in the mist. A fire was burning on the low point of land where Nichols—the Nova Scotian—had planted the battery which had worked such havoc with Admiral Rowley's boats. It was a mere earthwork and some of the guns had been removed. The fire, however, warned us that there were some people on the point. We ceased rowing for a moment, and Castro explained to me that a fire was always lit when any of these thieves' boats were stirring. There would be three or four men to keep it up. On this ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... possession of this structure, and that, too, without the slightest alarm having been given to the garrison, and in another minute all hands of us stood inside the battery, which was a fine, solid earthwork, with casemates, very like the battery that we had seized at Abervrach harbour. Unlike the French battery, however, all the casemates were open, with the exception of four, two of which were converted into the officers' quarters, while the other two constituted the magazine; and ...
— The Log of a Privateersman • Harry Collingwood
... the first had been provided with heavy shutters for windows and doorways, and loop-holes for fire-arms had been made at regular four-foot intervals. These the proprietor had not considered ample, and had constructed, twenty yards from the house, an ingenious earthwork which could be entered by means of a subterranean passage from the cellar. This miniature fort was in the form of a circular pit, sunk four feet and a half in the ground, and covered by a nearly flat roof, the edges or eaves of which were but a foot and a half ...
— Captured by the Navajos • Charles A. Curtis
... building of the golden bridge. After all, a fortified city, the second in importance after Groningen of all those regions, was the real prize contended for. The garrison was meagre and much reduced during the siege. The fortifications, of masonry and earthwork combined, were nearly as strong as ever. Saint Barbara had done them but little damage, but the town itself was in a sorry plight. Churches and houses were nearly all shot to pieces, and the inhabitants had long been dwelling in the cellars. Two hundred of the garrison remained, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... pyramidal, square and polygonal, and in some places are manifestly imitations of the shapes of beasts, birds, and human beings. There are districts where hundreds of these mounds appear within a limited area. Sometimes—as at Aztalan, in Wisconsin, and at Newark, in the Licking Valley—a vast series of earthwork enclosures is discovered, sometimes with embankments twelve feet high and fifty broad, within which are variously shaped mounds, definitely formed avenues, and passages and ponds. These enclosures amply prove, ...
— The Nation in a Nutshell • George Makepeace Towle
... defensive purposes. The rebel batteries, numbering at least one hundred guns, were massed on these heights, and covered not only every street leading out from the city, but every square foot of ground of the plain below. A third of the way down the terrace was an earthwork filled with infantry, whilst at its foot ran the famous stone wall extending southward from the cemetery above the city, and was continued by an earthwork around the whole circle. Behind this stone wall was massed a double line ...
— War from the Inside • Frederick L. (Frederick Lyman) Hitchcock
... island the resident's house and the barrack fort looked more like some ornamented set of buildings for summer pleasure, than a couple of places designed as a stronghold and retreat in case of danger. For the ditch and the earthwork were now carpetted with verdant growth, while the abattis, having been made of green wood, was putting ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn
... evidence to show that the riotous ringleader of 1381 had ever any connection with the hostelry named after him, but it is quite possible that the Heath formed a rendezvous for the malcontents of his time. In early times an earthwork stood on the site, which gave rise to the name "castle." The real Jack Straw's Castle was at Highgate. It is almost certain that the Hampstead hostelry was originally a private house; the wood of the gallows ...
— Hampstead and Marylebone - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... wholly sheltered by them), forthwith, and without your being able to prevent him, he dislodges you, and you are forced to quit your defences and deliver battle: as happened to the Spaniards at the battle of Ravenna. For having posted themselves between the river Ronco and an earthwork, from their not having carried this work high enough, and from the French having a slight advantage of ground, they were forced by the fire of the latter to quit their ...
— Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius • Niccolo Machiavelli
... Trench, still fluttering with rainbow rags—a shapeless trench which the confusion of torn stuffs invests with an air of a trench assassinated—to a place where the irregular and winding ditch forms an elbow. All the way along, as far as an earthwork barricade that blocks the way, German corpses are entangled and knotted as in a torrent of the damned, some of them emerging from muddy caves in the middle of a bewildering conglomerate of beams, ropes, ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... out of a clump of bamboos. He cut a shoot and took from it a fleshy substance, which afterwards grew into a man, the supposed ancestor of the Binds. In Mandla the Murhas say that the difference between themselves and the Nunias is that the latter make field-embankments and other earthwork, while the Murhas work in stone and build bridges. According to their own story they were brought to Mandla from their home in Eastern Oudh more than ten generations ago by a Gond king of the Garha-Mandla dynasty ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... earlier meaning of Fr. motte, now a clod, In Anglo-French we find moat used of a mound fortress in a marsh. Now it is applied to the surrounding water. From dike come the names Dicker, Dickman, Grimsdick, etc. Sometimes the name Dykes may imply residence near some historic earthwork, such as Offa's Dyke, just as Wall, for which Waugh was used in the north, may show connection with the Roman wall. With these may be mentioned the French name Fosse, whence the apparently pleonastic Fosdyke and the name of Verdant Green's friend, Mr. Four-in-hand Fosbrooke. Delves is from ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... thread-like tissue—spans the sky. It is the momentary and vanishing mark of the shell in the invisible air. There are little splashes in the stream, where the fragments of iron fall. There are pillars of water tossed upward in front of the earthwork, which break into spray, painted with rainbow hues by the bright sunshine. A round shot skips along the surface and pierces the embankment. Another just clears the parapet, and cuts down a tree beyond. The air is filled with ...
— My Days and Nights on the Battle-Field • Charles Carleton Coffin
... identified with the Margidunum of the Antonine Itinerary. Lately excavation has been attempted, and the Antiquary of December 1914 contains an interesting account of the results attained up to the end of 1913, with some illustrations.[12] A very broad earthwork and ditch surround an area of 7 acres, rhomboidal in shape (fig. 23). In this area the excavators, Drs. Felix Oswald and T. D. Pryce, have turned up floor-tesserae, roof-slates, flue-tiles, window-glass, painted wall-plaster, ...
— Roman Britain in 1914 • F. Haverfield
... light is low and slant, one sees the long clean flanks of the jackrabbits, leaping like small deer, and of late afternoons little cotton-tails scamper in the runways. But the most one sees of the burrowers, gophers, and mice is the fresh earthwork of their newly opened doors, or the pitiful small shreds the ...
— The Land of Little Rain • Mary Austin
... is crowned with the grassy mound and trenches of an ancient earthwork, from whence there is a noble view of hill and plain. The inner slope of the green fosse is inclined at an angle pleasant to recline on, with the head just below the edge, in the summer sunshine. ...
— Seaward Sussex - The South Downs from End to End • Edric Holmes
... back the battalion of regulars to the small earth redoubt near it. The depot-building was of brick, and had been punctured with loop-holes. To its east, about two hundred yards, was a small square earthwork or fort, into which were put a part of the regulars along with the company of the Sixty-sixth Indiana already there. The rest of the men were distributed into the railroad-cut, and in some shallow rifle-trenches near ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... no Frenchman had perhaps seen it, yet with his facile tongue he worked persuasion in the mind of the bluff Englishman, who at this point, turned about and put out to sea—hence its name, English Turn. We found here relics of very early times in the form of an old earthwork, and an angle of a brick wall, built, when, and whether by French or Spaniard, none could tell. Here we soon selected a site and laid out our camp. The time rapidly passed in the busy occupations which each day brought, in little ...
— Reminiscences of two years with the colored troops • Joshua M. Addeman
... precaution of no use. Fire is communicated to the combustible matter within the shell by means of a fuse, which is so regulated that the explosion shall take place at the desired moment. Hollow-shot are used with advantage to destroy ordinary buildings, ships, earthwork, and thin walls of masonry; they, however, are of little avail in breaking the massive walls of well-constructed forts. Howitzes and grenades are particularly effective against cavalry and columns of infantry, and are much employed ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck
... in the space between the spruce stockade and the cabin with "burnt-out" soil closely packed down and well tramped in. It was generally conceded, as the winter wore on, that to this contrivance of the "earthwork" belonged a good half of the credit of the Big Cabin, and its renown as being the warmest spot on the lower river that terrible memorable year of ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... trenches are so cleverly constructed in a waving line like a succession of S's, that even if a shell does succeed in pitching into one bit of the curve it makes things uncomfortable only for the two or three men who occupy that portion of the earthwork. No, the real value of artillery in attack is to shake the enemy and keep down his rifle fire. If shells are accurately fired the tops of trenches may be swept by a constant rain of shrapnel bullets, under which the enemy's riflemen will of necessity suffer when they expose ...
— With Methuen's Column on an Ambulance Train • Ernest N. Bennett
... tower above, the defenders now hurled over great stones, which had been specially placed there for the purpose of destroying the drawbridge should the earthwork be carried. The boards were soon splintered, and the drawbridge was pronounced by the Earl of Talbot, who was acting as judge, to be destroyed. The excitement of the spectators was worked up to a great pitch while the conflict ...
— Saint George for England • G. A. Henty
... together on a high place, an earthwork of the stone-age men, watching for the light. It came over the land. But the land was dark. She watched a pale rim on the sky, away against the darkened land. The darkness became bluer. A little wind was running in from the sea ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... flushed, and a sudden flash of the eye showed with what reluctance he retired before the fire directed upon him. No other course was left him, however, and he continued to ride slowly toward his inner line—a low earthwork in the suburbs of the city—where a small force was drawn up, ardent, hopeful, defiant, and saluting the shell, now bursting above them, with cheers and laughter. It was plain that the fighting-spirit of the ragged troops remained unbroken; and the shout of welcome with which they received Lee indicated ...
— A Life of Gen. Robert E. Lee • John Esten Cooke
... indescribably wild and deserted, the plain stretched before us. At some distance to our right a long and narrow mound rose five hundred feet from the plateau, a hill that did not mar the vast level expanse, but seemed instead a great earthwork piled upon it by man. Its green terrace was a wild garden of flowers and fruit growing in luxuriant confusion, watered by a stream that ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... commenced by the French artillery has been completed by the Prussians. From three batteries in the park of Rancy they have destroyed the wall of the cemetery, behind which one battery was posted and an earthwork. What remained of the church has been literally reduced to dust. Except sentinels hid in the interior of the houses, all our troops had been withdrawn. Some few persons, out of curiosity, had adjourned to the Grande ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... established for a distance of eleven miles, to the Upper Works, which seem to have been the only works in operation. At the Lower Works, besides the remains of the dam, the only vestige I saw was a long low mound, overgrown with grass and weeds, that suggested a rude earthwork. We were told that it was once a pile of wood containing hundreds of cords, cut in regular lengths and corded up here for ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... to re-appear as the islets of the Steep and Flat Holms. On their S.W. side they descend into the plain with considerable abruptness; and when viewed from the lower parts of the county, present a hard sky-line, like some enormous earthwork. On the opposite side their aspect in general is far less impressive, and towards Bath they lose themselves in a confusion of elevations and declivities. The main ridge is an extended tableland, ...
— Somerset • G.W. Wade and J.H. Wade
... Fifty-fourth in disembarking on Morris Island in the rain, and at noon Colonel Shaw was able to report their arrival to General Strong, to whose brigade he was assigned. A terrific bombardment was playing on Fort Wagner, then the most formidable earthwork ever built, and the general, knowing Shaw's desire to place his men beside white troops, said to him: "Colonel, Fort Wagner is to be stormed this evening, and you may lead the column, if you say Yes. Your men, I know, are worn out, but do as you ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... nation, of the original Britons. But if we speak of history we shall never have done, for the town and its antique abbey (of which this tower is a mere remnant) have mingled more or less in every change that has occurred, down from the earthwork camp yonder on the hills to to-day—down to the last puff of the locomotive there below, as its driver shuts off steam and runs in with passengers and dealers for the market, with the papers, and the latest ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... able to extricate himself. As it was, however, by such light as remained he could crawl upon the coping of the stonework which was still held in place with old struts of timber that, until they had been denuded by the slow and constant leakage, were buried and supported in the vanished earthwork. It was not a pleasant bridge, for to the right lay the mud-bottomed gulf, and to the left, almost level with his feet, were the black and peaty waters of the rain-fed dyke pouring onwards to ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... was an earthwork with five bastions, situated on the east bank of the Tennessee River, on low ground, but in a position where a slight bend in the stream gave it command of the stretch below for two or three miles. It mounted twenty guns, but of these only twelve bore ...
— The Gulf and Inland Waters - The Navy in the Civil War. Volume 3. • A. T. Mahan
... of the rocky eminence which juts out into the waters of the gulf at the point. The upper battery mounted modern 10 and 12-inch Krupp guns, behind a six-foot stone parapet, in front of which were twenty feet of earthwork and belting ...
— The Boys of '98 • James Otis
... determined to force an entrance by them. The traverse having been rushed by the 4th Punjab Infantry gallantly led by a Dogra Subadar,[19] a Punjabi Mahomedan of this distinguished corps behaved with the most conspicuous bravery. The enemy, having been driven out of the earthwork, made for the gateway, the heavy doors of which were in the act of being closed, when the Mahomedan (Mukarrab Khan by name) pushed his left arm, on which he carried a shield, between them, thus preventing their being shut; on his hand being badly wounded by a sword-cut, he drew ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... passing sails; and at the next, spread far below them, range on range of fertile park, stately avenue, yellow autumn woodland, and purple heather moors, lapping over and over each other up the valley to the old British earthwork, which stood black and furze-grown on its conical peak; and standing out against the sky on the highest bank of hill which closed the valley to the east, the lofty tower of Kilkhampton church, rich with the monuments and offerings ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... this combe on foot, as though I were going bird's nesting. I beat along by the hedges, keeping out of sight behind them, till I was actually on the combe's north slope, climbing up to the old earthwork on the top. I took care to climb the slope at a place where there was no sentry, which was, of course, not only the steepest bit of the hill but covered with gorse clumps, through which I could scarcely thrust ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield
... for the women and children. Under the wagons, completely around the circle, a shallow trench was dug and an earthwork thrown up. This was ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... the Northern officers on the earthwork disappear, dropping down behind, and the young Southern soldiers raised a great shout of triumph which, as it sank on its dying note, was merged into a tremendous crash. The whole fort seemed to Harry to blaze with red fire, as ...
— The Guns of Bull Run - A Story of the Civil War's Eve • Joseph A. Altsheler
... to lose no time in protecting the station by a ditch and earthwork, so that I could leave a garrison without risk, and I would then attack ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... as he could see, and there was a powerful odor of drugs. Around him was a forest, of the kind with which he had become familiar in Europe, that is, of small trees, free from underbrush. He saw some distance away soldiers walking up and down and beyond them the vague outline of an earthwork. ...
— The Forest of Swords - A Story of Paris and the Marne • Joseph A. Altsheler
... farther end of the causeway, I found my men couched, like black statues, behind the slight earthwork there constructed. I expected that my proposed immersion would rather bewilder them, but knew that they would say nothing, as usual. As for the lieutenant on that post, he was a steady, matter-of-fact, perfectly disciplined Englishman, who wore a Crimean ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson |
