"Pitched battle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... he observed, "and I'd be the last one to claim that it possessed one grain of culture; but at that, I can't remember having a pitched battle with a girl ...
— Betty Gordon at Boarding School - The Treasure of Indian Chasm • Alice Emerson
... cottages and carried away the garbage cast there. It has passed where a little while before the cattle strayed, and passing has been stained. Here is no breaking of clear green waves against black defiant rocks, no tumultuous pitched battle between the ocean, inspired by the supreme passion of the tide, and the sullen resistance of unyielding cliffs. Instead a dubious sea wanders in and out amid scenes which the experience of many centuries has not made ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham
... it was not until after much doubt and hesitation, and against his original judgment, that that course of action was entered upon which ended in the victory of Plassey. He knew the risk that was run in fighting a pitched battle against a force nearly twenty times larger than his own; and had the viceroy been either a respectable ruler or a good soldier, the English, humanly speaking, must have then failed as signally as their ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... to force a pitched battle, then French, by a series of simultaneous flank and rear movements, would harass him out of the possibility of a general action. It is doubtful, indeed, whether during this lively period of his life the Boer commander ever really had time to meet either his ...
— Sir John French - An Authentic Biography • Cecil Chisholm
... watching his responsibility, ready to spring on it and fasten his teeth in it. And now that he had confounded them with their own attempted weapon of ridicule, his powers seemed to be profoundly dormant. That final pitched battle of wits had made the men his captives and admirers—all save Trampas. And of him the Virginian did not seem to ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... and midway in a fortnight of exquisite weather, during which Wellington and Marmont faced each other across the Douro before opening the beautiful series of evolutions—or, rather, of circumvolutions—which ended suddenly on the 22nd, and locked the two armies in the prettiest pitched battle I ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Legislature, and there was no constitutional method of redress. The authorities held obstinately to their obsolete and irritating regulations, and eventually the miners revolted under the leadership of an Irishman, Peter Lalor, and with the watchword "Vinegar Hill." There was a pitched battle with the military forces of the Crown, ending after much bloodshed in the victory of the soldiers. Lalor was wounded, and carried into hiding by his friends. Other captured rioters were tried for "high treason" before juries of townsmen picked by the ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers
... Scotland, who had reduced their King to a puppet with such entire success, should now feel it necessary to get possession of Prince James in order to confer dignity, on their proceedings seems very strange; but perhaps when rebellion comes to the dignity of a pitched battle its flags and pretensions are of more importance than when it can so order matters as to put on an appearance of acting in the King's own interests, as at Lauder. And how far the Prince might be an independent actor ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... fashion I have indicated, townsfolk constantly assembling outside the prefectures, subprefectures, and municipal buildings in order to read the day's news. At times it was entirely false, at others some slight success of the French arms was magnified into a victory, and a petty engagement became a pitched battle. The news in the French newspapers was usually very belated and often quite unreliable, though now and again telegrams from London were published, giving information which was as near to the truth as the many English ...
— My Days of Adventure - The Fall of France, 1870-71 • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... Rullus who in the Sabine wars brought the names Fabius and Maximus into prominence. His life is given by Plutarch under the name Fabius, and he is remembered as the originator of the policy of delay in war, as our dictionaries tell us, because his plan was to worry his enemy, rather than risk a pitched battle with him. On this account the Romans called him Cunctator, which meant delayer, or one who is slow though safe, not rash. He was called also Ovicula, or the lamb, on account of his mild temper, and Verrucosus, because he had a wart on his upper ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... State's progress and needs, was not exactly the leader he had expected him to be. And yet Harlan was relieved. He looked at the girl beside him, and that relief smoothed away his disappointment. As matters were shaping themselves he no longer anticipated that he would be driven into pitched battle, forced to fight intrenched enemies of reform—Luke Presson's face most conspicuous of all those behind the party wall of privilege. As he listened to the address he comforted himself with the thought that probably political disagreements loomed more blackly as a cloud on the ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... whether the affair was to be a pitched battle. He waited, sure that Bob would tell him when he was ready. That young man ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine
... is better you should lose your life than, by being taken, lose your empire." —[Zonaras, lib. iii.]—But fear does then manifest its utmost power when it throws us upon a valiant despair, having before deprived us of all sense both of duty and honour. In the first pitched battle the Romans lost against Hannibal, under the Consul Sempronius, a body of ten thousand foot, that had taken fright, seeing no other escape for their cowardice, went and threw themselves headlong upon the great battalion of the enemies, which with marvellous ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... so ill- organized and disorderly a description of force as that which at all times composed the bulk of a Turkish army, he carried victory along with his banners; gained many partial successes; and at last, in a pitched battle, overthrew the Turkish force opposed to him with a loss of 5000 men ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... Sergius Catilina, a man of noble birth and high rank, but ruined circumstances; its discovery, and the punishment of the conspirators at Rome in B. C. 63; and its final and complete suppression in a pitched battle at the beginning of ...
— De Bello Catilinario et Jugurthino • Caius Sallustii Crispi (Sallustius)
... the former. "Good God! and so you had a pitched battle, and licked that bully before he had time to begin; give me your hand! Who would ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle
... of persistence. They it was who under King Philip fought the Puritan fathers; who at the instigation of Pontiac doomed to death every white trespasser on their soil; who led by Tecumseh and Black Hawk gathered the clans of the forest and mountain for the last pitched battle of the races in the Mississippi valley. To them belonged the mild mannered Lenni Lenape, who little foreboded the hand of iron that grasped their own so softly under the elm tree of Shackamaxon, to them ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... the insurgents of the loyalists' coming. MacKenzie was for immediate advance. Van Egmond thought it stark madness for five hundred poorly armed men to meet twelve hundred troopers in pitched battle; but it was too late now for stark madness to retreat. The loyalist {423} bands could be heard from Rosedale; the loyalists' bayonets could be seen glittering in the sun. MacKenzie posted his men a short distance south of the tavern in some woods; one hundred and fifty on one side of the road ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... fury of all patriots, joined the foreign cause from jealousy of Ghent. War broke out between the two great rivals; and the men of Ghent, commanded by Philip, the son of Jacques van Artevelde, gained the upper hand. Victorious in a pitched battle, they pursued the beaten army into Bruges, massacred the partisans of France, and put the city to the sack. No other commune dared to imitate the policy of Bruges, or to dispute the supremacy of ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis
... fanatics, they scattered everywhere terror, ruin, and death, sailing in their light proas up the narrow channels and animated with implacable hatred for those conquering invaders, to whom they never gave quarter and from whom they never expected it; constantly beaten in pitched battle, they as constantly took again to the sea, eluding pursuit of the heavy Spanish vessels, taking refuge in bays and creeks where no one could follow them, pillaging isolated ships, surprising the villages, massacring the old men, leading away the women and the adults into slavery, pushing ...
— The Boys of '98 • James Otis
... Leon, slaying and laying waste before him, as an army of infidels would have done; and King Don Alfonso sent to him to bid him cease from this, for it was inhuman work to kill and plunder the innocent: and he defied him to a pitched battle, saying that to whichsoever God should give the victory, to him also would he give the kingdom of Leon: and the King of Castille accepted the defiance, and a day was fixed for the battle. Both kings were in the field that day, and full hardily was the battle contested, and ...
— The Junior Classics, V4 • Willam Patten (Editor)
... if they were very insistent, they might make her, Rilla, secretary. As for the various committees, they must be chosen after the Juniors were organized, but Rilla knew just who should be put on which. They would meet around—and there must be no eats—Rilla knew she would have a pitched battle with Olive Kirk over that—and everything should be strictly business-like and constitutional. Her minute book should be covered in white with a Red Cross on the cover—and wouldn't it be nice to have some kind of ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... in the darkness, and arrived safe home on the stoker's chin. With a tiger-like roar of fury, the stoker charged, and on the engineer's dodging conjecturally aside, fell heavily over the parish boundary-stone. He rose, foaming, and a pitched battle ensued, in which the combatants saw nothing but the brilliant showers of stars evoked by an occasional head-blow, and the general advisability of homicide. Toward dawn fatigue overcame them. The stoker lay down and declined to get up again ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... added new fuel to the old feuds of the Beni-Modhar, and the Yemenis or Beni-Kahttan; and a desperate civil war raged till 746, when the Khalif's lieutenant, the Emir Abu'l-Khattar, who supported the Yemenis, was killed in a pitched battle fought near Cordova. The leader of the victorious tribe, Yusuf Al-Fehri,[11] now assumed supreme power, which he exercised nearly ten years as an independent ruler, without reference to the court of Damascus. The state of affairs in the East, indeed, left little leisure to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... fighting for us is not available in regard to the small annoyances of home and daily life, I know not for what it is available. 'Many littles make a mickle,' and there are more deaths in skirmishes than in the field of a pitched battle. More Christian people lose their hold of God, their sense of His presence, and are beaten accordingly, by reason of the little enemies that come down on them, like a cloud of gnats in a summer evening, than are defeated by the shock of a great assault or a ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... sign of military preparedness against their coming. The huge ships of the main fleet waited while they reported monotonously that they saw no sign of the stolen fleet. But the stolen fleet was the only means by which the planet could be defended. There could be no point in a pitched battle in emptiness. But a fleet with a planet to ...
— Pariah Planet • Murray Leinster
... Beaulieu was not yet two-and-twenty, but he counted himself a grown man, and a very accomplished cavalier into the bargain. Lads were early formed in that rough, warfaring epoch; and when one has been in a pitched battle and a dozen raids, has killed one's man in an honourable fashion, and knows a thing or two of strategy and mankind, a certain swagger in the gait is surely to be pardoned. He had put up his horse with due care, and supped with due deliberation; ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... spectacular point of view, the most interesting portion of that decisive conflict was among the hills and valleys and woods of Lorraine, where over a front of eighty miles the Bavarians and the French swayed back and forth in fierce pitched battle. For the Bavarians were striking at the French right flank toward the gap of Miracourt and the German Crown Prince was striking in the Argonne at the same time that Von Kluck was striking at the French left. The Bavarians and the crown prince failed, while Von Kluck extended ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various
... hath ever," thus the Duke begun, "Thy counsel shows thy wisdom and thy love, And what you left in doubt shall thus be done, We will their force in pitched battle prove; Closed in this wall and trench, the fight to shun, Doth ill this camp beseem, and worse behove, But we their strength and manhood will assay, And try, in ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... was obliged at last to yield to famine; when, in the moment that the garrison was about to close with the terms of surrender, proposed by the enemy, William came up with his army, and obliged the Greek commander, instead of taking possession of the citadel, to face about and fight a pitched battle for the town. The struggle was obstinate and bloody: fortune often changed sides; but at last declared for the Sicilians, into ...
— Pope Adrian IV - An Historical Sketch • Richard Raby
... long inaction, sallied out from Canosa, where the viceroy had established his headquarters, and, crossing the Ofanto, marched up directly under the walls of Barleta, with the intention of drawing out the garrison from the "old den," as they called it, and deciding the quarrel in a pitched battle. The duke of Nemours, accordingly, having taken up his position, sent a trumpet into the place to defy the Great Captain to the encounter; but the latter returned for answer, that "he was accustomed to choose his ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott
... bursting of a shell in his own intrenchments, but Sir William Johnson took the command, and nothing could withstand that brave and skilful fellow. Aubrey came to Pouchot's relief with at least a thousand men collected from the other forts, but was beaten in a pitched battle before the place, which had to surrender at discretion, and the governor and garrison were made prisoners, but were allowed to march out with the honours of war. This and the loss of Frontenac make the English masters of all the ...
— The King's Warrant - A Story of Old and New France • Alfred H. Engelbach
... have stayed and fought, however uneven and hopeless the battle. But he found the girl a mental block to all thoughts of open, pitched battle on the shadowy, moonsilvered slopes. He might surprise the pursuers and flush them by some type of ambush. But they would be too many for him, and his feeble try would end either ...
— Master of the Moondog • Stanley Mullen
... completely victorious. Berkeley is driven to Accomac, on the eastern shore of the Chesapeake, but, succeeding in capturing a fleet sent to oppose him, he returns with this and captures Jamestown. Beaten by Bacon in a pitched battle, he again retires to Accomac, and the colony comes fully under the power of his antagonist, the colonists agreeing even to fight England should it interpose on the governor's side, when a decisive change in affairs is brought about by the rebel ...
— History of the United States, Vol. I (of VI) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... considered with themselves that they were not able to repel the army of Dareios alone by a pitched battle, proceeded to send messengers to those who dwelt near them: and already the kings of these nations had come together and were taking counsel with one another, since so great an army was marching towards them. Now those who had come together were the kings of the Tauroi, Agathyrsians, Neuroi, ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 1(of 2) • Herodotus
... one vast storehouse filled with precious art treasures. But men turned the cathedrals into arsenals of war. If the clerks in some porcelain or cut-glass store should attend to their duties in the morning, and each afternoon have a pitched battle, during which they should throw the vases and cups and medallions at each other, and each night pick up a piece of vase, here an armless Venus and there a headless Apollo, to put away for future generations to study, we should have that which answers precisely to what has gone ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... had been displayed. On March 17, 1916, a dispatch was issued from Vienna to the effect that the Austrian army had reached the vicinity of Avlona and had engaged the Italians in pitched battle outside the town, into which they were driving them. But apparently there was little truth in this report, for some weeks later a body of Italian troops were reported to have crossed the Greek frontier in Epirus, which caused an exchange of notes between the Greek and Italian governments, by no ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... confidence in the courage and patriotism of your troops, displayed by you on the 19th day of October at Cedar Run, whereby, under the blessing of Providence, your routed army was reorganized, a great National disaster averted, and a brilliant victory achieved over the rebels for the third time in pitched battle within thirty days, Philip H. Sheridan is appointed a major-general ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... chief of the mountaineer deputation cracked the crown of the leading chief of the Raturan deputation, and the two deputations spent the remainder of that day in fighting. Reinforcements came up on both sides. The skirmish became a pitched battle. Blood was shed lavishly, heads were broken beyond repair, and women, coming to the help of the men with the baskets of stones, were slain in considerable numbers, as well as little children who had an inconvenient but not uncommon habit ...
— The Madman and the Pirate • R.M. Ballantyne
... it wise again to gather them. He had no further hope of facing Caesar in pitched battle, and contented himself with keeping in touch with the enemy with a flying column of chariot-men some two thousand strong. His practice was to keep his men a little off the road—there was still, be it noted, a road along which the Romans ...
— Early Britain—Roman Britain • Edward Conybeare
... and Portugal, particularly, Wellington had under his command a mass of troops of the country, in which he placed but little confidence in regular formation in a pitched battle, on account of their want of instruction and discipline, but which were animated by a lively hatred of the French and formed bodies of skirmishers useful in harassing the enemy. Having learned by experience ...
— The Art of War • Baron Henri de Jomini
... drawing up our forces on both sides.—One struggle for my dying liberty, my dear!—The success of one pitched battle will determine which is to be the general, which the subaltern, for the rest of the campaign. To dare to be sullen already!—As I hope to live, my dear, I was in high good humour within myself; and when ...
— The History of Sir Charles Grandison, Volume 4 (of 7) • Samuel Richardson
... more magnificent scale. Having ascertained the weakness of some neighboring colony, through the sly intrusions of those who have entered the hive to spy out all "the nakedness of the land," they prepare themselves for war, in the shape of a pitched battle. The well-armed warriors sally out by thousands, to attack the feeble hive against which they have so unjustly declared a remorseless warfare. A furious onset is at once made, and the ground in front ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth
... pitched battle at Lewes ended in complete victory for Simon, and found the King, Prince Edward, and the kinsmen and chief supporters of the ...
— The Rise of the Democracy • Joseph Clayton
... pleasant Christmas holiday time had been kept at Audley Court. There was no open warfare between the two women; there was only an armed neutrality, broken every now and then by brief feminine skirmishes and transient wordy tempests. I am sorry to say that Alicia would very much have preferred a hearty pitched battle to this silent and undemonstrative disunion; but it was not very easy to quarrel with my lady. She had soft answers for the turning away of wrath. She could smile bewitchingly at her step-daughter's open petulance, and laugh merrily at the young lady's ill-temper. Perhaps had she been less ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... feuds which were of perpetual recurrence in those times, he encountered the Count de Lourain in a pitched battle, and—so runs the story—in the first onset Colin Maillard ...
— Children's Rhymes, Children's Games, Children's Songs, Children's Stories - A Book for Bairns and Big Folk • Robert Ford
... They were the power to which everything else deferred. They used to overrun the country in great bands, and brooked no interference with their business. Not long before they had defeated regular troops in a pitched battle on the Marsh, and on the very day I went away I remember we couldn't do our carting because the smugglers had given us notice they would need our horses in the evening. They were a power in the land where there was violence enough without them, God ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... Warren asked him (wrote Putnam's son Daniel, many years later) "if 10,000 British troops should march out of Boston, what number, in his opinion, would be competent to meet them, the answer was, 'Let me pick my officers, and I would not fear to meet them with half that number—not in a pitched battle, to stop them at once, for no troops are better than the British—but I would fight on the retreat, and every wall we passed should be lined with ...
— "Old Put" The Patriot • Frederick A. Ober
... Ludovico knew the strength or even the existence of this army, it took up a position between Novarra and Milan, cutting off all communication between the duke and his capital. He was therefore compelled, in spite of his inferior numbers, to prepare for a pitched battle. ...
— The Borgias - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... covering the mountains. Thou shouldst burn the house of that person whom thou punishest with death. And thou shouldst never permit beggars and atheists and thieves to dwell in thy kingdom. By a sudden sally or pitched battle by poison or by corrupting his allies, by gift of wealth, by any means in thy power, thou shouldst destroy thy foe. Thou mayest act with the greatest cruelty. Thou shouldst make thy teeth sharp to give a fatal bite. And thou should ever smite so effectually ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... less than a regular pitched battle between the McGregors and the McRaes of the Sixteenth, and all on ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor
... River mines in Idaho as well, and the result was one of the fiercest of all the stampedes, and the rise, almost overnight, of Virginia City. Meanwhile some Indian fighting had taken place and in a pitched battle on the Bear River General Connor had beaten decisively the Bannack Indians, who for years had preyed on the emigrant trains. This made travel on the mountain trails safer than it had been; and the rich ...
— The Passing of the Frontier - A Chronicle of the Old West, Volume 26 in The Chronicles - Of America Series • Emerson Hough
... itself, three weeks later, in Germany. You ask for the capture of a town? Here is the surrender of Ulm. You are not satisfied!! You are craving for more victories? Here they are: Here is Vienna which you wanted, and also a pitched battle, in order that no kind of success may be wanting. Add to these a whole series of noble and generous deeds, of words full of grandeur and kindness, and always to the purpose, so much so that our hearts share also that glory, ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... about a month, and then again moved on after our enemy, our cavalry, pontoon bridges, and artillery coming on by the most convenient passes of the mountains. While on the march we often had slight skirmishes with the enemy, but no regular pitched battle until we came to the Nivelle, where Soult had taken up a strong position. There our army halted in line, determined to attack and proceed if possible into France, as nothing more remained to be done in the ...
— The Autobiography of Sergeant William Lawrence - A Hero of the Peninsular and Waterloo Campaigns • William Lawrence
... mixed in sentiment. A hundred voices raised in opposition were cried down by twice as many more. "Hang 'em!" cried some. "No, no, banish them!" cried others. "Don't hang them!" and blood-curdling threats. A single shot would have brought on a pitched battle. Somehow eventually the tumult died down. Then Morton, who had been awaiting his chance, spoke up in ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... conquered the nine; and that night Sir Launcelot rose quietly, and dressed him in Sir Kay's armor and took Sir Kay's horse and gat him away into distant lands, and vanquished sixteen knights in one pitched battle and thirty-four in another; and all these and the former nine he made to swear that about Whitsuntide they would ride to Arthur's court and yield them to Queen Guenever's hands as captives of Sir Kay the Seneschal, spoil of his knightly prowess; and now here were these half dozen, and the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... themselves of either their arrows or their spears. But the Blemmyes had learned to use their strength in frequent battles with the imperial troops, and so soon as they perceived that they were no match for their enemies in pitched battle, their leaders set up a strange shrill cry, their ranks dissolved, and they dispersed in all directions, like a heap of feathers strewn by a ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... seemed so fickle, now lighting upon one banner and now upon another, that all parties were wary, practicing the extreme of caution, and disposed rather to act upon the defensive. Though not a single pitched battle was fought, the allies, outnumbering the Prussians, three to one, continually gained fortresses, intrenchments and positions, until the spirit even of Frederic was broken by calamities, and he yielded to ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott
... codes of honor in a girl's friendships and boys'. No matter how carefully I made the distinction that I meant the average girl, and not all of them, she always flared into a temper, and in order to be loyal to her entire sex, took up arms against me in a regular pitched battle. She's ordered me off the place more than once, and yet in her soul I believe she agrees ...
— The Little Colonel: Maid of Honor • Annie Fellows Johnston
... Quincy Adams had the effective support of Joshua R. Giddings from the Western Reserve, Ohio—who also fought a pitched battle of his own which illustrates another phase of the crusade against liberty. The ship Creole had sailed from Baltimore to New Orleans in 1841 with a cargo of slaves. The negroes mutinied on the high seas, slew ...
— The Anti-Slavery Crusade - Volume 28 In The Chronicles Of America Series • Jesse Macy
... relapsed, chased away the missionaries and the kings who sheltered them, and only yielded at last to the overwhelming weight of Christian opinion in the Western world. St Olof, king and martyr, martyred in pitched battle by his mutinous allodial freemen, because he tried to drive rather than to lead them to the cross; and another Olof, greater than he, Olof Tryggvason, who fell in battle against the heathen Swedes, were men of blood rather than peace; but to them the introduction of the new faith into Norway ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent
... the extent of my attachment to you; you shall see. On the day when I retire from office, we will go together. But you are not a Deputy, my friend. Many men want your place; but for me, you would be out of it by this time. Yes, I have fought many a pitched battle to keep you in it.—Well, I grant you your two requests; it would be too bad to see you riding the bar at your age and in the position you hold. But you stretch your credit a little too far. If this appointment gives rise to discussion, we shall not be held blameless. ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... into the interior, and both were captured. On the other hand, the Americans could not shake off the main central army, and there was danger to the very last that the British would beat them in one pitched battle which would decide ...
— Formation of the Union • Albert Bushnell Hart
... in lieu of gun practice to send off sky-rockets and catherine wheels; given a warm personal interest in each private's bosom as to whom, for the next twelfth month (if the war lasted that long), he was going to obey—and there resulted a shattering of monotony comparable to a pitched battle. ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... with a bear or a wild-cat—that is, if the creature shows any signs of attacking you—you must make him fully understand that you have seen him and are aware of his intentions. If you are not well equipped for a pitched battle, the only way to make him retreat is to take a long sharp-pointed pole for a spear and rush toward him. No wild beast will face this unless he is cornered and already wounded. These fierce beasts are generally afraid of the common weapon ...
— Indian Child Life • Charles A. Eastman
... some of our own men, mistaking us, opened fire on our rear; but to this a stop was speedily put by a flag of truce, improvised from a ramrod and a white handkerchief. We were allowed to fire only three or four volleys in return. This skirmishing tries courage, I believe, more than a pitched battle. To lie on the ground for hours, two or three miles in front of your main body, ten feet from the nearest man, and be fired at without firing yourself or making any noise, is a different thing from standing in your place amid ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. IV. October, 1863, No. IV. - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... be cheerful and chatty at the breakfast table. But the very air her relatives breathed seemed to feed their spleen. Mr. Day insisted upon Marty's finishing the hoeing of the potatoes, and it took almost a pitched battle to get ...
— Janice Day at Poketown • Helen Beecher Long
... afterward, "It was the most delightful Donnybrook fair he had seen since lavin' the ould country!" A private of Kentuckian blood declared, "They didn't know enough as soldiers to surrender, but jest fit, an' fit, an' fit!" This pitched battle was laughed over for many a day afterward. In the end, however, ...
— An Undivided Union • Oliver Optic
... large as a Numidian elephant. He must have slain it, single-handed in the forest, else had he not presumed to wear its trophies, which belong only to the greatest of their champions. For every stud of silver on his casque of bronze he must have fought in a pitched battle; and for each tuft of hair upon his charger's poitrel he must have slain a foe in hand-to-hand encounter. There are eighteen tufts on this side, and, I warrant me, as many on the other. Doubtless, he has already stricken ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... despondency ever to give way under any casual elation of success. Success, however, we really had at times; in slight skirmishes pretty often; and once, at least, as the reader will find to his mortification, if he is wicked enough to take the side of the Philistines, a most smashing victory in a pitched battle. But even then, and whilst the hurrahs were yet ascending from our jubilating lips, the freezing remembrance came back to my heart of that deadly depression which, duly at the coming round of the morning and evening watches, travelled ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... up in Reshid's rear he could either fall upon Shumla or force the Turks to open battle. He chose the latter course. The Turks, harried in their rear, attempted to regain the roads to Shumla. On June 10, the two forces met in a pitched battle at Kulevtcha. Reshid was badly defeated, losing 5,000 men and forty-three guns, but made good his retreat to Shumla. Diebitsch had to lay siege to Shumla. Soon after this, Silistria fell into the hands of the Russians. Turning ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... Putney Pet was dressed out in a gown and mortar-board, and the whole party then sallied out to battle. From time immemorial it has been the custom at Oxford for the town-people and the scholars to engage, at least once a year, in a wild scrimmage, and the pitched battle was now due. No doubt it was not quite fair for the men of Brazenface to bring the Putney Pet up from London for the occasion; but for some years Gown had been defeated by Town, and they were resolved ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... Ulster had now for some time been in a state bordering on anarchy; not only were the secret societies constantly at war, but marauding bands, pretending to belong to one or other of the societies, were ravishing the country. Something like a pitched battle was fought between the Protestants and the Defenders, in which the Defenders, although they were the stronger party and made the attack, were utterly routed. In the evening, the victors agreed to form themselves into a society which should bear the name of ...
— Is Ulster Right? • Anonymous
... inspired, and the prostration of men's spirits before the apparently resistless career of the Persian arms. It is therefore, little to be wondered at, that five of the ten Athenian generals shrank from the prospect of fighting a pitched battle against an enemy so superior in numbers, and so formidable in military renown. Their own position on the heights was strong, and offered great advantages to a small defending force against assailing masses. They deemed it mere foolhardiness ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... of the grand scheme, from which they had expected so much. At this time, the Germans had no other line of rail at their command; and the destruction of the tunnel would have been a disaster, equal to that of the loss of a pitched battle. ...
— The Young Franc Tireurs - And Their Adventures in the Franco-Prussian War • G. A. Henty
... Chicago in 1886. Just previous to that fatal catastrophe, a series of great strikes had occurred in and about that city. At the McCormick Reaper Works a crowd of men was being addressed by Spies, an anarchist, when the "scabs" left the factory. A pitched battle ensued. The police were called, and, when they were assaulted with stones, they opened fire on the crowd, shooting indiscriminately men, women, and children, killing six and wounding many more. Spies, full of rage, hurried to the office of Arbeiter Zeitung, the anarchist paper, and composed ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... the young Guthrie Carey of old Redford days in this stern, tough, substantial man, steady as a rock amid the winds and waves of incalculable fate. Just now he had the look of a military commander braced for a pitched battle. And the V.C. has been won for many a less courageous enterprise than that on which he ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... none the less, join themselves to their hero, and as at the same moment news is brought that the Indians have risen and are attacking the town, Bacon is induced to lead the troops against the foe; and in a pitched battle Cavernio is slain. That night whilst his army is revelling after their victory the Council and their party with infamous treachery suddenly attack the camp. There are further skirmishes with a remnant of the Indian fugitives, and in one of these frays Bacon accidentally wounds Semernia, ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn
... the neighbouring princes, and the patriotic exertions of his countrymen, was at this moment at the head of a force which the Turkish prince could not have anticipated, he resolved to march at once to meet the Ottomans, and decide the fate of Greece by a pitched battle. ...
— The Rise of Iskander • Benjamin Disraeli
... in God's name, a sure and certain protection, provided they would trust in him only, sent secretly to the Egyptians and Ethiopians for succour. Their armies, being united, marched to the relief of Jerusalem at the time appointed, and were met and vanquished by the Assyrian in a pitched battle. He pursued them into Egypt and entirely laid waste the country. At his return from thence, the very night before he was to have given a general assault to Jerusalem, which then seemed lost to all hopes, the destroying angel made dreadful havoc in the camp of ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... operations captured numbers of the Egyptian transports that were conveying supplies to the enemy's camps. Antony ought to have replied to this challenge by putting to sea with his combined fleet, forcing Agrippa to concentrate the Western armament to meet him, and deciding by a pitched battle who was to have the command of the sea in the Adriatic. But Caesar's old lieutenant, once as energetic and enterprising a soldier as his master, had now become indolent and irresolute. He was used to idling away weeks and months with Cleopatra and his semi-Oriental Court. ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale
... remarkable by your calamities before it was by ours. In this, also, fortune would seem to have exhibited a disposition to sport with events, for it was when your father was Consul that I first took up arms; he was the first Roman general with whom I engaged in a pitched battle; and it is to his son that I now come unarmed to solicit peace. It were, indeed, most to have been desired that the gods should have put such dispositions into the minds of our fathers, that you should have been content with the empire of Italy, and we with that of Africa; nor, indeed, even ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume II (of X) - Rome • Various
... one single incident as being a "decisive" one. Such a term can only rightly be applied to conditions where the opposing powers each have but one organized army in the field, and these armies meet in a pitched battle. None the less, the several actions which are known as the Battles of the Marne may be considered as decisive, to the extent that they decided the limit of the German offensive at that point. The German General Staff, taking ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of 12) - The War Begins, Invasion of Belgium, Battle of the Marne • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan
... notice. To Schuyler, in command of the northern department, he began now to write constantly, and to unfold the methods which must be pursued in order to compass the defeat of the invaders. His object was to delay the army of Burgoyne by every possible device, while steadily avoiding a pitched battle. Then the militia and hardy farmers of New England and New York were to be rallied, and were to fall upon the flank and rear of the British, harass them constantly, cut off their outlying parties, and finally hem ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge
... my time heard lions roar? Have I not heard the sea, puft up with wind, Rage like an angry boar chafed with sweat? Have I not heard great ordnance in the field, And Heaven's artillery thunder in the skies? Have I not in the pitched battle heard Loud 'larums, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... who visited Naples under the old disorder of things, when the Bourbon and the Camorra reigned, will like to hear that the pitched battle which travellers formerly fought, in landing from their steamer, is now gone out of fashion. Less truculent boatmen I never saw than those who rowed us ashore at Naples; they were so quiet and peaceful that they harmonized perfectly with that tranquil scene ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... I told you how I was out with the Minute Men in '76 at Moore's Creek, where we fought the Scotchmen. It was our first pitched battle, and I opine it smelled somewhat of severity on both sides—no quarter was asked, and the Tory MacDonalds fought like fiends for King George, small cause as they had to love the ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... out here they've got on their side," went on Abe, "an' they've got possession, too, which is more. Of course we could go at 'em in a pitched battle, but I take it you don't want any bloodshed?" and he ...
— Tom Swift in the Caves of Ice • Victor Appleton
... always avoid a pitched battle. In irregular fighting we are as good as they—better, for we can move more quickly—but when it comes to fighting in order of battle, we have no chance with them, whatever. Their cavalry, the other day outside Tarichea, were like wolves among a flock of sheep. Nothing ...
— For the Temple - A Tale of the Fall of Jerusalem • G. A. Henty
... and near the town of Issus fought his second pitched battle, sending Darius and the relic of his army in wild flight back to the east.2 It was an incident which did not modify Alexander's plan. He did not press the pursuit far, although the great king's camp with his harem fell into his hands. The chivalrous courtesy which he showed ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... Anlaf the Red, who was joined by two earls of Bretland (Cumbria); and the whole force encamped near a place called Weondune, supposed to be Wandon near Chatton. Athelstan advanced against them and challenged them to a pitched battle on this ground. They agreed, and with much deliberation the course was staked out with hazel wands between a wood and a river (Chillingham woods and the Till). The Scots greatly outnumbered Athelstan's men, who set up their tents at the narrowest ...
— Northumberland Yesterday and To-day • Jean F. Terry
... "Essex" had been thus pacificly employed, the little schooner "Enterprise" had carried off the honors by fighting the first and only pitched battle of the year. This little craft, after accompanying the "President" to Algiers, was ordered to Malta. While on the way thither she fell in with a polacre-rigged ship flying the Tripolitan colors. Closer inspection showed her to be a notorious corsair, well known for the constant and merciless warfare ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... threes, taking up positions. Their orders were, that, at the firing of a gun at daybreak, when the stores opened, they were to rush through the business district, setting fires everywhere and killing the white men and the gendarmerie. Benoit believed that, while his men could not withstand a pitched battle with the Marines, they could sweep the town in guerilla fashion when the Marines were scattered here and there, putting out fires. Moreover, the Cacos general was sure that, once a massacre of the whites was begun, ...
— Plotting in Pirate Seas • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... sack Aberdeen when he was met by Alexander Stewart, Earl of Mar, the gentry of the northern Lowlands, mounted knights, and the burgesses of the towns, some eighteen miles from Aberdeen, at Harlaw. There was a pitched battle with great slaughter, but the Celts had no cavalry, and the end was that Donald withdrew to his fastnesses. The event is commemorated by an old literary ballad, and in Elspeth's ballad in Scott's novel, ...
— A Short History of Scotland • Andrew Lang
... fight. conflict, skirmish; rencounter^, encounter; rencontre^, collision, affair, brush, fight; battle, battle royal; combat, action, engagement, joust, tournament; tilt, tilting [Mediev.]; tournay^, list; pitched battle. death struggle, struggle for life or death, life or death struggle, Armageddon^. hard knocks, sharp contest, tug of war. naval engagement, naumachia^, sea fight. duel, duello [It]; single combat, monomachy^, satisfaction, passage d'armes [Fr.], passage of arms, affair of honor; triangular duel; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... Willy's peace, the conversation was at this moment violently interrupted by Triss. He rushed forth, and Frank was only in time to prevent a pitched battle. He returned leading the dog by his silk handkerchief, amid the murmur of nurse-maids ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... and the letter to Adams of the day following overthrow for both Seward and for the United States the accusations sometimes made that it was the Northern disaster at Bull Run, July 21, in the first pitched battle with the South, which made more temperate the Northern tone toward foreign powers[234]. It is true that the despatch to Adams was not actually sent until July 26, but internal evidence shows it to have been written on the 21st before there was any ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... 'Squire Jones, because, jest before I found it out, he took and died; and so I thought I'd speak to old Silence, and see if she meant to do any thing about it, 'cause I knew pretty well she wouldn't; and I tell you, if she didn't put it on to me! We had a regular pitched battle—the old gal, I thought she would 'a screamed herself to death! I don't know but she would, but just then poor Sukey came in, and looked so frightened and scarey—Sukey is a pretty gal, and looks so trembling and delicate, that it's kinder a shame to plague her, and so I took and ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... us to ascertain the situation. The Committee could no longer hesitate: I myself renounced the hopes which I had based upon a grand manifestation, upon a powerful reply to the coup d'etat, upon a sort of pitched battle waged by the guardians of the Republic against the banditti of the Elysee. The Faubourgs failed us; we possessed the lever—Right, but the mass to be raised, the People, we did not possess. There was nothing more to hope for, as those ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... hand, running fight. conflict, skirmish; rencounter[obs3], encounter; rencontre[obs3], collision, affair, brush, fight; battle, battle royal; combat, action, engagement, joust, tournament; tilt, tilting [medieval times]; tournay[obs3], list; pitched battle. death struggle, struggle for life or death, life or death struggle, Armageddon[obs3]. hard knocks, sharp contest, tug of war. naval engagement, naumachia[obs3], sea fight. duel, duello[It]; single ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... afterwards there was scarcely an important settlement in New England that did not have some trouble with its neighbor. In 1666 Stamford and Greenwich came to blows over their dividing line, and in 1672 men from New London and Lyme attempted to mow the same piece of meadow and had a pitched battle with clubs and scythes. Not many years later the inhabitants of Windsor and Enfield "were so fiercely engag'd" over a disputed strip of land, reported an eye-witness, that a hundred men met to decide this controversy by force, "a resolute combat" ensuing between them "in which ...
— The Fathers of New England - A Chronicle of the Puritan Commonwealths • Charles M. Andrews
... Black Riley, and "One-ear" Mike held a hasty converse outside Grogan's. They were narrow-chested, pallid striplings, not fighters in the open, but more dangerous in their ways of warfare than the most terrible of Turks. Fuzzy, in a pitched battle, could have eaten the three of them. In a go-as-you-please encounter ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... who had succeeded his father about 605, held the greater share of it to obedience and tribute, but not, apparently, by means of any such centralized bureaucratic organization as the Assyrians had established. Just before his father's death he had beaten the Egyptians in a pitched battle under the walls of Carchemish, and subsequently had pursued them south through Syria, and perhaps across the frontier, before being recalled to take up his succession. He had now, therefore, no rival or active competitor in Syria, and this part of the lost empire ...
— The Ancient East • D. G. Hogarth
... fire to all the houses, with a thoroughness and method which showed that this was not the work of stragglers or camp-followers, but that it was the result of a settled plan. At last news came that the Russians had resolved to fight a pitched battle at Borodino, and the spirits of the army at ...
— Through Russian Snows - A Story of Napoleon's Retreat from Moscow • G. A Henty
... sovereign, to remain a captive in the hands of his enemies, and in even refusing to all his friends permission to treat of his ransom;" whilst it is beyond all question that the person whom this pretended manifesto confounds with the Earl of March, "taken in pitched battle," was Sir Edmund Mortimer. The Earl of March was himself then a boy, and was in close custody in Henry's castle of Windsor. The manifesto, as Hume quotes it, is evidently full of historical blunders; its author had followed those historians ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 1 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... events shaped a different course for us, perhaps because the Abati got wind of our intention and had no stomach for a pitched battle with desperate men. As it happened, this night from sunset on to moonrise was one of a darkness so remarkable that it was impossible to see anything even a foot away, also a wind blowing from the east made sounds very inaudible. Only ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard
... A political pitched battle was imminent. The Ministers declined to withdraw their confidence from the Lord High Commissioner, though they passed on him censure for his hasty and independent proceedings. That the members of Government ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) - From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum - of 9th Oct. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... is well for him he had found out a Way to steal a Kingdom; if he had gone on conquering as he did before, his Ruin had been long since finished. This brings to my Mind a saying of King Pyrrhus, after he had a second time beat the Romans in a pitched Battle, and was complimented by his Generals; Yes, says he, such another Victory and I am quite undone. And since I have mentioned Pyrrhus, I will end with a very good, though known Story of this ambitious mad Man. When he ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... deceased, than the Volscians felt the need of his assistance. They quarreled first with the Aequians, their confederates and friends, about the appointment of the general of their joint forces, and carried their dispute to the length of bloodshed and slaughter; and were then defeated by the Romans in a pitched battle, where not only Tullus lost his life, but the flower of their whole army was cut to pieces; so that they were forced to submit and accept of peace upon very dishonorable terms, becoming subjects of Rome, and ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... time heard lions roar? Have I not heard the sea, puff'd up with winds, Rage like an angry boar, chafed with sweat? Have I not heard great ordnance in the field? And heav'n's artillery thunder in the skies? Have I not in a pitched battle heard Loud larums, neighing steeds, and trumpets clang? And do you tell me of a woman's tongue, That gives not half so great a blow to hear, As will a chestnut in a ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... the mouse, and she struck out her leg proudly. But the wren broke it with his flail, and there was a pitched battle on a ...
— Celtic Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)
... Burgoyne had been in America before the day of Bunker Hill and knew a great deal about the country. He thought the "insurgents" good enough fighters when protected by trees and stones and swampy ground. But he thought, too, that they had no real knowledge of the science of war and could not fight a pitched battle. He himself had not shown the prevision required by sound military knowledge. If the British were going to abandon the advantage of sea power and fight where they could not fall back on their fleet, they needed to pay special attention to land transport. This Burgoyne had not ...
— Washington and his Comrades in Arms - A Chronicle of the War of Independence • George Wrong
... Chinese martyrs, he advocated the translation of the Liturgy into the vulgar tongue of the converts; which elicited a reply from Gueranger in his "Institutions Theologiques;" while again between the years 1729 and 1736 a pitched battle took place between the Bollandists and the Dominicans touching the genealogy of their founder, St. Dominic. All these controversies, with many other minor ones in which they were engaged, will ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... of his own. There were ceaseless feuds between these Princes and constant fighting between their armies of samurai, as their followers were called. Japan was like England at the time of our War of the Roses: family quarrels were fought out in pitched battle. All that has now gone. The Daimios have become private gentlemen; the armies of samurai have been disbanded, and Japan is ruled and managed just like a European country, with judges, and policemen, and law-courts, after the model ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Japan • John Finnemore
... feel as if always eager and ready for the fray," said Helen, "for commence as meekly as a saint that girl will have a pitched battle ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... his gang had a pitched battle down on Rattlesnake 'bout six months ago; killed three of the sheriff's posse, an' got away. Seemed like the whole outfit naturally dropped inter the earth. Never saw hide ner hair of ...
— The Strange Case of Cavendish • Randall Parrish
... the eve of the Feast of Bairam that we set out, and when we arrived at Adrianople, the city was illuminated and the street was filled with joyful crowds. News had arrived to the effect that a pitched battle had been fought between the Russian army and the forces of Raouf Pasha, and the Turks were reported to have been magnificently victorious. But Adrianople saw another sight next morning when the trains from Yeni ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... on the 20th and the 22d to bring about a general pitched battle arose from the unfortunate policy pursued from Dalton to Atlanta, and which had wrought 'such' demoralization amid rank and file as to render the men unreliable in battle. I cannot give a more forcible, though homely, exemplification of the morale of the troops at that period than by comparing ...
— Memories - A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure During Four Years of War • Fannie A. (Mrs.) Beers
... send "Mac" up the steep slippery bank to report progress. After a little while he returned to say that the river-side was not far off, where boats could be hired for the upward journey. The word given, the porters threw themselves upon my packages; a pitched battle ensued, out of which issued the strongest Spanish Indians, with their hardly earned prizes, and we commenced the ascent of the clayey bank. Now, although the surveyors of the Darien highways had considerately cut steps up the steep incline, they had become worse than useless, so I floundered ...
— Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands • Mary Seacole
... more reason now than ever to believe in it. There was no doubt that if a French corps and a German corps were set the task of marching a hundred miles to a strategic position, the French would arrive first and win the day in a pitched battle. But no one knew this better than that German Staff whose superiority, as von Moltke said, would always ensure victory. Was the French army ready? Could it bring the fullness of its strength into the first and perhaps the ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... commander; he was made Brigadier and then Major-General of Volunteers, and received the commission of Major-General in the regular army for his gallantry at Cedar Creek, October 19th, 1864, when he achieved a brilliant victory for the third time in pitched battle within thirty days; was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant-General March 4th, 1869, and became Commander of the Army on the retirement of General ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... of his mind makes him perceive decided advantages where vulgar ignorance or passion sees only doubts and difficulty; and a flaw in an adversary's argument stands him instead of the shout of a mob, the votes of a majority, or the fate of a pitched battle. The Editor is satisfied with his own conclusions, and does not make himself uneasy about the fate of mankind. The issue, he thinks, will verify his moderate and well-founded expectations.—We believe also that late events have given a more decided turn to Mr. Jeffrey's ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... headquarters on the identical spot where he had them four weeks before during his struggle to keep the German center from being pierced. Then it had been mainly infantry fighting at close range; now it was the labored pounding of heavy guns, the pushing ahead of trench-work preparatory to another pitched battle. ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... Babylonia. But the difficulties which stood between them and their homes were of a very different character. How were they to find their way back, or obtain provisions, in defiance of a numerous hostile cavalry, which, not without efficiency even in a pitched battle, would be most formidable in opposing their retreat? The line of their upward march had all been planned, with supplies furnished, by Cyrus:—yet even under such advantages, supplies had been on the point ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote
... there is out here they've got on their side," went on Abe, "an' they've got possession, too, which is more. Of course we could go at 'em in a pitched battle, but I take it you don't want any bloodshed?" and he ...
— Tom Swift in the Caves of Ice • Victor Appleton
... however, that the fighting was mere skirmishing and raiding, no general onslaught was attempted; and from Book II. 73, 83 it seems to have been a matter of doubt, with Agamemnon and Nestor, whether the army would venture a pitched battle. ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang
... Cats as Fighters. Tigers, when well matched, fight head to head and mouth to mouth, as do nearly all other carnivora, and at the same time they strike with their front paws. One of the finest spectacles I ever witnessed was a pitched battle between two splendid tigers, in a cage which afforded them ample room. With loud, roaring coughs, they sprang together, ears laid tight to their heads, eyes closed until only sparks of green and yellow fire flashed through four narrow slits, and their upper lips snarling ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... Spanish force is so much larger and better armed than his own, that he could not hope to win a pitched battle. ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 27, May 13, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... thus that in a country, in which the general features do not allow of protracted warfare, the inhabitants were always at the hazard of a single pitched battle. Subsequent to the Conquest, in the reign of John, it was, in truth, the strong castle of Dover, on the siege of which Prince Louis lost so much time, that saved the realm of England from passing to a French dynasty: and as, in later periods, strongholds fell again into decay, ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... partisan created quite an excitement in the ranks. To have captured Canales—the "Chapparal Fox," as the Texans termed him—or to have made conquest of his band, would have been esteemed a feat of grand consequence—only inferior in importance to a pitched battle, or the taking ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... whom he has here to make a match for me, he and I must have a pitched battle about her by and by. At present my purse insists upon my not offending him. When will old men understand young ones? I burn your letters, and beg you to follow the example. Old letters are the dreariest ghosts in the world, and you cannot keep more treacherous rubbish in ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... campaign. Vendome, who commanded the French, though at the head of a gallant army above eighty thousand strong, had too much respect for his formidable antagonist to hazard any offensive operation, or run the risk of a pitched battle, unless in defence of his own territory. On the other hand, Marlborough, harassed by the incessant opposition of the Dutch deputies, and yet not strong enough to undertake any operation of importance without the support of their troops, was ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... of Massachusetts, March 14, 1775, was destined to become to the patriot citizens of Vermont. That date reminds them to-day of the first blood shed in the great struggle within the borders of the Grants—the first pitched battle between American yeomanry and the minions of a cruel and tyrannical king. Before the martyrs were shot down at Lexington was the Westminster Massacre—an incident which set the torch to the passions of ...
— With Ethan Allen at Ticonderoga • W. Bert Foster
... dynasty. As the power of Egypt was on the wane, the power of Assyria was more and more in the ascendant. Shabak joined hands with Hoshea, king of Israel, but was defeated by the Assyrians, under Sargon II., in a pitched battle at Raphia, in which the superiority of the Asiatic kingdom was evinced. Later (701 B.C.) Sennacherib defeated an Egyptian army, sent for the relief of Ekron, and made Hezekiah a tributary. Tirhakah, the ally of Hezekiah, continued the struggle. His army was ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... the bigger Jewish boys of our street had a pitched battle with the Sands boys, an event which is one of the landmarks in ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... with a reverse at the hands of the rebels in the neighbourhood of Carmona, but rallied and pushed on towards the rebel quarters near Silan, where the enemy was apparently concentrating for a great struggle. The combined columns under General Jaramillo at length opened the attack. A pitched battle was fought, and no quarter was given on either side. This fierce contest lasted a whole day, and the Spaniards were forced to retire with considerable loss. The combined operations accomplished nothing decisive, ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... reinforcements of the enemy compelled him indeed to retire; but not until after several days of desperate fighting, and when he had literally strewn the streets of Tarku with his dead. Then devastating the unfriendly aouls on the Sulak, beating General Emanuel in a pitched battle, converting by fire and sword the district of Tabasseran which had held with the Russians, blockading the strong town of Derbend until it was relieved by superior numbers, and storming Kisliar on the Terek whence ...
— Life of Schamyl - And Narrative of the Circassian War of Independence Against Russia • John Milton Mackie
... his own resources. A robust young farmer, named Leitchman, and he were rival suitors for the hand of a young coquette, and she being unable to decide between them, they took the matter into their own hands and fought a regular pitched battle at a solitary spot in the forest. After a severe struggle, Kenton triumphed, and left his antagonist upon the ground, apparently in the agonies of death. Without returning for a suit of clothing, the young conqueror fled westward, assumed the name of Butler, ...
— Heroes and Hunters of the West • Anonymous
... 1935, Rodriguez and his organization staged a military demonstration in Mexico City, and marched upon the President's palace. Trade-unionists, liberals and Communists barred their way. When the pitched battle was over, five Gold Shirts were dead, some sixty persons wounded, and Rodriguez himself had been stabbed by a woman worker, on her lips the furious ...
— Secret Armies - The New Technique of Nazi Warfare • John L. Spivak
... not forget to remark that at every post where we changed horses and drivers, we had a pitched battle with the driver for more money than we had been told was the regular rate, and the carriage was surrounded with a perfect mob of ragged, shock-headed, black-eyed people, whose words all ended in "ino," and who raved and ranted at us till finally we paid ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... and afterwards that of the Normans; and I think a circumstance related by Aulus Gellius worth inserting in this place. On the day that Caius Caesar and Cneius Pompey, during the civil war, fought a pitched battle in Thessalia, a memorable event occurred in that part of Italy situated beyond the river Po. A priest named Cornelius, honourable from his rank, venerable for his religion, and holy in his manners, in an inspired moment proclaimed, "Caesar has conquered," ...
— The Description of Wales • Geraldus Cambrensis
... wonderful liquid for the future refreshment, they sat down to ecarte. Without having exchanged a word upon the subject, there seemed a general understanding among all the parties that to-night was to be a pitched battle, and they began at once, briskly. Yet, in spite of their universal determination, midnight arrived without anything decisive. Another hour passed over, and then Tom Cogit kept touching the Baron's elbow and whispering in a voice which everybody could understand. ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... that if the Ashantis had meant to attack us they would have disputed every foot of the passage through the woods after we had once crossed the Prah. Had they done so it may be confidently affirmed that we could never have got to Coomassie. Their policy should have been to avoid any pitched battle, but to throng the woods on either side, continually harassing the troops on their march, preventing the men working on the roads, and rendering it impossible for the carriers to go along unless protected on either side by lines of troops. ...
— By Sheer Pluck - A Tale of the Ashanti War • G. A. Henty
... exhausted by the enforcement of the blockade, and by fighting against all the expedients which we shall employ for the defence of our coast; our fleet, under the protection of these expedients, will continually inflict partial losses on him, and thus gradually we shall be able to challenge him to a pitched battle on the high seas. These are the lines that our preparation for war must follow. A strong coast fortress as a base for our fleet, from which it can easily and at any moment take the offensive, and on which the waves of the hostile superiority can break harmlessly, is the recognized ...
— Germany and the Next War • Friedrich von Bernhardi
... upon them the forces of the Mexican monarch, and a pitched battle was fought in which the republic was again victorious, but from that time hostilities never ceased between the two nations, every captive was mercilessly sacrificed, and the Tlascalan children were trained from the cradle to hate the Mexicans with a deadly hatred. In this ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... many perverted stories of their adventure immediately got abroad in Willoughby. Telson's highly-coloured version made it appear that a pitched battle had been fought between Game and the new captain, resulting in the defeat of the former chiefly through Telson's instrumentality and assistance. As, however, this narrative did not appear in the same dress two hours ...
— The Willoughby Captains • Talbot Baines Reed
... then camping close by the fort and it was midwinter, which facts held them in check for a month or two; but as soon as spring came, they removed their camp across the river and rose in rebellion. A pitched battle was fought, in which the soldiers got the worst of it. Even the associate chief, Big Mouth, was against Spotted Tail, who was practically forced against his will and judgment to take up ...
— Indian Heroes and Great Chieftains • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... there was no scattering of Municipals and Legals. The Municipal forces were rushing up toward the dome, and surprised Legals were frantically arriving in trucks. There was the beginning of a pitched battle right at the spot where Gordon ...
— Police Your Planet • Lester del Rey
... gentleman sits a quarter of an hour, upright as a palm tree, his back squared against the rails, pretending to be reading a paper; but a dismal look of disgust is settling down about his lips; the old sea and his will are evidently having a pitched battle. Ah, ha! there he goes for the stairway; says he has left a book in the cabin, but shoots by with a most suspicious velocity. You may ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... had been no pitched battle. As was usual between the gangs, war had broken out in a somewhat tentative fashion at first. There had been skirmishes by the wayside, but nothing more. The two armies were sparring ...
— The Prince and Betty - (American edition) • P. G. Wodehouse
... said Madame de Camps, "they say the life of a Christian is a struggle, but that of a woman married in a certain way is a pitched battle. ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac
... at that period, had a considerable reputation for the skill and scholarship of the master. He used to describe school scenes rather different, I suspect, from school scenes in our day. One boy, on coming late, explained that the cause had been a regular pitched battle between his parents, with the details of which he amused his school-fellows; and he described the battle in vivid and Scottish Homeric terms: "And eh, as they faucht, and they faucht," adding, however, with much complacency, "but my minnie dang, she ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... another room and dictated to his stenographer. While he was absent, Tom sat, watch in hand, counting the minutes. It was his first pitched battle with the Farleys, and victory promised. But with industrial panic in the air the victory threatened to be of the Cadmean sort, and a scowl of anxiety gathered between ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde |
