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Bastion   Listen
noun
Bastion  n.  (Fort.) A work projecting outward from the main inclosure of a fortification, consisting of two faces and two flanks, and so constructed that it is able to defend by a flanking fire the adjacent curtain, or wall which extends from one bastion to another. Two adjacent bastions are connected by the curtain, which joins the flank of one with the adjacent flank of the other. The distance between the flanks of a bastion is called the gorge. A lunette is a detached bastion. See Ravelin.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Bastion" Quotes from Famous Books



... Braithwaite, scholar of William and Mary College, man of refinement and experience, commissioned officer who had been in the assault at Ticonderoga, and who had stood victoriously with Wolfe on the Plains of Abraham, leaned upon a bastion at Fort Prescott and watched one of the wildest nights that he had ever seen. He wore his three-cornered military hat, but the rain flowed steadily in a little stream from every corner. He was wrapped in an old military coat, badge of distinguished ...
— The Riflemen of the Ohio - A Story of the Early Days along "The Beautiful River" • Joseph A. Altsheler

... signal of defeat and victory: the Swedes gave way, the Dutch pressed forward; the former took to their heels, the latter hotly pursued. Some entered with them, pell-mell, through the sally-port; others stormed the bastion, and others scrambled over the curtain. Thus in a little while the fortress of Fort Christina, which, like another Troy, had stood a siege of full ten hours, was carried by assault, without the ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner

... principal church of La Rochelle. The Count de la Noue, as a friend and companion-in-arms of her father, gave her away; and all the Huguenot noblemen and gentlemen in the town were present. Three weeks later, a great assault upon the bastion of L'Evangile having been repulsed, the siege languished; the besieging army having suffered greatly, both from death in the trenches and assaults, and by the attacks ...
— Saint Bartholomew's Eve - A Tale of the Huguenot WarS • G. A. Henty

... commanding the guard upon the Rajah, struck one of them with his sword. The people grew more and more irritated; but a message being sent from the Rajah to appease them, they continued, on this interposition, for a while quiet. Then the Rajah retired to a sort of stone pavilion, or bastion, to perform his devotions, the guard of sepoys attending him in this act of religion. In the mean time a person of the meanest station, called a chubdar, at best answering to our common beadle ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VIII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... forth the Russians ran. A neighboring division consisting of young men who had enlisted in the course of the war, in a brilliant charge took a bastion at Klosnowo. The effect of this first penetration of the Russian main position made itself felt in the course of the afternoon and night along the whole front. Further German forces were thrown into the breach ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various

... enormous nursing homes and hostels, which under the direction of the Religious Orders had gradually grown up about this shrine of healing, until now, up to a height of at least five hundred feet, the city of Mary stood on bastion after bastion of the lower slopes of the hills, like some huge auditorium of white stone, facing down towards the river ...
— Dawn of All • Robert Hugh Benson

... caused by the headstrong rivers? What can I say? Certainly I do not feel myself equal to such a demonstration, yet by experience I will try to relate the process of ruin of the rivers which destroy their banks and against which no mortal bastion ...
— Thoughts on Art and Life • Leonardo da Vinci

... of Nike Apteros has had, as Mr. Stillman reminds us, a destiny unique of its kind. Like the Parthenon, it was standing little more than two hundred years ago, but during the Turkish occupation it was razed, and its stones all built into the great bastion which covered the front of the Acropolis and blocked up the staircase to the Propylaea. It was dug out and restored, nearly every stone in its place, by two German architects during the reign of Otho, and it stands again just as Pausanias ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde

... the soldiers had disappeared over the rise. Through other dark arches of masonry he ran. On the crest were two ways to choose—the roadway on around and past the barracks, and a flight of steps cut steeply in the living rock of the ledge, and leading up to the King's Bastion. Bobby took the stairs ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson

... gives a religious look to tapestry, quite other than the later introduction of castles. These castle strongholds of the Middle Ages wasted no daintiness of construction, nor favoured light ornament, nor dainty hand. They were, par excellence, places of defence against the frequent enemy; so, in bastion and tower they were piled in curving masses around the scenes of the later Gothic tapestries. Even more, they began to play an important part in the mise en scene, and were drawn on tiny scale as habitations ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee

... elephant, left the fort. Soldiers and citizens, stirred by deep sympathy, thronged the ramparts to take one last look at the two boys. Even the stern and cruel Tippoo himself was moved, and found it difficult to repress his emotion as, standing on the bastion above the great entrance, he watched ...
— The Junior Classics • Various

... the plain, the Pyrenees rose, range behind range, a white wall in the moonlight. At their feet the walls of the ramparts, bastion below bastion, broken and crenelated, a triumph of mediaeval fortification, faded into the shadow where ...
— The Velvet Glove • Henry Seton Merriman

... gleam of the bayonets, and the crowd retired precipitately behind the second barricade. The first was now speedily torn down, and the head of the column advanced. The second was a more formidable affair, in fact, a regular bastion, behind which were packed in one dense mass an immense body of desperate men, reaching down the street, till lost in the darkness. It seemed now that nothing but deadly volleys would answer. One of the city officers advised Colonel Stevens to retreat, but, instead of obeying, ...
— The Great Riots of New York 1712 to 1873 • J.T. Headley

... The fight continued till long after night. Our troops gained first one traverse and then another, and by 10 o'clock at night the place was carried. During this engagement the sailors, who had been repulsed in their assault on the bastion, rendered the best service they could by reinforcing Terry's northern line—thus enabling him to send a detachment to the assistance of Ames. The fleet kept up a continuous fire upon that part of the fort which was still occupied by the enemy. By means of signals ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan

... Towards the north, a narrow slip of land, the peninsula of Araya, formed a dark stripe on the sea, which, being illumined by the rays of the sun, reflected a strong light. Beyond the peninsula the horizon was bounded by Cape Macanao, the black rocks of which rise amid the waters like an immense bastion. ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt

... think not, ye that loved her, Of the pallor hushed and dread, Where the winds, like heavy mourners, Cry about her lonesome bed, But of white hands softly reaching As the shadow o'er her fell, Downward from the golden bastion Of the eternal citadel. ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various

... Man the Leonoren bastion as strongly as possible, stir not from the spot, and make constant use of the best glass to observe what movements are going on among the forces ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... moved in single file, swiftly and silently on their bare feet, under the wall of the fort toward the northeast bastion, gliding like phantoms in the gloom. Each man bore his burden: the Babu carried the dark lantern; one of the Marathas the coil of rope; the other the sentry's matchlock and ammunition; several had small bundles containing food, secreted during the past ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang

... interval of at least three hundred yards, was completely turned, and the Sixth Kentucky was almost surrounded. This regiment (under the command of Major William Bullitt, an officer of the calmest and most perfect bravery), behaved nobly. It stood the heavy attack of the enemy like a bastion. At length seeing that General Morgan had gotten out of the valley with the rest of the division, Colonel Johnson and myself, upon consultation, determined to withdraw simultaneously. We had checked ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke

... been; you shall hear presently. During the siege I served as bombardier, There in St. Angelo. His Holiness, One day, was walking with his Cardinals On the round bastion, while I stood above Among my falconets. All thought and feeling, All skill in art and all desire of fame, Were swallowed up in the delightful music Of that artillery. I saw far off, Within the enemy's trenches on the Prati, A Spanish cavalier in scarlet cloak; And firing ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... which the great trees stood like huge parasols. So gigantic was the growth, that sometimes a whole village was sheltered by one and the same tree. The post of Sedhiou—a brick-built fort, with a little bastion armed with a gun at each corner—is placed at a point of great importance on the caravan line from the interior. I was received by an infantry captain, M. Dallin, who had done the most excellent service there, but ruined his health, and by two white ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville

... line of road, from which all communication with Antwerp itself has latterly been cut off. Two of the sides of this fastness front towards the adjacent country, and are likewise supplied with ravelines; the centre bastion in this direction bears Paciotto's name, which has been denaturalized in that of Paniotto in the French elevations. The defences of the town terminate in the centre of the fifth side, which circumstance has left it unprovided with a raveline. On the summit (or capital) of the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 581, Saturday, December 15, 1832 • Various

... occupied a Roman site; for, in 1800, in the rear of the house, in a bastion of the City Wall, was found a sepulchral monument dedicated to Claudina Martina by her husband, a provincial Roman soldier; here also were found a fragment of a statue of Hercules and a female head. In front of the Coffee-house immediately west of ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers

... for a moment to get her breath, she became sensible that some living thing was near; and putting out her hand she felt that there was round her something that was like a bastion upon a fortified wall, and immediately a hand touched hers, and a soft voice said, 'Sister, fear not! for this is the watch-tower, and I am one of those who keep the way.' She had started and trembled indeed, not that ...
— The Little Pilgrim: Further Experiences. - Stories of the Seen and the Unseen. • Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant

... some scouts to reconnoiter the field. They were driven down, and our own scouts posted there, who gave advice from above of what was being done in the fort. Captain Vergara, and after him, Don Rodrigo de Mendoca and Alarcon, went to reconnoiter the walls, the bastion of Nuestra Senora, and the pieces mounted on the ground there, and a low wall of rough stone which extended to the mountain, where there was a bastion in which the wall ended. It was called Cachiltulo, and was defended with pieces of artillery and a number of culverins, muskets, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVI, 1609 • H.E. Blair

... a southeasterly direction toward a far-off hill, barely outlined through the haze of the distance. Meanwhile the darkness settled and over the sea the somber bastion of cloud heaved its sooty bulk up the sky. The air stagnated and the whole desert ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller

... forced with comparatively little difficulty, although a terrible fire of artillery and musketry was kept up, from the walls on either side of the road, and from the bastion commanding it. The assailants pressed so hotly, upon the defenders of the second gate, that they gained the third before the enemy had time ...
— At the Point of the Bayonet - A Tale of the Mahratta War • G. A. Henty

... breeze. And then I meandered back, and began to ask myself, had Marryat aught to do with the sponsorship of this outpost of the British Empire? Shingle Point, Blackstrap Bay, the Devil's Tower, O'Hara's Folly, Bayside Barrier, and Jumper's Bastion—the names were all redolent of the Portsmouth Hard; and I almost anticipated a familiar hail at every moment from the open door of "The Nut," and an inquiry as to what cheer ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea

... Phyllis. There were such left, even in my time, between Paris and St. Denis, (see the prettiest chapter in all the "Mysteries of Paris," where Fleur de Marie runs wild in them for the first time), but now, I suppose, St. Phyllis's native earth is all thrown up into bastion and glacis, (profitable and blessed of all saints, and her, as these have since proved themselves!) or else are covered with manufactories and cabarets. Seven years old she was, then, when on his way to England from Auxerre, ...
— Our Fathers Have Told Us - Part I. The Bible of Amiens • John Ruskin

... handsome promenade on an elevated bastion which overlooks the city and lakes. While enjoying the cool morning breeze and listening to the stir of the streets below us, we were also made aware of the social and friendly politeness of the people. ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor

... to shine in a more conspicuous manner in that line than in any other. No sooner had he received intelligence of the designs of his enemy, than he set all hands to work upon the fortifications, appointed a number of gunners to each bastion, and held frequent musters to train the men to the use of arms. A storehouse was prepared, and a quantity of ammunition laid up in it, to be ready on the first emergency. A small fort, called Fort Johnson, was erected on James's Island, and several great ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 1 • Alexander Hewatt

... made of piles driven into the ground, standing more than twelve feet above it, and sharp at top; with port holes cut for cannon, and loop holes for the small arms to fire through. There are eight six pound pieces mounted in each bastion, and one piece of four pound before the gate. In the bastions are a guard house, chapel, doctor's lodging, and the commander's private store: round which are laid platforms for the cannon and men to stand on. There are several barracks without ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 2 (of 5) • John Marshall

... lighted Strand. A monstrous hotel rose before them, its masonry pale, insubstantial in the twilight, a delicate framework for its piled and serried squares of light. It showed like a hollow bastion, filled with insurgent fire, flung up to heaven. The buildings on either side of it were ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair

... words, he dragged the boys, much against their will, away from the busy scene on the common and past the last remaining bastion of the old fortifications that once encircled Portsmouth; and, finally getting into the town he dived through all sorts of queer little streets and alleys, and then along the new road running by the side of the Gunwharf until they ...
— Bob Strong's Holidays - Adrift in the Channel • John Conroy Hutcheson

... gate of the magazine was similarly defended by two guns and by the chevaux-de-frise laid down in the inside. For the further defense of this gate and the magazine in its vicinity, there were two six-pounders so placed as to command it and a small bastion close by. Within sixty yards of the gate, and commanding two cross roads, were three six-pounders, and one twenty-four pound howitzer, which could be so managed as to act upon any part of the magazine in that neighborhood. After all these guns and howitzers had been placed in the several positions ...
— In Times of Peril • G. A. Henty

... retire during war, and one can imagine that when the river was low in summer, and perhaps fordable, the spit of land before it, which formed an exception to the marshes round about, needed to be protected as a sort of bastion beyond the stream. This theory will at least account for the two great ridges of earthwork going from one water to the other and completely cutting off the peninsula, since it is agreed these works are earlier than the Roman invasion. Whatever its origin, the part which Dorchester plays in the ...
— The Historic Thames • Hilaire Belloc

... this end I had chosen a peasant's house in the village of Gross-Graupen, which is half- way between Pillnitz and the border of what is known as 'Saxon Switzerland.' Frequent excursions to the Porsberg, to the adjacent Liebethaler, and to the far distant bastion helped to strengthen my unstrung nerves. While I was first planning the music to Lohengrin, I was disturbed incessantly by the echoes of some of the airs in Rossini's William Tell, which was the last opera I had had to conduct. ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner

... against fathers, and brothers whom war was to find in hostile ranks. A young fellow of my age, the son of Mr. Macpherson, sat below us on the steps with the girls. He was to leave his young life on the bastion at Quebec, and, for myself, how little did I dream of what I should get out of the devil-pot of war which was ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell

... rest to this day. The town of Fremont in the commonwealth of Ohio has grown up around them. Young children who climb the grassy bastion, may walk above his head, never guessing that a little gentleman of France, who died like a soldier of his wound, lies deeply ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood

... of battle, and giving time to the Russians to reform and plant their batteries afresh, the Russian cavalry withdrew. The Viceroy recrossed the stream again, and prepared to make another attack upon the great bastion he had before captured, and the whole line again advanced. While the Viceroy attacked the great redoubt in front, Murat sent a division of his cavalry round to fall upon its rear, and, although swept by artillery and infantry fire, ...
— Through Russian Snows - A Story of Napoleon's Retreat from Moscow • G. A Henty

... morning, as from the crowded ferry he watched the city's sky line detach itself from the mist. Notwithstanding his legislative career, New York was almost an unknown country, and this battlemented mystery overawed him like a frowning bastion. It challenged the alien to do and dare, but it quenched his individuality. Krantz, obviously, was hardened to its lesson. He elbowed the jostling pack in the ferry slip as one of them, called the elevated road the ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther

... stiff as a ramrod, with a package under his arm. Where is the dressing-room? Imagine my plight. I open the door there (pointing left). Just luck that everything was in order. The sweet thing vanishes into it, and the old fellow posts himself outside as a bastion. Two minutes later out she steps in this Pierrot. (Shaking his head.) I never saw anything like it. (He goes left and stares ...
— Erdgeist (Earth-Spirit) - A Tragedy in Four Acts • Frank Wedekind

... droves of horses roaming about. On the other side flowed a tiny stream, and close to its banks came the dense undergrowth which covered the flinty heights joining the principal chain of the Caucasus. We sat in a corner of the bastion, so that we could see everything on both sides. Suddenly I perceived someone on a grey horse riding out of the forest; nearer and nearer he approached until finally he stopped on the far side of the river, about a hundred fathoms from us, ...
— A Hero of Our Time • M. Y. Lermontov

... vast lengths of the Mississippi River, Fortress Monroe in Virginia and Suffolk south of the James—entrance had been made into all these courts of the fortress. Blue forces held them stubbornly; smaller grey forces held as stubbornly the next bastion. On the Rappahannock and the Rapidan, within fifty miles of the imperilled Capital, were gathered by May one hundred and thirty thousand men in blue. Longstreet gone, there opposed them sixty-two thousand ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston

... presents his compliments to the commanding officer of Fort Delaware, and recommends the 10-inch Columbiad in place of the 30-lb. Parrotts on the bastion near the southern ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke

... Teucrians from their camp descried The gathering dust-cloud on the plains appear. Then brave Caicus from a bastion cried, "What dark mass, rolling towards us, have we here? Arm, townsmen, arm! Bring quick the sword and spear, And mount the battlements, and man the wall. The foemen, ho!" And with a mighty cheer The Teucrians, hurrying at the warning call, Pour in through all ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil

... extolled by all men. After the death of Clement, Raffaello attached himself to Duke Alessandro de' Medici, who was then having the fortress of Prato built; and he made for him in grey-stone, on one of the extremities of the chief bastion of that fortress—namely, on the outer side—the escutcheon of the Emperor Charles V, upheld by two nude and lifesize Victories, which were much extolled, as they still are. And for the extremity of another bastion, in the direction of the ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 05 ( of 10) Andrea da Fiesole to Lorenzo Lotto • Giorgio Vasari

... thought of then, Battle, and the loves of men, Cities entered, oceans crossed, Knowledge gained and virtue lost, Cureless folly done and said, And the lovely way that led To the slimepit and the mire And the everlasting fire. And against a smoulder dun And a dawn without a sun Did the nearing bastion loom, And across the gate of gloom Still one saw the sentry go, Trim and burning, to and fro, One for women to admire In his finery of fire. Something, as I watched him pace, Minded me of time and place, Soldiers of another corps And ...
— Last Poems • A. E. Housman

... round the battlements towards the opposite or southern side of the fortress, and indeed to a bastion almost immediately overlooking the place of our projected flight. Thence we had a view of some fore-shortened suburbs at our feet, and beyond of a green, open, and irregular country rising towards the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... notice only the most important of the buildings. At the southwestern point of the Acropolis on the angle of rock which juts out beyond the Propylea is the graceful little temple of the "Wingless Victory," built in the Ionic style. The view commanded by its bastion will become famous throughout the world. Behind this, nearer the southern side, stands the less important temple of Artemis Brauronia. Nearer the center and directly before the entrance rises a colossal brazen ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis

... were now forgotten in the intoxication of her triumph, determined to compel the victors to lay their spoils before the Great Powers. In haste the Austrian and Hungarian troops took station on the great bastion of the Carpathians, and began to exert on the military situation the pressure which had been so fatal to Russia in her Turkish campaign ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose

... a very strong place it was in the Middle Ages. Much of the wall where the town was not naturally defended by the high naked rock, forming a frightful precipice that no besiegers would have attempted to scale, has been well preserved. Standing upon some bastion of this rampart, with the deep valley far below him and the sky above him, the wanderer may allow his fancy almost to convince him that he is really standing upon some 'castle in the air.' Of the ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker

... angelo"), a quaint song in waltz time, the melody being that of an old Spanish song by Tradier, called "El Aveglito." A serious duet between Michaela and Don Jose ("Mia madre io la rivedo") follows, which is very tender in its character. The next striking number is the dance tempo, "Presso il bastion de Seviglia," a seguidilla sung by Carmen while bewitching Don Jose. In the finale, as she escapes, the Havanaise, which is the Carmen motive, ...
— The Standard Operas (12th edition) • George P. Upton

... deck-hand, and what he had done; and she would know Griswold the benefactor, and what he meant to do. But until she could link the two together, there could be no demonstration. Though he should build the bastion of good deeds mountain high, it could never figure as a bastion to her unless she might come to know what it was ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde

... Unconscious why, its capes, grotesque and wild. High on a mound th' exalted gardens stand, Beneath, deep valleys, scoop'd by Nature's hand. A Cobham here, exulting in his art, Might blend the general's with the gardener's part; Might fortify with all the martial trade Of rampart, bastion, fosse, and palisade; Might plant the mortar with wide threat'ning bore, Or bid the mimic cannon ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White

... together within the wooden wall of these tall log pickets, which were twenty-five feet high. The houses were roofed with bark or thatched with straw. The streets were mere paths, but a wide road went all around the town next to the palisades. Detroit was almost square in shape, with a bastion, or fortified projection, at each corner, and a blockhouse built over each gate. The river almost washed the front palisades, and two schooners usually anchored near to protect the fort and give it communication with other points. Besides the homes of settlers, it contained barracks for ...
— Heroes of the Middle West - The French • Mary Hartwell Catherwood

... Rosa"—because instead of ballast they placed in it wax, and for fifteen hundred other articles that were included in the lading of the ship. As soon as the secret inquiry was ended, Admiral Faura was arrested in the fort, and Sargento-mayor Gallardo at the entrance of the bastion; and all their goods were seized—but not much of their property was found; if there had been, it would have showed that they were fools, and certainly they are not of that sort. All agree that six hundred thousand pesos would not ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898—Volume 39 of 55 • Various

... her course, and as she came off Fort Ricasoli, the other person habited as a Greek, who had not hitherto spoken, observed the four figures suspended on the southern bastion. ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston

... forts, instead of block-houses, the angles were furnished with bastions; a large folding gate, made of thick slabs nearest the spring, closed the forts; the stockade, bastion, cabin, and block-house walls were furnished with port-holes at proper heights and distances. The whole of the outside was made completely bullet-proof; the families belonging to these forts were so attached to their own cabins on their farms that they seldom moved into ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler

... run to her like a dog and fawned at her feet. But he never stirred, and simply answered across the other people, though she is so much more intelligent than I—I, who couldn't describe properly what is a bastion. ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... requested us to take care of this Gt. Chief. we then Saluted them with a gun and Set out and proceeded on to Fort Mandan where I landed and went to view the old works the houses except one in the rear bastion was burnt by accident, Some pickets were Standing in front next to the river. we proceeded on to the old Ricara village the S E wind was so hard and the waves So high that we were obliged to Come too, & Camp on the S W Side near the old Village. ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al

... and feelings, always following her lead in the conversation, that before he left her she felt as if she had made a great discovery; namely, that this man, so formidable behind the guns of his wooden bastion, was a most tenderhearted and sympathizing person when he came out of it unarmed. How delightful he was as he sat talking in the twilight in low and tender tones, with respectful pauses of listening, in which he looked as if he too had just made a discovery,—of an angel, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... street terminations. The most famous of the old gates is the "Puerta del Conde," "Gate of the Count," so called because it was constructed by the Count of Penalva, Governor of Santo Domingo, about 1655, though the bastion through which it leads is as old as the city wall. It was here that the cry of independence was raised on February 27, 1844, and it is therefore regarded as the cradle of Dominican independence and its official name is "Bulwark of the twenty-seventh of February." Another important gate ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich

... summary mode in which Turkish justice was administered; he was not unfamiliar with the dark stories that were told of sunken bodies about the outer bastion of the palace where its walls were laved by the Bosphorus. He knew very well that an unfaithful wife or rival lover was often sacrificed to the pride or revenge of any titled or rich Turk who happened to possess the ...
— The Circassian Slave; or, The Sultan's Favorite - A Story of Constantinople and the Caucasus • Lieutenant Maturin Murray

... perilous circumstances. Many times they went forward at a double-quick to do duty in the most dangerous place during an engagement, perhaps to build a redoubt or breastworks behind a brigade, or to blow up a bastion of the enemy's. "They but reminded the lookers on," said a correspondent of a Western newspaper, "of just so many cattle going to ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson

... kind enough to state her business, she replied as frankly that her business was personal to himself, he directed that she should be admitted. Then entrenching himself behind his library table, overlooking a bastion of books, and a glacis of pamphlets and papers, and throwing into his forehead and eyes an expression of utter disqualification for anything but the business before him, ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte

... a square building with circular bastions at the corners, each bastion terminating skyward in a Turkish minaret. The southwest face was the front, and was pierced by a Moorish arch fitted with glass doors, which could be secured on occasion by gates of fantastically hammered iron. The arch was ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw

... Gervais, Athos, and the napkin which was converted into a banner?" and he then related to Raoul the story of the bastion, and Raoul fancied he was listening to one of those deeds of arms belonging to days of chivalry, so gloriously ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... within one hundred yards of a regular bastion front, the curtain of which had four pieces in embrasure, besides nearly a thousand infantry, both of which kept up such a constant stream of fire that I could not advance further in line; I therefore ordered the men to cover themselves as well as possible. ...
— Company 'A', corps of engineers, U.S.A., 1846-'48, in the Mexican war • Gustavus Woodson Smith

... short branches put out, and came in sight of another glacier of the first order sending off bergs, our joy was complete. I had a most glorious view of it, sweeping in grand majesty from high mountain fountains, swaying around one mighty bastion after another, until it fell into the fiord in shattered overleaning fragments. When we had feasted awhile on this unhoped-for treasure, I directed the Indians to pull to the head of the left fork of the fiord, where we found a large cascade with a volume ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir

... treachery, they had posted twenty-five men in a bastion, with orders to fire upon the council, as soon as they should see any marks of treachery or violence. The instant the negotiators were seized, the whole besieging force fired upon them, and the fire was as promptly returned ...
— The First White Man of the West • Timothy Flint

... one metre and a half thick, opening upon it like rooms: of these we counted twenty on either side. At the northern end of the "horse," which, like the southern, has been weathered to a mere spur, is a work composed of two semicircles fronting to the north and east. A bastion of well-built wall in three straight lines overhangs the perpendicular face of the eastern gorge: in two places there are signs of a similar defence to the south, but time and weather have eaten ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton

... did as the chief wished, when the Beaver went on for a few yards to where the shelf of rock seemed to end, and there was nothing but a sheer fall of a thousand feet down to the stones and herbage at the bottom of the canyon, while above towered up the mountain which seemed like a Titanic bastion round ...
— The Silver Canyon - A Tale of the Western Plains • George Manville Fenn

... point and every tip, In the blood of Jesus dip; Pierce till the monster reel and cry, Pierce him till he fall and die. Yet cease not, rest not, onward quell, Power divine and terrible! See where yon bastion'd Midnight stands, On half the sunken central lands; Shoot! let thy arrow heads of flame Sing as they pierce the blot of shame, Till all the dark economies Become the light of blessed skies. For this, above in wondering love, To Genius ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... were thirty-six-pounders, and the rest twenty-four-pounders, and from eight mortars, two of thirteen inches and two of ten. The fire was very heavy and continued all day and night, and by it all the guns on the Gallion bastion were dismounted, and the bastion itself a heap of ruins. Every day after this grew worse until the 9th, on the evening of which day I went into the ditch accompanied by the engineer, when we were both but too well convinced of the tottering state of ...
— The History of the First West India Regiment • A. B. Ellis

... thought impregnable, they bade the Swedes do their worst; 'twas well provided with all things, and a strong garrison in it, so that the army indeed expected 'twould be a long piece of work. The castle stood on a high rock, and on the steep of the rock was a bastion which defended the only passage up the hill into the castle; the Scots were chose out to make this attack, and the king was an eye-witness of their gallantry. In the action Sir John was not commanded out, but Sir James Ramsey led them on; but ...
— Memoirs of a Cavalier • Daniel Defoe

... business of a dull kind. Then I walked a little way among fields; and when I was in a pleasant flat piece of ground, full of thickets, where the stream makes a bold loop among willows and alders, the sun set behind a great bastion of clouds that looked like a huge fortification. It had been one of those days of cloudless skies, all flooded with the pale cold honey-coloured light of the winter sun, until a sense almost of spring came into the air; and in a sheltered place I found a little golden hawk-weed ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson

... besides a stock of clothing and linen, neat and clean, as country linen can be. Marion herself, a big, stout woman of thirty-six, felt sufficiently flattered by the admiration of a cuirassier, who stood five feet seven in his stockings, a well-built warrior, strong as a bastion, and not unnaturally suggested that he should become a printer. So, by the time Kolb received his full discharge, Marion and David between them had transformed him into a tolerably creditable "bear," though their pupil could neither ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac

... hours, and next day commenced my excavations where I had, a year previously, made some preliminary explorations, and had found, among other things, at a depth of 16 feet, walls about 6-1/2 feet thick, which belong to a bastion of the ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton

... which is one of the mysteries of that wild charlatan imagination, who now and then administers tonics to the weary which are of inexplicable value. John Penhallow felt the sudden uplift and quickened his pace until he paused within the bastion lines of the fort. Before him, with her back to him, sat Leila. Her hat lay beside her finished sketch. She was thinking that John Penhallow, the boy friend, was to-day in its accepted sense but an acquaintance, of whom she ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell

... architectural works. In 1484 he was sent to rebuild the bridge of Buonconvento, broken by a flood of the Ombrone, and in the same year, with Francesco di Giorgio, and on equal terms with him, restored the bridge of Macereto. In 1495 he was asked to make designs and models for a bastion to be erected over against the bridge of Valiano, taken by the Florentines. Owing to a bad guard being kept this was taken, and between 1498 and 1500 Barili was sent again to rebuild it larger and stronger. ...
— Intarsia and Marquetry • F. Hamilton Jackson

... allied lines around Sebastopol were considerably contracted, and several serious assaults were made on the Russian works. On the twenty-third of February the French in front of the bastion, called the Malakhoff, assaulted that stronghold with great valor, but were unsuccessful. On the eighteenth of the following June an attempt was made to carry the Redan, a strong redoubt at the other extreme of the Russian defences, but the assailants were ...
— Notable Events of the Nineteenth Century - Great Deeds of Men and Nations and the Progress of the World • Various

... the plain good and deep, as instanced by ravines, and the deep beds of streamlets. Cultivation is abundant, villages numerous, and, as usual, all walled; their form generally square, with a bastion at each corner, and often two at each face, in which there is a gate. The people are very confident of their own security in these parts, crowding to our camp with merchandise. The country continues bare of trees, except about some of the villages; northern boundary ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith

... leaves. This hedge was like a strip of wild nature placed alongside of a plot of man's improved nature; and here, like snakes hunted from the open, the weeds and wildings which were not permitted to mix with the flowers had taken refuge. Protected by that rude bastion of spikes, the hemlock opened feathery clusters of dark leaves and whitish umbels wherever it could reach up to the sunshine. There also grew the nightshade, with other solanaceous weeds, bearing little clusters of green and purple berries, wild oats, fox-tail grass, and nettles. ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson

... Like a bastion frowning over converging valleys, that Alpine tract dominates the basins of the Po, the Inn, the Upper Rhine, and the Upper Rhone. He who holds it, if strong and resolute, can determine the fortunes of North Italy, Eastern France, South Germany, and the ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose

... Beyond, to the left, down the river, stood the masts in the new docks that were built to preserve the trade of this difficult port. Up-river, great new works of I know not what kind stood like a bastion against the plain; and in between ran these oldest bits of ...
— Hills and the Sea • H. Belloc

... should have to withstand a siege by artillery. But to the savages it was an imposing fortress, the very laws of its construction unknown to them, even the mortar between the logs, a substance of which they had no comprehension. Over the bastion as they emerged on the other side they beheld the English flag floating. This they took to be some kind of an Okee, in which opinion Smith's action confirmed them, for taking off his hat, he waved it in delight towards the symbol of all that was ...
— The Princess Pocahontas • Virginia Watson

... strength, and fresh courage, and within a few days they were called upon to assist at carrying the castle by storm. The English had been a long time sapping toward the fortress walls, and a breach having been opened near the bastion, the combined assailants poured through in an invincible flood. The Duke of Albermarle, who commanded the British forces, had informed the comandante of the castle that he had mined the bastion and demanded a capitulation. ...
— "Old Put" The Patriot • Frederick A. Ober

... undergoing its training on the "firing-line," and his company furnished twelve men daily for the "lunette," a kind of detached bastion about 800 yards in front of the line in the direction of the enemy. This was a lonesome detail. Just twelve men to man an isolated little fort, the enemy known to be in great numbers not more than four or five miles away. It came Timmons' turn to go on this duty for, the first time. The detail, ...
— Bamboo Tales • Ira L. Reeves

... career of this portion of the Maroons is easily told. They were first dreaded by the inhabitants of Halifax, then welcomed when seen, and promptly set to work on the citadel, then in process of reconstruction, where the "Maroon Bastion" still remains,—their only visible memorial. Two commissioners had charge of them, one being the redoubtable Col. Quarrell; and twenty-five thousand pounds were appropriated for their temporary support. Of course they did not ...
— Black Rebellion - Five Slave Revolts • Thomas Wentworth Higginson

... steepish Grand' Rue, on the right and not much short, as it comes back to me, of the then closely clustered and inviolate haute ville, the more or less surviving old town, the idle grey rampart, the moated and towered citadel, the tree-shaded bastion for strolling and sitting "immortalised" by Thackeray, achieved the monumental, in its degree, after a fashion never yet associated for us with the pursuit of learning. Didn't the Campaigner, suffering indigence at ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James

... understand, have been forming ambuscades in front of our bastion Du Mat, which have given us infinite trouble. Last night we attacked them in three columns, 10,000 ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths

... in tiers, like stone coffins, rose in fierce ranges one above another up and up—back and farther back until they reached a point from whence a miniature forest of dwarf beech and maple, that appeared to crown the topmost bastion of them all, nodded in the swaying wind like funeral plumes upon ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens

... felt the lack, as if a bastion had been razed, leaving them in the open. Secrecy in Lost Valley had been brought to a work of art. ...
— Tharon of Lost Valley • Vingie E. Roe

... reflected that it will be a bad thing, that the opera will be a failure, in fact, if neither of the principal women appears on the scene until the last minute, but both are kept promenading on the bastion of the fortress. I credit the audience with patience enough for one act, but it would never endure the second. It ...
— Mozart: The Man and the Artist, as Revealed in his own Words • Friedrich Kerst and Henry Edward Krehbiel

... fell as the color-bearers were killed, but they were instantly seized and defiantly waved. With a wild cheer the Rebels dashed forward up to the very front of the forts, receiving without recoil a most deadly fire. They leaped the ditch and gained the parapet. They entered a bastion of Battery Williams, and for a minute held possession of one ...
— Camp-Fire and Cotton-Field • Thomas W. Knox

... windows so narrow that they may be used as loopholes for musketry. The first story is at a considerable distance from the ground, and reached by a long ladder which can be drawn up so as to cut off all communication. Some of the towers are further strengthened by a semicircular bastion, projecting from the side most liable to attack. The families supplied themselves with telescopes, to look out for enemies in the distance, and always had a store of provisions on hand, in case ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Vol VIII - Italy and Greece, Part Two • Various

... greater part fell back behind the Viaduct, which afforded them shelter. Somehow or other, the troops in the sap that had been pushed forward to within fifty yards of the gate must have come to the conclusion that the bastion was not tenanted, and trying the experiment, found themselves inside the wall without a shot having been fired. More must have followed them, at any rate a considerable force must have gathered there before the Communists found out they had entered. There can be no doubt ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty

... British and American forts attested the honour and esteem in which the dead soldiers were held by friends and foes alike. Amid the tears of war-bronzed soldiers and even of stoical Indians they were laid in one common grave in a bastion of Fort George. A grateful country has since erected on the scene of the victory—one of the grandest sites on earth—a noble monument to the memory of Brock, and beneath it, side by side, sleeps the dust of the heroic ...
— Neville Trueman the Pioneer Preacher • William Henry Withrow

... arrived it was hard to realize that Stavoren had once been a place of vast importance, and that a powerful king had lived there in old, old days, for the bastion seemed the only thing of importance in the poor little town now. But no doubt the great sand-bank, with its famous legend of the Proud Lady, is enough to ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson

... of these young men, leaders of the Companions of Jehu, were executed at Bourg, on the Place du Bastion." ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas

... bestowed upon it. The outer polygon, which looks towards Vera Cruz, is three hundred yards in extent; to the north it is defended by another of two hundred yards; whilst a low battery is situated as a rear-guard in the bastion of Santiago; and on the opposite front is the battery of San Miguel. The whole fortress is composed of a stone which abounds in the neighbouring island, a species of coral, excellent for building, ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca

... than that," said the doctor; "the disease knows its old place; it has gone back to the foot like a shot; and if you can keep it there, the patient will live; he's not the sort of patient that strikes his colors while there's a bastion left to defend." ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade

... Caldwell, commander of the militia regiment to which Roderick belonged, and who had entrusted his young friend with the destruction of the Palace. "That is a good work. I have watched it from the bastion yonder and come to congratulate you. I shall ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance

... picturesque; and at last, at the meeting-point of [81] five long causeways across a wide expanse of marshland, where the wholesome sea turned stagnant, La Rochelle itself scowled through the heavy air, the dark ramparts still rising higher around its dark townsfolk:—La Rochelle, the "Bastion of the Gospel" according to John Calvin, the conceded capital of the Huguenots. They were there, and would not leave it, even to share the festivities of the marriage of King Charles to his little Austrian Elizabeth about this time—the ...
— Gaston de Latour: an unfinished romance • Walter Horatio Pater

... superior officer of the English force which fights there under my Lord Cecil, that shall be Wimbledon; the gallant Sir Hatton, I say, being of hot temper, superior officer, and the service a storm-party on some bastion or demilune, speaks sharp word of command to Sir Thomas Dutton, who also is probably of hot temper in this hot moment. Sharp word of command to Dutton; and the movement not proceeding rightly, sharp word of rebuke. To which Dutton, with kindled voice, answers something sharp; ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various

... is a relief," he said, waving a graceful hand in a neatly limited gesture, which everybody's eyes followed, his own included. "It is a relief and a retreat. The windows open, the blinds closed—that is as it should be. It is a retreat, a fastness, a bastion against the heat's assault. For me, a quiet room—a quiet room and a book, a volume in the hand, held lightly between the fingers. A volume of poems, lines metrical and cadenced; something by a sound Victorian. We ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington

... friends how to make my escape, I effected it on August the 8th, at five o'clock in the evening. I let myself down to the bottom of the bastion, which was forty feet high, with a rope, while my valet de chambre treated the guards with as much liquor as they could drink. Their attention, was, moreover, taken up with looking at a Jacobin friar ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... walls; but the soldiers, working night and day, drove mines under two of the principal bastions, and constructed two great chambers there; these were charged, one with five thousand pounds of powder, the other with half that quantity. On the 3d of July the mines were sprung. The bastion of the east gate was blown to pieces and the other bastion greatly injured, but many of the Dutch troops standing ready for the assault were also killed ...
— By England's Aid or The Freeing of the Netherlands (1585-1604) • G.A. Henty

... yourself, my worthy president," replied Michel; "might it not be possible that the dark lines forming that bastion were ...
— Jules Verne's Classic Books • Jules Verne

... outposts constituted the perquisites of men-at-arms. And, albeit the enemy's positions were very wisely chosen, the assailants if they proceeded with extreme swiftness had a chance of success. The Burgundians at Margny were very few. Having but lately arrived, they had erected neither bastion nor bulwark, and their only defences were the outbuildings of ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France

... which the women love to brighten the worn stones. Even the scrapers are sleek with blacklead, and it is not easy to find a window without spotless curtains. At high tide the sea comes half-way up the steep opening between the coastguards' quarters and the inn which is built on another bastion, and in rough weather the waves break hungrily on to the strong stone walls, for the bay is entirely open to the full force of gales from the east or north-east. All the way from Scarborough to ...
— Yorkshire Painted And Described • Gordon Home

... the breach of a bastion which our troops had recently taken by assault, in sight of the most majestic of rivers, of the magnificent valley which it fertilizes, of the frightful desert of Lybia, of the colossal pyramids of Gizeh; it was in presence of twenty populations ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago

... fifty wide; at one end was the principal, at the other, a minor fort. The first consisted of a thick round tower, flat at top, where their largest gun was mounted. This was surrounded by a low wall, with two small bastions at different angles; the other was a square building, with a bastion at one corner, containing, I believe, the stores. All over the island were the tents of the soldiers—that of the commander distinguished by a red flag. I think I counted about forty. The Montenegrians declared they had in the island five hundred men. Not one was visible however, the whole day. Under ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various

... rowed up the river as fast as the arms of six stout watermen could pull against the tide. They passed the groves of masts which even then astonished the stranger with the extended commerce of London, and now approached those low and blackened walls of curtain and bastion, which exhibit here and there a piece of ordnance, and here and there a solitary sentinel under arms, but have otherwise so little of the military terrors of a citadel. A projecting low-browed arch, which had loured over many an innocent, and many a guilty head, in similar ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott

... been killed,) were not to be refused, and I helped to draw the guns backwards and forward, and load them. The captain kept running from one to the other, pointing them, and admirably well too; for every shot took effect within a circumference of a few feet on the bastion ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various

... a wonderful picture of war in all its filth and shambles. But was it Victory? I knew then that it was only a breach in the German bastion, and that on the left, Gommecourt way, there had been ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs

... along, speaking in a perfectly normal voice whenever he had to, as if there were no such thing as hurry in the world. When we reached the farther corner of the moat it was he who climbed out first to con the situation. A look-out in a bastion on the ruined town wall ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy

... projectors at his heels. At length, after a world of consultation and contrivance, his plans of defence ended in rearing a great flag-staff in the center of the fort, and perching a windmill on each bastion. ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving

... forward with the ladders as the storming party moved up to the gateway. And just at that moment there the sentry let off his alarm shot. It set all within the San Vincente bastion moving and whirring like the works of a mechanical toy; feet came running along the covered way; muskets clinked on the stone parapet; tongues of fire spat forth from the embrasures; and then, as the musketry quickened, a flash ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch



Words linked to "Bastion" :   fortification, kremlin, acropolis, fastness, defense force, defence, defence force, citadel



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