"Fortress" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and calmer, until we were able to make sail again and bear away eastwards, rounding the Cape two days afterwards, our fifty- sixth from England, in 37 degrees south latitude—the meridian of the "Flying Dutchman's fortress," as Table Mountain has been termed by those who once believed in the Vanderdecken legend, being a little ...
— Afloat at Last - A Sailor Boy's Log of his Life at Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... For thee, young Fortress Wagner—thou shalt wear Green laurels, worthy of the names that now, Thy sister forts of Moultrie, Sumter, bear! See that thou lift'st, for aye, as proud a brow! And thou shalt be, to future generations, A trophied monument; whither men shall come In homage; and report to distant nations, A ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... by the river, and even the brick-fields contrived to take on a gorgeous, glittering colour in the afternoon sun. Stony Point, a high rocky promontory just above, is the place where "Mad Anthony Wayne" stormed the fortress thought to be impregnable. The British called it "Little Gibraltar." Jack had been looking out for that and the ruins of the old fort, because daredevil Wayne is quite one of his heroes. The whole peninsula here is a public park, so no ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... city of death, its roofs riddled by shell, its every church a crowded hospital, every street a battle-line, every hill a rampart, every rock a fortress, and every stone wall a blazing line ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... that hurt me. It pained me by day and by night;—but that was not all." Faith hesitated. "These things never did touch my faith, Endecott—but it seems to me now as if they had shut it up in a fortress and besieged it. I hadn't a bit of comfort of it except by snatches—only I knew it was there—for ever so long. When I tried to read the Bible, often I could think of nothing but these thoughts would push ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... world? Have you answered that love with yours, kindled by your faith in, and experience of, His? Is His love the overmastering impulse which urges you to all good, the mighty constraint that keeps you back from all evil, the magnet that draws, the anchor that steadies, the fortress that defends, the light that illumines, the treasure that enriches? Is it the law that commands, and the power that enables? Then you are blessed, though people will perhaps say that you are mad, whilst here; and you will be blessed for ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... should be quite a paragon, And worthy of the noblest pedigree (His sire was of Castile, his dam from Aragon): Then for accomplishments of chivalry, In case our lord the king should go to war again, He learn'd the arts of riding, fencing, gunnery, And how to scale a fortress—or ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... far from us—on Sixty-seventh Street near Fifth Avenue, while we are on Seventy-second Street near Madison. The wall of her house near the ground looks like that of a fortress; there are no high steps in front, but Milly and I were shown into a hall, oak finished and English, right on the street level; and then into a room off the hall that was English, too—oak and red leather, with branching ...
— The Bacillus of Beauty - A Romance of To-day • Harriet Stark
... had no wall or tower, but only the stream that encircles it, it would still be so secure and strong that it would have no fear of the whole world." "God!" said Erec, "what great wealth! Let us go and see the fortress, and we shall take lodging in the town, for I wish to stop here." "Sire," said the other in great distress, "were it not to disappoint you, we should not stop here. In the town there is a dangerous passage." "Dangerous?" ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... Barbara's most cherished delight was in one continued running invention of a defence of Jotapata by a crusading family, which went on from generation to generation with unabated energy, though they were very apt to be reduced to two young children who held out their fortress against frightful odds of Saracens, and sometimes conquered, sometimes converted their enemies. Nobody but themselves was fully kept au courant with this wonderful siege, which had hitherto been recorded in interlined copy-books, or little paper books ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... blocks fixed to the logs. One was turned horizontal, and through the hole under it Chad saw daylight—portholes they were. At the door were taken blocks as catches for a piece of upright wood nearby, which was plainly used to bar the door. The cabin was a fortress. By degrees the story came out. The neighborhood was in a turmoil of bloodshed and terror. Tom and Dolph had gone off to the war—Rebels. Old Joel had been called to the door one night, a few weeks since, and had been shot down without warning. They had fought all night. ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... Hesketh, Bowes, Tom Sowerby, and Hugh Seymour, who commanded from the inside the Chateau of Huguemont. When the French had taken possession of the orchard, they made a rush at the principal door of the chateau, which had been turned into a fortress. MacDonell and the above officers placed themselves, accompanied by some of their men, behind the portal and prevented the French from entering. Amongst other officers of that brigade who were most conspicuous for bravery, I would record the names of Montague, the "vigorous Gooch," ...
— Reminiscences of Captain Gronow • Rees Howell Gronow
... the sea!—come with his cohort to mar our measures! Yet see—who cometh now?" he cried; and at once the attention of the young people was turned in the opposite direction as they saw, streaming out of the great fortress-like court-yard of the Temple of the Sun, another ...
— Historic Girls • E. S. Brooks
... to Provence, laying waste on his march several towns of Septimania, Agde, Maguelonne, and Nimes, where he tried, but in vain, to destroy the famous Roman arenas by fire, as one blows up an enemy's fortress. A rising of the Saxons recalled him to Northern Gaul; and scarcely had he set out from Provence, when national insurrection and Arab invasion recommenced. Charles Martel waited patiently as long as the ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... boy's point of view, is a general favourite in Gelderland and Overyssel. For this the boys build a sort of castle with large stones, and after tossing up to see who is to be 'Boer,' the boy on whom the lot has fallen stands in the stone fortress, and the others throw stones at it from a distance, to see whether they can knock bits off it. As soon as one succeeds in doing so he runs to get back his stone, at the same time calling out 'Boer, lap den buis,' signifying ...
— Dutch Life in Town and Country • P. M. Hough
... waited low down there I looked at the high rough stone wall and the two-storied factory with its rows of strong iron-barred windows, and thought of what Mr Tomplin had said the night before, coming to the conclusion that it was a pretty strong fortress in its way. For here was a stout high wall; down along by the stream there was a high blank wall right from the stones over which the water trickled to the double row of little windows; while from the top corner by the ...
— Patience Wins - War in the Works • George Manville Fenn
... the hill-sides. A mountain stream, often swollen to an impetuous torrent by the autumnal rains and the spring thaws, swept through the little verdant lawn, which smiled amid the stern sublimities surrounding this venerable and moss-covered fortress. Around the solitary towers the eagles wheeled and screamed in harmony with the gales and storms which often swept through these wild regions. The expanse around was sparsely settled by a few hardy ...
— Henry IV, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... where, in place of sandy beach or cliff, huge granite boulders lie strewn along the shore, like the ruins of some Titan city, and assuming, here the features of some uncouth monster, there the outline of some gigantic fortress, present an aspect of mingled farce and solemnity, and give the whole region the air of some connection with the under-world,—on this coast, and low down among the boulders out to sea, stands a little ...
— A Loose End and Other Stories • S. Elizabeth Hall
... obtain a plan of the fortress," said O'Brien, "I would give five Napoleons for one," and he looked ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... flushed and breathless from the climb. "I wonder if there is anyone else for whom you wave red ribbons from your fortress!" ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... Immediately below one's feet lies the compact little city, with its red roofs and green chimney pots, its narrow streets and vivid awnings, its wide avenues and the ancient Castle to the north. To the south, the fortress and the bridges; encircling the city a thick, high wall with here and there enormous gates flanked by towers so grim and old that they seem ready to topple over from the sheer fatigue of centuries. A soft, Indian summer haze hangs ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... reign of William the Conqueror there was no strong castle or palace for the King in London, but only an old fortress on one side of this wall, the east side, quite near to the river. This fortress had stood there for a long time. No one knew when it had been built. King William ordered it to be pulled down, and in its place he caused a strong castle to be built. Part of ...
— The Children's Book of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... jack-boots of the Junkers, of the Crown Princes, of the Kaiser, and their courts of intellectuals and business men, and the pan-Germanism which would dye Europe black and red, and the half-bestial servility of the German people. Germany is the fiercest fortress of militarism. Yes, everybody is agreed ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... Wesel Fortress, Gate of the Rhine, could not be defended by Friedrich: and the Hanover Incapables, and England still all in St. Vitus, would not hear of undertaking it; left it wide open for the French; never could recover it, or get the Rhine-Gate barred ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle
... Isthmus were at one time the scene of the many brave but often cruel deeds of the great adventurers and explorers like Drake, buccaneers like Morgan, pirates like Kidd and Wallace. Morgan, a Welshman, sacked and destroyed old Panama, a rich and palatial city, in 1670. He also captured the strong fortress town, Porto Bello. Drake captured the rich and important Cartagena. Captain Kidd, native of Greenock, was commissioned by George III. to stamp out piracy, but turned pirate himself and became the greatest of ...
— Ranching, Sport and Travel • Thomas Carson
... Henry's assassination. To the fair Montmorency's very decided proclivity to gallantry was to be attributed—if we may believe the scandal-loving Tallemant des Reaux—her long confinement, by the Regent Marie de' Medici's consent, within the gloomy fortress of Vincennes, rather than any reason of State for her sharing her husband's imprisonment. In fact, it was believed that the jealous prince procured her incarceration simply to keep her out ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... and ganja or Indian hemp, drinking the latter in the form of the intoxicating liquid known as bhangs, which is prepared from its leaves. Bhang was as a rule drunk by the Rajputs before battle, and especially as a preparation for those last sallies from a besieged fortress in which the defenders threw away their lives. There is little reason to doubt that they considered the frenzy and carelessness of death produced by the liquor as a form of divine possession. Opium has contributed much to the degeneration ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... the fortress of that city is in a state of defense, although not with the completeness that was maintained in former times, and that the fortification of the city is a difficult task. The site of its settlement is admirable, because ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 27 of 55) • Various
... Zengi, a powerful Seljuk Atabeg, in 1144 captured Edessa, the outpost of Christendom, and the Second Crusade, led by the Emperor Conrad of Germany and by King Louis VII of France, failed to effect the recapture of the fortress. Nureddin, the far-sighted son and successor of Zengi, and later on Saladin, a Kurd, trained at his court, discovered how to restore the fallen might of Islam and expel the Franks from Asia. A necessary preliminary step was to put an end to the dissensions of the Atabeg rulers. Nureddin did ...
— The Itinerary of Benjamin of Tudela • Benjamin of Tudela
... side were forty-seven disciplined men splendidly armed, and ensconced moreover in a building possessing for the purpose of the hour the strength of a fortress. It stood on the brow of a hill overlooking the country in every direction; it consisted of two storeys with four windows in each, in front and rere; each gable being also pierced by a pair of windows. There were six ...
— Speeches from the Dock, Part I • Various
... of Nottingham Castle, by which the young King Edward III. and his loyal associates gained access to the fortress and captured the murderous regent and usurper Mortimer, Earl of March, is known to this day as "Mortimer's Hole." It runs up through the perpendicular rock upon which the castle stands, on the south-east side from a place called Brewhouse yard, and has an exit in what was originally ...
— Secret Chambers and Hiding Places • Allan Fea
... Montenegrin tribes and the Albanian tribes of the mountains—who had also their own Bishops —were but insubordinate tribes against whom they sent punitive expeditions when taxes were in arrears and raids became intolerable. The Montenegrins descended from their natural fortress and plundered the fat flocks of the plain lands. They existed mainly by brigandage as their sheep-stealing ballads tell, and the history of raid and punitive expedition is much like that of ...
— Twenty Years Of Balkan Tangle • Durham M. Edith
... will learn that General Montgomery is in Possession of the Fortress Montreal. You are very sensible that I am in Possession at this Place, and that, from the strength of the United Colonies on both sides your own situation is Rendered Very disagreeable. I am therefore ...
— The Father of British Canada: A Chronicle of Carleton • William Wood
... have full sway so long as the peace of the region remains precarious. The last attack from Yaghistan was signally repulsed in 1866. The practice of going armed is still general, and travellers need an escort. Some of the villages resemble the casemates, mines and covered-ways of a fortress. The people are of the same family and religion with those over the border, their foes, although perhaps less hated by them than their nominal compatriots the Kashmiris and Dogras. The Dards are an active and proud people, fond of independence, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... fidelity. Towards the close of the campaign, the arms of Sapor incurred some disgrace by an unsuccessful enterprise against Virtha, or Tecrit, a strong, or, as it was universally esteemed till the age of Tamerlane, an impregnable fortress of ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... the book, illumined, gleaming in the sunshine; the letters, red, gold, many-hued, dancing before them. Love in crimson, the five silver shafts of Cupid, the Tower of Jealousy, a frowning fortress, the Rose, incentive for endless striving and endeavor—all floated by on the creamy parchment leaves. So interested was she in these wondrous pages, executed with such precision and perfection, with marginal ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... Chevalier, if disobedient, could cool his heels in the prison tower of the royal fortress at Caen. After a while, he might indeed see reason and think better of ...
— Orphans of the Storm • Henry MacMahon
... out into the open air, he was still under the spell of those figures. It was a still, sultry, moonlight night. The white walls of the houses beyond the river, the heavy barred gates, the stillness and the black shadows, combined to give the impression of a fortress, and nothing was wanting to complete the picture but a sentinel with a gun. Laptev went into the garden and sat down on a seat near the fence, which divided them from the neighbour's yard, where there was a garden, too. The bird-cherry was in bloom. Laptev remembered that the tree had been just as ...
— The Darling and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... fighting must be, I see that it will be the fight of a single battle, for there is neither fortress nor mountain to admit of long warfare. And look you, my friend, everything here is worn out! The royal line is extinct with Edward, save in a child, whom I hear no man name as a successor; the old nobility are gone, there is no reverence for old names; the Church is as decrepit in ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Can'st scarce through life have travelled many a year, Or lack'st the spirit of a pilgrim here. Youth hath its walls of strength, its towers of pride; Love, its warm hearth-stones; Hope, its prospects wide; Life's fortress in thee, held these one, and all, And they have fallen to ruin, ...
— Poems • Frances Anne Butler
... title Mein Vaterland, are works of considerable power and brilliant orchestral treatment. Perhaps the finest sections are Vltava (Moldau), celebrating the beauties of Bohemia's sacred river, and Vy[vs]ehrad, a realistic description of the national fortress at Prague.[327] The Quartet in E minor, noted for its freedom and intimacy of style, has become a classic. Whenever it was performed Smetana wished the sub-title "Aus Meinem Leben" to be printed on the program; for, as he says in a letter to a friend, "My quartet is no mere juggling with tones; ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... place in St. Petersburg one soft Indian-summer's evening, in a cosy room on the Gagarine Quay, from the windows of which we looked out with admiration upon the blue expanse of the Neva, as it reflected the burnished gold of the spire of the Fortress church. At that time we gazed upon the wavelets of the river and the wonders of the world from exactly ...
— The Sceptics of the Old Testament: Job - Koheleth - Agur • Emile Joseph Dillon
... which built this fortress, most noble Duke," returned the Knight, with a peculiarly soft accent. "My own ancestor was but distantly connected with the last great Earl of Lincoln whom the ...
— Beatrix of Clare • John Reed Scott
... members this morning, tells me, is a "unit." There was a party ready to accept the dismantling of Metz and Strasburg, but as this concession will not disarm the Prussians, they have rallied to the "not a stone of one fortress" declaration. ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... "I looked in the right places, but I must have come on treasures under a charm. My father looked for it, too, and my brother, too—but not a thing did they find, so they died without luck. A monk revealed to my brother Ilya—the Kingdom of Heaven be his—that in one place in the fortress of Taganrog there was a treasure under three stones, and that that treasure was under a charm, and in those days—it was, I remember, in the year '38—an Armenian used to live at Matvyeev Barrow who sold talismans. Ilya bought a talisman, took two other fellows with him, and went to Taganrog. ...
— The Witch and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... Caballero, if your worship wants lodging, bating the bed (for there is not one in the inn) there is plenty of everything else here." Don Quixote, observing the respectful bearing of the Alcaide of the fortress (for so innkeeper and inn seemed in his eyes), made answer, "Sir Castellan, for me anything will ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... mass meeting at the Fifth Regiment Armoury, and I shall never forget the scene as I stood on Hoffman Street with my friend F. R. Kent, Editor of the Baltimore Sun, and watched the multitude press within the fortress-like walls. This huge grey building had seen excitement before, as when Wilson and Bryan triumphed here at the Democratic convention of ...
— The Conquest of America - A Romance of Disaster and Victory • Cleveland Moffett
... settlement of Bahia Blanca, the uppermost plain is composed of very compact, stratified tosca-rock, containing rounded grains of quartz distinguishable by the naked eye: the lower plain, on which the fortress stands, is described by M. Parchappe as composed of solid tosca-rock (Ibid.); but the sections which I examined appeared more like a redeposited mass of this rock, with small pebbles and fragments of quartz. I shall immediately return to the important sections on the shores ...
— South American Geology - also: - Title: Geological Observations On South America • Charles Darwin
... his adherents from their retreats, and restored the authority of the sovereign in all his dominions. The young prince was obliged to take shelter in the castle of Gerberoy in the Beauvoisis, which the King of France, who secretly fomented all these dissensions, had provided for him. In this fortress he was closely besieged by his father, against whom, having a strong garrison, he made an obstinate defence. There passed under the walls of this place many rencounters, which resembled more the single combats of chivalry than the military ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... from the mouth of the Scheldt to Antwerp is usually reckoned to be sixty-two miles, allowing for the bending of the river. At Lillo, an important fortress, the appearance of the city of Antwerp becomes an interesting object, and the more imposing the nearer the traveller approaches along the last reach ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 579 - Volume 20, No. 579, December 8, 1832 • Various
... now numbered 2,500 men, with seventeen guns. He encountered the enemy, and scattered them several times. They reached the thickly settled town where each house was a fortress, and with valor equal to anything on record, fought their way to the Residency, where they were rapturously ...
— Across India - Or, Live Boys in the Far East • Oliver Optic
... lost scarcely two score of his men in the fight, protected as they were by the walls of the fortress, while the besiegers were entirely exposed to the fire of musketry, and the two small cannon they had brought with them, and so they entered into the daring plan of their commander with the utmost zeal. They were instructed as to the plan more fully, ...
— The Heart's Secret - The Fortunes of a Soldier, A Story of Love and the Low Latitudes • Maturin Murray
... Verplank's, and Stony Point, guarding the pass called King's Ferry. Gen. Clinton moves upon them with the British army, and Commodore Collier with the British squadron ascends the river; the British storm the fort named the Fort of Lafayette, at Verplank's; the fortress had to surrender, but not until Col. Bigelow showed them the points of his bayonets. It was said of this conflict, that Col. Bigelow ordered his men to draw their charge and approach the enemy with fixed bayonets, while he himself laid aside his sword and ...
— Reminiscences of the Military Life and Sufferings of Col. Timothy Bigelow, Commander of the Fifteenth Regiment of the Massachusetts Line in the Continental Army, during the War of the Revolution • Charles Hersey
... how should his luxury be applied? Would I put it under his head or mangled limb? I think I never realized our destitution until those little pillows came to remind me that sometimes wounded men had beds! Oh, God! would relief never come? Like the Scotch girl in the besieged fortress of India, I felt like laying my ear to the ground, to harken for the sound of the bagpipes, the tramp of the Campbells coming. It did seem that, without surgical aid or comforts of any kind, my men must soon be all past hope; but a surgeon came, and I hailed him with joy, ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm
... especially as the passage of one of the resolutions by a vote of 36 to 8, exhibits a shift of position on the part of the South, as sudden as it is unaccountable, being nothing less than the surrender of a fortress which until then they had defended with the pertinacity of a blind and almost infuriated fatuity. Upon the discussions during the pendency of the resolutions, and upon the vote, by which they were carried, I make no comment, save ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... not permitted to remain unmolested. Described by Sir Ralph Eure as "the strength of Teviotdale," and by Hertford as "a house of some strength which might be made a good fortress," it was, as already mentioned, the frequent object of attacks by the English. It was pillaged and burnt in 1544 and 1545, and never recovered from the damage done. In 1559 the monastery was suppressed. In 1587 the bailery of the ...
— Scottish Cathedrals and Abbeys • Dugald Butler and Herbert Story
... of New Amsterdam always observed Sunday and attended church regularly. Within the fort at the battery stood the church, built of "Manhattan Stone" in 1642. Its two peaked roofs with the watch-tower between was the most prominent object of the fortress. "On Sunday mornings the two main streets, Broadway and Whitehall, were filled with dignified and sedate churchgoers arrayed in their best clothes. The tucked-up panniers worn by the women displayed to the best advantage the quilted ...
— Quilts - Their Story and How to Make Them • Marie D. Webster
... lies a crystal lake—one hundred and fifty acres of sparkling water. At this point the promenade is fully three-fourths of a mile wide, gradually narrowing to a width of less than one hundred feet at the extreme point. The long battlemented sides of this lofty triangle, like some mighty fortress, grim and frowning, are protected and supported by perpendicular cliffs of black rock, rising like some bastioned wall of terrifying proportions, two hundred feet above the shoulder of the mountain. In a sheltered nook, near the point, about five hundred feet below the base ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... missionaries, who had been sent thither from England for the purpose of propagating the Christian religion, were not on so comfortable a footing with the natives as could have been wished, being in a manner shut up within their little fortress. The natives had made use of threats, and had signified an intention of taking off their women (several of the missionaries having been accompanied by their wives and families). The arrival at Otaheite of this little vessel in some degree relieved them from the anxiety under which ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 2 • David Collins
... on the morning of the 3d of June 171-, the report of a cannon was heard rolling along the waters of the Hudson. Smoke issued from an embrasure of a small fortress, that stood on the point of land where the river and the bay mingle their waters. The explosion was followed by the appearance of a flag, which, as it rose to the summit of its staff and unfolded itself heavily in the light current of air, showed the blue field and red ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... the road to Strasbourg at last, in the rear of St. Mande, near a wood to the left of which we could see some high towers, which they told us was the fortress of Vincennes. ...
— Waterloo - A sequel to The Conscript of 1813 • Emile Erckmann
... area, to the right of the two attacks described, the Germans had converted a large mine crater into a fortress of formidable strength, for from this position they could sweep the entire wood with machine guns so placed that the British were powerless to reach them. The "tanks" were of great efficiency in reducing this strong point on the eastern angle of the wood. ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... priests were torture and dark places... Luther looking up to God... saying you couldn't get away from your sins by paying money... standing out in the world and Kathe making the meal at home... Luther was fat and German. Perhaps his face perspired... Eine feste Burg; a firm fortress... a round tower made of old brown bricks and no windows.... No need for Kathe to smile.... She had been a nun... and then making a lamplit meal for Lather in a wooden German house... and ...
— Pointed Roofs - Pilgrimage, Volume 1 • Dorothy Richardson
... my heart, full of infinite sadness and pity,— Of endless doubt and endeavour, of sorrowful question and strife, Like some unlighted fortress within a beleagured city, Holding within and hiding ...
— The Coming of the Princess and Other Poems • Kate Seymour Maclean
... that glorious, strong fortress of the weak consider it advisable that you remain unburned, pass thence, my little book, to every man who may desire to purchase you, and live out your little hour among these very credulous persons; and at your appointed season perish ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... down Tantallon, and make a bridge to the Bass," was an adage expressive of impossibility. The shattered ruins of this celebrated fortress still overhang a tremendous rock on ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish border (3rd ed) (1 of 3) • Walter Scott
... far off among the highlands. The town is at the head of a small inlet, a short distance from the rock, which was once surrounded by water. We went immediately to the Castle. The rock is nearly 500 feet high, and from its position and great strength as a fortress, has been called the Gibraltar of Scotland. The top is surrounded with battlements, and the armory and barracks stand in a cleft between the two peaks. We passed down a green lane, around the rock, and entered ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... with arquebuses, sakers, and murtherers, a species of naval ordnance which probably did not belie its name. It also boasted, we are told, of two drums for training-days, and no fewer than fifteen hautboys and soft-voiced recorders—all which suggests a mediaeval castle, or a grim fortress in the time of Queen Elizabeth. To the younger members of the community glass or crockery ware was an unknown substance; to the elders it was a memory. An iron pot was the pot-of-all-work, and their table utensils were of beaten pewter. The diet was ...
— An Old Town By The Sea • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... Germany, but were pushed back by the Prussians and their allies, who followed the retreating enemy across the frontier, defeated one large French army at Gravelotte (Aug. 18, 1870) and imprisoned it in Metz, captured the strong fortress of Sedan,—making a prisoner here of the emperor himself, [Footnote: After the war Louis Napoleon found an asylum in England (at Chiselhurst), where he died January 9, 1873.]—and then advancing upon ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... it impossible and he would be hurried away.[128] From the time that he actually saw again the city that he loved this recurring dream was to come no more. He wandered through the well-known places, and seeking for an echo in the Rocca, the ruined fortress above the town, he found that it had not lost its tongue. A fortnight at Venice in a hotel where quiet and coolness were the chief attractions, prepared the way for many subsequent visits to what he afterwards called "the dearest place in the world." Everything in Venice, ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... the Spanish monarchy, which lay contiguous to the eastern frontier of France. Already, before the conclusion of the treaty of Breda, he had invaded those provinces. He now pushed on his conquest with scarcely any resistance. Fortress after fortress was taken. Brussels itself was in danger; and Temple thought it wise to send his wife and children to England. But his sister, Lady Giffard, who had been some time his inmate, and who seems to have been a more ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... peace between them. This quarrel originated from the following circumstance: Not far from Alexandria there was a strong castle belonging to the Saracens[4], in which they had placed some of their principal ladies, and much treasure; which fortress the earl and his English followers had the good fortune to take, more by dexterous policy than by open force of arms, through which capture he and his people were much enriched; and when the French came to the knowledge of this exploit, which had not been previously communicated to them, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr
... possession of the mountains, confident of the advantages of their position. El Feri, therefore, having secured all the heights and passes of the Sierra, beheld with inward satisfaction the approach of the enemy; indeed, his situation could not be improved; nature had fashioned an impregnable fortress in the whole circumference of that huge mountain; large masses of rock frowned at intervals around the summit and extended down the sides, and the hollows were filled up with large clumps of trees, the growth of ages. There was only one path by ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... which was situate, I learned, no more than a third of a mile away. I went thither on foot by way of an avenue of trees leading up to a drawbridge and gateway. The former was down, but the gates were closed, and all the formalities of a fortress in time of war were observed on my admission, though the garrison appeared to consist only of two or three serving-men and as many foresters. I had leisure after sending in my name to observe that the house was old and partly ruinous, but of great strength, covered in places with ivy, ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... of armed men about a spot so surrounded by mystery and superstition that not a soul upon Barsoom would have dared to approach it even had they known its exact location. I questioned Thuvia, asking her what enemies the therns could fear in their impregnable fortress. ...
— The Gods of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... fortress of the castle, and the entrance that was so perilous, whereof he marvelleth much. He passeth a bridge that was within the entry, and cometh nigh them that guard the gate. A Voice began to cry aloud above the gate that he might go forward safely, and that ...
— High History of the Holy Graal • Unknown
... corresponding quiescence in the mind, and to fill it with those indescribably solemn feelings that frequently arise before a thunderstorm. Dark, lurid clouds hung overhead in gigantic masses, piled above each other like the battlements of a dark fortress, from whose ragged embrasures the artillery of heaven was ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... me nothing more than a rough and incorrect draft of an intended answer.) But Stafford was a traitor. In the interval, being "fairly treated," he accepted, without communication with the governor, the terms granted by Cromwell, and opened the gates of the fortress to the enemy. From the castle they scaled an undefended wall in the vicinity, and poured into the town. A paper containing the terms was now delivered to the other three commissioners; but "their ...
— The History of England from the First Invasion by the Romans - to the Accession of King George the Fifth - Volume 8 • John Lingard and Hilaire Belloc
... the Islands of the North Sea." Heligoland, an island and fortress in the North Sea, lies thirty-six miles northwest of the mouth of the Elbe—Hamburg. It was ceded to Germany by Great Britain in 1890; and is attached to Schleswig Holstein. As a fortress, its importance has been greatly increased since the Germans recovered ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume V (of X) • Various
... the grave murmur of organ music; men's voices mingling together in mellow unison chanted the Magnificat, and the uplifted steady harmony of the grand old anthem rose triumphantly above the noise of the storm. The monks who inhabited this mountain eyrie, once a fortress, now a religious refuge, were assembled in their little chapel—a sort of grotto roughly hewn out of the natural rock. Fifteen in number, they stood in rows of three abreast, their white woollen robes touching the ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... o'clock then in the evening of the 4th, on a fresh mount, I turned my back on the doomed fortress, and crossing the Guadiana by the horse ferry above Elvas, struck into ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... mile, between Cartlane Craigs and Bothwell Castle, he reached the valley in which that fortress stands, and calling to the warder at his gates, that he came from Sir William Wallace, was immediately admitted, and ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... sight, then, for the first time, opened her eyes to the deep affection she had conceived for Jean. It was plain that the men had heard of the wounded man's presence at the farm and were come to claim him; he was to be torn from them and led away captive to the dungeon of some dark fortress deep in Germany. She listened ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... so safely was he in his keeping. Also, I tell ye, he himself kept the keys of the strong tower wherein he had locked his guest. He would bethink him what 'twere best to do ere he let him be slain or maimed; thus did he hold him within his fortress. ...
— The Romance of Morien • Jessie L. Weston
... failure. Not so the expedition against Louisburg, the capture of which was the most important event of the year. Being regarded as the key to the St. Lawrence, it was a strongly fortified place. A fortress had been erected there at a cost of 30,000,000 livres. The garrison was defended by the Chevalier de Drucourt, with 3,100 troops and about 700 Indians; while two frigates and six line-of-battle ships guarded the harbour, the entrance to which was blocked by three sunken ...
— Canadian Notabilities, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... The fortress in the isle of Arguin was finished, and it was found necessary to build another at S. Georgio de la Mina, a few degrees north of the line, to secure the trade of gold dust, which was chiefly carried on ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... instinct of the proprietor caused all forest growth to be cleared from a broad space entirely around the rude fortress that held his life's treasures; but within the enclosure he left standing two superb oaks. These not only afforded a grateful shade, but gave a distinctive feature to the place that was quickly recognized by the surrounding Indians. Thus they always spoke ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... and her father had gone out upon the terrasse to have their cigarettes prior to their walk up the steep hillside to the fortress. ...
— The Doctor of Pimlico - Being the Disclosure of a Great Crime • William Le Queux
... with the flowers she had gathered in the forenoon from the forests, the meadows, and the gardens out by the city fortress, where an old gardener went with her and picked out the choicest specimens for her. He had a crippled son who fell in love with Eleanore and always stood in the door and smiled at her when she came. He promised he would get ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... to be alone, and have all day to wander up and down the old prison and palace and museum, for it has been all these things by turns. Well, we rode over Tower Hill, and got directly in front of the old fortress, and had a complete view ...
— Young Americans Abroad - Vacation in Europe: Travels in England, France, Holland, - Belgium, Prussia and Switzerland • Various
... least tallies fairly with the epigraphical and other records of the time. According to him, Muhammad Taghlaq of Delhi, having reduced Gujarat, marched southwards through the Dakhan Balaghat, or high lands above the western ghats, and a little previous to the year 1336[8] seized the town and fortress of Anegundi. Its chief was slain, with all the members of his family. After a futile attempt to govern this territory by means of a deputy, Muhammad raised to the dignity of chief of the state its late minister, a man whom Nuniz ...
— A Forgotten Empire: Vijayanagar; A Contribution to the History of India • Robert Sewell
... of the fort. Anderson held out for a day or two, until the walls were beaten down about his ears, and then surrendered the fortress to the rebels. This ...
— The Story of Garfield - Farm-boy, Soldier, and President • William G. Rutherford
... mostly built of stone, some of the streets on terraces, many of them thickly planted with trees, has a shady and sylvan look. The gaol, an enormous building crowning a steep hill, looks like the capitol of a fortress, and appears to have exercised a salutary effect on the neighbourhood, for it has long been disused. The district did not furnish malefactors enough to make the establishment pay. The gaol officials stood about with folded hands wishing for something to ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... have prevented Bernadotte from quitting the banks of the Elbe and the Weser, and reinforcing the Grand Army which was marching on Vienna. But the King of Sweden's coalition produced no other result than the siege of the little fortress of Hameln. ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... were about to turn into the great square in front of the fortress of the Seven Towers, another imposing crowd encountered them coming from the opposite direction. It was the escort of the Sultana. The half a thousand odalisks and the four hundred eunuchs occupied the whole width of the road, but face to face with them were advancing ...
— Halil the Pedlar - A Tale of Old Stambul • Mr Jkai
... themselves seriously to their business. The guard cast a glance along the road, and up the sides of the steeps, and beckoned to the horsemen behind to come on; and the driver repeatedly cracked his whip. Silence settled down on the party within the carriage; for all understood that they drew near the fortress. In silence they wound through the defile, till all egress seemed barred by a lofty crag. The road, however, passed round its base, and disclosed to view a small basin among the mountains, in the midst of which rose the steep ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... wasn't, properly speaking, a ranch at all. It was a low, four-room adobe house with a lean-to kitchen built of boards. It had a dirt roof and iron-barred windows and in the rear there was a long rectangular patio with a fountain and a flower garden. In fact, the ranch was more of a fortress than a dwelling-place and was surrounded by an adobe wall which enclosed about an acre of the Mojave desert. Originally it had been the habitation of a visionary who wandered into San Pasqual, established the ranch and sunk an artesian ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... pamphlet The Fortress of the Soul and its Seven Dwellings, St. Teresa describes similar states of mind: "The bridegroom commands the doors of the dwellings to be closed and also the gates of the fortress and its surrounding walls. ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... vigorously from the western shore, having come far to see the last of the adventurers, and the garrisons of the forts looked like silhouetted maniacs above the fortress mounds. They, too, faded in the distance, and at length the reefs with their white surge, and Pencarrow Light high on the cliffs above the poor rusty remnants of a wreck, were far astern. The leading vessels had lifted their bows westward through the Strait, and each following ship ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie
... courage—sowing their seed, it may be, in the dark, in the hope that it will yet take root and spring up in achieved result. The best of causes have had to fight their way to triumph through a long succession of failures, and many of the assailants have died in the breach before the fortress has been won. The heroism they have displayed is to be measured, not so much by their immediate success, as by the opposition they have encountered, and the courage with which ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... moreover, exceedingly proud and punctilious, and tenacious of all his privileges and dignities. Under his sway, the immunities of the Alhambra, as a royal residence and domain, were rigidly exacted. No one was permitted to enter the fortress with firearms, or even with a sword or staff, unless he were of a certain rank, and every horseman was obliged to dismount at the gate and lead his horse by the bridle. Now, as the hill of the Alhambra rises from the very midst of the city of Granada, being, as it were, an excrescence ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... sides of us we see public and private society broken up, as it were by an earthquake: the noblest and the meanest passions of the human bosom at contention, and the latter often so disguised, that the vile ambuscade is not even suspected till found within the heart of the fortress itself. We have, however, one veritable touchstone, that of the truest observation, "ye shall know a tree by its fruits." Let us look round, then, for those which bear "good fruits," wholesome to the taste as well ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... bit of line, but on the whole campaign, because of the political reason for holding the Salient. The town of Ypres is nothing to us, but if the Boche took it they would publish it to the world that they had captured the fortress of Ypres, which we have held ...
— The Sherwood Foresters in the Great War 1914 - 1919 - History of the 1/8th Battalion • W.C.C. Weetman
... made a concentration of their best troops opposite our positions west of the village of Guzow, against the trenches of the second army at a point where an army corps of veterans have turned their position into an earthen fortress. Here within the last few days the Germans have brought up guns of all but the largest calibre and generally displayed considerable increases in their artillery. Here also their infantry attacks, those tragic and ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... what she had done. It is so hard to build and defend a fortress of lies, and she was very old and not very wise, tired out, confused by the stare of the mob and the knowledge that every word she uttered endangered the life she had borne. Now she felt that she had undone everything. She blamed herself for ruining the work of years. She saw her ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... dazzling white in the early sun. Above and beyond the city rose, overpowering, a very different city, somehow, than that her imagination had first drawn. Each of that multitude of vast towers seemed a fortress now, manned by Celt and Hun and, Israelite and Saxon, captained by Titans. And the strife between them was on a scale never known in the world before, a strife with modern arms and modern methods and modern brains, in ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... however, difficult to say whether taste, or religion, or policy, or necessity, induced this nobleman to quit the saloons of Paris for the wilds of the Penobscot. It is merely known that he passed the greater part of his life on that river, in a rude fortress that was then called a palace, that he had many wives, a numerous progeny, and that he possessed a great influence over most of the tribes that dwelt in his vicinity. He is also believed to have been the instrument of furnishing ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... entitled respectively "Godefridus," "Tancredus," "Morus" (Sir Thomas More), and "Orlandus," after four representative paladins of Christian chivalry. The title of the whole work was suggested by the fortress of Ehrenbreitstein, the "Gibraltar of the Rhine." Like Fouque, Digby was inspired by the ideal of knighthood, but he emphasises not so much the gallantry of the knight-errant as his religious character as the champion of Holy Church. The book is, loosely speaking, ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... successfully fought off, although the Austrian, Belgian, Italian. and Dutch legations were then and subsequently burned. With the aid of the native converts, directed by the missionaries, to whose helpful co-operation Mr. Conger awards unstinted praise, the British legation was made a veritable fortress. The British minister, Sir Claude MacDonald, was chosen general commander of the defense, with the secretary of the American legation, Mr. E. G. ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... been a pretty bitter quarrel that drove the tenants of the airy height of Old Sarum to remove to the marshy level of the present site of the cathedral and the town. I wish we could have given more time to the ancient fortress and cathedral town. This is one of the most interesting historic localities of Great Britain. We looked from different points of view at the mounds and trenches which marked it as a strongly fortified position. For many centuries ...
— Our Hundred Days in Europe • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... us, on the right bank of the river, and separated from it by a low flat, of about two miles in extent, stood the fortress of Kehl, at that time garrisoned by a strong Austrian force; the banks of the river, and the wooded islands in the stream, which communicated with the right by bridges, or fordable passes, being also held by ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... their families; except those of Louis Capet, and his wife, of Philip Egalite, and Madame du Barre (sic). Decree to apply the palace of Versailles to national uses. Assignats burned to this month amount to 2,623,680,000 livres. 7. The fortress of Luxemburg, almost impregnable, surrenders to the French from want of provisions. 8. Louis Charles, the descendant of 60 Kings, the son of Louis XVI. whom the royalists acknowledged as King since the 21st of Jan. 1793, under ...
— Historical Epochs of the French Revolution • H. Goudemetz
... ensure their transfer to a less rigorous confinement, whence they might find means of flight. Twenty galley slaves were imprisoned in the castle. At night they occupied the same apartment with Pepe; in the day-time they were set to work in different parts of the fortress. These men were easily persuaded to adopt an ingenious plan of escape devised by Pepe, who, with his friend, was to remain behind, "upon the plea that, as the government attached far more importance to the custody of state prisoners, than to that ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... the place capitulated. This defeat, though he had only held a subordinate command, afflicted him greatly, and he looked round for some means of avenging his country's loss on the Turks. He resolved at last to endeavour to make a diversion by recommencing the war in Crete; but without a strong fortress to secure the ammunition and supplies necessary for prosecuting a series of irregular attacks, it was evident that nothing important could be effected. In this difficulty, Kalergy determined to attack the impregnable island-fortress ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... at frosty May like spring's return. Say you are terrorized: you dare not melt. You like me; you might love me; but to dare, Tasks more than courage. Veneration, friends, Self-worship, which is often self-distrust, Bar the good way to you, and make a dream A fortress ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... delude himself, and to celebrate a defeat, even a glorious one, as a victory. Negotiations recommenced. Heinsius had held to his last proposals. It was on this sorry basis that Marshal d'Huxelles and Abbe de Polignac began the parleys, at Gertruydenberg, a small fortress of Mardyk. They lasted from March 9 to July 25, 1710; the king consented to give some fortresses as guarantee, and promised to recommend his grandson to abdicate; in case of refusal, he engaged not only to support him no longer, but to furnish the allies, into the bargain, with a monthly subsidy ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... wrong while Sir Edmund Andros ruled over them," continued Grandfather; "and they were apprehensive of much more. He had brought some soldiers with him from England, who took possession of the old fortress on Castle Island and of the fortification on Fort Hill. Sometimes it was rumored that a general massacre of the inhabitants was to be perpetrated by these soldiers. There were reports, too, that all the ministers were ...
— Grandfather's Chair • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... more and more, until after rounding a prodigious headland we found ourselves in face of the charming little city of Funchal: long horizontal lines of red roofs, ivory and pink and salmon walls, evenly fenestrated, with an ancient fortress giving the modern look of things a proper mediaeval touch. Large hotels, with the air of palaces, crowned the upland vantages; there were bell-towers of churches, and in one place there was a wide splotch ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... sin, with sorrows rife, While still from the dizzy whirlpool drowning souls creep to the door; For the House of God, unchanging, stands now and forevermore. Struggling in life's lonely battle, wounded, faint with many falls We have found a mighty fortress in ...
— The Kirk on Rutgers Farm • Frederick Bruckbauer
... for an instant to forget his great trouble, and his face went to warm sunshine like a boy's; but it was as sun playing on a scarred fortress. Presently the light faded out of his face and left it like iron ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... consequences. We wished to save the honour of the knights—that was all; for no one who has seen Malta can imagine that an island surrounded with such formidable and perfect fortifications would have surrendered in two days to a fleet which was pursued by an enemy. The impregnable fortress of Malta is so secure against a 'coup de main' that General Caffarelli, after examining its fortifications, said to the General-in-Chief, in my presence, "Upon my word, General, it is luck: there is some one in the town to open the ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... was a little one, worse than a village, and it was inhabited by scarcely any but old people who died with an infrequency that was really annoying. In the hospital and in the prison fortress very few coffins were needed. In fact business was bad. If Yakov Ivanov had been an undertaker in the chief town of the province he would certainly have had a house of his own, and people would ...
— The Chorus Girl and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... for trade. It has a landlocked harbor encircled by precipitous hills and large enough to float the navies of the world. It is the second largest port on earth for exports and imports, over six hundred million dollars' worth in a year. It is a meeting-place of the East and the West, a fortress of Britain in China, a conglomeration of people, a center of influence for Japan and for India, an object-lesson in sanitation, education, and municipal government. The dominating religion is that of the Church of England, and the Hongkong University, though endowed in part by wealthy Chinese, ...
— A Tour of the Missions - Observations and Conclusions • Augustus Hopkins Strong |
