"Earthwork" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... position a number of men were set to work with spades, picks, and shovels, to throw up an earthwork. When it had assumed sufficiently large dimensions to attract the attention of the French, a body of men, with blue jackets, and caps with bits of red flannel hanging down the sides, were marched up behind it at the double, and ...
— The Lighthouse • R.M. Ballantyne
... back to the depot, and drew back the battalion of regulars to the small earth redoubt near it. The depot-building was of brick, and had been punctured with loop-holes. To its east, about two hundred yards, was a small square earthwork or fort, into which were put a part of the regulars along with the company of the Sixty-sixth Indiana already there. The rest of the men were distributed into the railroad-cut, and in some shallow rifle-trenches near the depot. We had hardly made these preparations ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... this precaution of no use. Fire is communicated to the combustible matter within the shell by means of a fuse, which is so regulated that the explosion shall take place at the desired moment. Hollow-shot are used with advantage to destroy ordinary buildings, ships, earthwork, and thin walls of masonry; they, however, are of little avail in breaking the massive walls of well-constructed forts. Howitzes and grenades are particularly effective against cavalry and columns of infantry, and are much employed on the battle-field; they ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck
... troops. Joan now gave instructions that no aid should reach this portion of the English defences from the adjacent bastilles. All around the fight raged, and Joan was soon in the hottest of the engagement, encouraging her soldiers, her flag in her hand. Dismounting, she stood on the edge of the earthwork, beyond which the English were ...
— Joan of Arc • Ronald Sutherland Gower
... continuously. They were covering a great stretch of country up to Hulluch, and north of it, with intense harassing fire. Later on that Saturday morning the 15th Division received orders to attack and capture the German earthwork redoubt on the crest of the hill. A brigade of the 21st Division was nominally in support of them, but only small groups of that brigade appeared on the scene, a few white-faced officers, savage with anger, almost mad ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... house and the barrack fort looked more like some ornamented set of buildings for summer pleasure, than a couple of places designed as a stronghold and retreat in case of danger. For the ditch and the earthwork were now carpetted with verdant growth, while the abattis, having been made of green wood, was putting forth ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn
... holds highest carnival. They keep in the Senate-chamber of the Capitol, nailed over the entrance doorway in full sight of the Speaker's chair, a drum, a musket, and a mitre-shaped soldier's hat-trophies of the fight fought in front of the low earthwork on Bunker's Hill. Thus the senators of Massachusetts have ever before them visible reminders of the glory of their fathers: and I am not sure that these former belongings of some long-waistcoated redcoat are not as ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... head, and grunted at a red blur very low in the mist. A fire was burning on the low point of land where Nichols—the Nova Scotian—had planted the battery which had worked such havoc with Admiral Rowley's boats. It was a mere earthwork and some of the guns had been removed. The fire, however, warned us that there were some people on the point. We ceased rowing for a moment, and Castro explained to me that a fire was always lit when any of these thieves' ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... black stuff, large grained, coarser even than blasting powder. Once they got a bag open it did not take them long to lay the train to the lantern, which Ken placed in a little excavation kicked out right under the front wall of the earthwork. ...
— On Land And Sea At The Dardanelles • Thomas Charles Bridges
... trenches? Suddenly the guns ceased pounding the earth in front of us and lifted to make a screen of fire almost a mile beyond. There was instant pitch darkness on every hand, and out of that a hundred trumpets sounded. Instantly, each squadron leader leaped the earthwork, shouting to his men. Ranjoor Singh leaped up in front of us, and we followed him, all forgetting their distrust of him in the fierce excitement—remembering only how he had led us in the charge on that first night. The air was ...
— Hira Singh - When India came to fight in Flanders • Talbot Mundy
... doubled, or even tripled. The restorations of Daux[654] contain, no doubt, a good deal that is fanciful; but they give, probably, a fair idea of the general character of the so-called "triple wall" of certain Phoenician cities. The outer line, or {proteikhisma}, was little more than an earthwork, consisting of a ditch, with the earth from it thrown up inwards, crowned perhaps at top with a breastwork of masonry. The second line was far more elaborate. There was first a ditch deeper than the outer one, while behind this rose a perpendicular battlemented wall to the height, from the ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... sward springs to the foot, and the heart grows lighter as the height increases. The ancient hill is alone with the wind. The broad summit is left to scattered furze and fern cowering under its shelter. A sunken fosse and earthwork have slipped together. So lowly are they now after these fourteen hundred years that in places the long rough grass covers and conceals ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... close against the Selinghinsk and Vallyrie redoubts, and partly covering the ground where we dug our rifle-pits later on. But we were going ahead with our work fast, and already we had thrown up the little redoubts known as No. 11 and No. 15, which covered the advancing earthwork leading to where our second parallel was to begin. Redoubt No. 11 was a good hundred yards, and Redoubt No. 15 was more than three times that distance outside of our lines; and everybody knew that these two advanced posts ...
— For The Honor Of France - 1891 • Thomas A. Janvier
... inexorable death. There had the stately stag his battle-field— Dying for mastery among his hinds. There vainly sprung the affrighted antelope, Beset by glittering eyes and hurrying feet. The dancing grouse at their insensate sport, Heard not the stealthy footstep of the fox; The gopher on his little earthwork stood, With folded arms, unconscious of the fate That wheeled in narrowing circles overhead, And the poor mouse, on heedless nibbling bent, Marked not the silent coiling of the snake. At length we heard a deep and solemn sound— Erupted ...
— Tecumseh: A Drama • Charles Mair
... ramparts to a great majesty. They were old friends of his, and while keeping up the heat through the long darkness, as it was sometimes his duty to do, he would imagine the dancing lights and shades about the stupendous earthwork to be the forms of those giants who (he supposed) had heaped it up. Often he clambered upon it, and walked about the summit, thinking out the problems connected with his business, his partner, his ...
— The Romantic Adventures of a Milkmaid • Thomas Hardy
... an old one and all that remained now of any life was the blackened ground where there had been cooking, the brown soiled cartridge-cases, and many empty tin cans. And then as I waited, leaning forward with my elbows on the earthwork, the frogs the only sound in the world, I was conscious that some one was watching me. In front of me I could see the red light flickering and turning a little as it seemed—behind me nothing but the starlight. I turned, looked back, and for ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... approached through the growing darkness; for near where the lane reached the Delaware was a small earthwork, the last of those I needed to visit. I tried after viewing it to cross the double rows of grenadiers which guarded this road, but was rudely repulsed, and thus had need to go back of their line and around the rear of the mansion. When opposite to the outhouses ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... attack would be made upon their position, and the passage of the troops without the slightest attention to themselves surprised and disconcerted them. But at last they perceived that they must take the offensive, and suddenly a hot fire of musketry broke out from bush and earthwork, while the Krupp guns, manned by the soldiers who had formed part of the Tokar garrison, opened fire. The distance was but four hundred yards, and several of the men fell out from their places in the ranks wounded, but the greater part of the shot ...
— The Dash for Khartoum - A Tale of Nile Expedition • George Alfred Henty
... for an hour or two at the strong oaken hall, moated and stockaded, of some great border thane for the midday meal. There were the marks of fire on roof and walls; for once the wild Welsh had tried to burn it, and failed, in a sudden raid before Offa had curbed them with the mighty earthwork that runs from Dee to Severn to keep the border of his realm. "Offa's Dyke" men call it, and so it will be called to ...
— A King's Comrade - A Story of Old Hereford • Charles Whistler
... army which Washington commanded, in 1776, in New England and New Jersey; and it was while the army was on the heights of Haerlem, in the autumn of 1776, that he attracted the notice of Washington. The General inspected an earthwork which the Captain was constructing, conversed with him, and invited him to his tent. This was the beginning of an acquaintance that was destined to have memorable consequences and lasting effects on the American nation. On the 1st of March, 1777, Hamilton was appointed to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... booty; the principal street was one hundred feet wide, and was called Principia. The defences of the camp consisted of a ditch, the earth from which was thrown inward, and of strong palisades of wooden stakes driven into the top of the earthwork so formed; the ditch was sometimes fifteen feet deep, and the vallum, or rampart, ten feet in height. When the army encamped for the first time the tribunes administered an oath to each individual, including slaves, to the effect that ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord
... packed and stacked side by side and on top of each other, being almost impossible for a single man even to pick his way through, and next to impossible for a line of battle to cross over. All along the entire length of the fortifications were built great redoubts of earthwork in the form of squares, the earth being of sufficient thickness to turn any of our cannon balls, while all around was a ditch from twelve to fifteen feet deep—only one opening in the rear large enough to admit the teams drawing the batteries. Field pieces were posted at each ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... Wessex too was to fall into their hands. AElfred himself, with a little band, "withdrew to the woods and moor-fastnesses." He took refuge in the Somerset marshes, and there occupied a little island of dry land in the midst of the fens, by name Athelney. Here he threw up a rude earthwork, from which he made raids against the Danes, with a petty levy of the nearest Somerset men. But the mass of the West Saxons were not disposed to give in so easily. The long border warfare with Devon and Cornwall had probably kept up their organisation ...
— Early Britain - Anglo-Saxon Britain • Grant Allen
... were, ragged and half starved, a handful of men, not more than four hundred, but their bayonets gleamed and flashed in the sunlight. In the face of a murderous fire he charged and actually drove our men out of an entrenchment. We concentrated our guns on him as he crouched behind this earthwork. Our own men lay outside in scores, dead, dying, and wounded. When the fire slacked, we could hear their cries ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon |
