Fortress

“ Such a fortress seems like an aged warrior, past his fighting days, or an old hunting dog, as keen on the chase as ever, poor fellow, but too old to move from before the fire, where he can only lie and dream of past triumphs. ”

“ The gates of the fortress shall be crushed more easily than nut-shells; the walls shall crumble; cities shall burn; and the scourge of God shall not cease! He shall cause your bodies to be bathed in your own blood, like wool in the dyer’s vat. ”

“ The fortress burns upon the hill-side, a regiment advancing with lances and pennons produces the illusion that it is the vanguard of a great army, the desperate conflict by the narrow bridge realises all the terrors of war. ”

“ They have been shaken by earthquake; have been made A fortress, and been battered by long sieges; The iron clamps, that held the stones together, Have been wrenched from them; but they stand erect And firm, as if they had been hewn and hollowed Out of the solid rock, and were a part Of the foundations of the world itself. ”

“ A fortress often assailed but never taken has a mana, and one of a high description too. The name of the fortress becomes a pepeha, a war boast or motto, and a war cry of encouragement or defiance, like the slogan of the ancient Highlanders in Scotland. ”

“ Such a fortress brought into being in so short a time and at such an altitude was in itself such a marvel of military capacity that one was lost in wonder at it all. Evidently no obstacle presented by nature deterred its accomplishment. ”

“ We fear that noble loving heart is wearing itself out in the lonely fortress. He seems chafing like a war-horse at the echo of the distant battle; or a hunter at the sound of the chase; or, rather, as a captive general who sees his troops, assailed by force and stratagem, broken and scattered, and cannot break his chains to rally and to lead them on. ”

“ The novelty and mystery of the dilapidated fortress,—its antiquity, its intricacy, its sounding vaults and corridors, its inaccessible heights and impenetrable depths, the broad sunny glare of its grass-grown courts and yards, the twilight of its passages and midnight of its dungeons, and along with all this my freedom to rove and scramble, my perpetual curiosity, my lusty absorption of the sun-warmed air, and the contagion of my companions careless and sensuous mirth,—all these things combined to make our excursion one of the memorable events of my youth. ”

“ One swelling crest the citadel shall crown,
Its slanted bastions black with battle's frown,
And bid the sons that tread its scowling heights
Bare their strong arms for man and all his rights!
One silent steep along the northern wave
Shall hold the patriarch's and the hero's grave;
When fades the torch, when o'er the peaceful scene
The embattled fortress smiles in living green,
The cross of Faith, the anchor staff of Hope,
Shall stand eternal on its grassy slope ”

“ Just as a fortress is a security to the garrison, and a frowning menace to the besiegers or enemies, so the 'name of the Lord is a strong tower,' and the 'way of the Lord' is a fortress. If you choose to take shelter within it, its massive walls are your security and your joy. ”

“ That is the fortress whose magnificent position still delights us, at whose ruins we gaze in amazement, in whose halls and chambers, almost entirely hewn in the rocks, we see the work of a far distant time, when comfort and luxury were unknown in this region. ”

“ Leave me my dreams, and they can yet restore
⁠The crumbling walls, where crouch invading fears.
Leave me my dreams, nor can rude sorrow break
⁠Into my fortress where content I go.
Leave me my dreams, and who dare combat make
⁠On Youth's sweet hours, or lay Hope's castle low? ”

“ He returned back in disgust to his rocky fortress, from thence beheld the smiling plain which human industry had made beautiful, and wondered that mother nature could lend her gifts to such a heartless brood. ”

“ A fortress which is made the object of a regular siege, and holds out, is naturally of more considerable weight in the scales of war, than one which by the strength of its works merely forbids the idea of its capture, and therefore neither occupies nor consumes any of the enemy’s forces. ”

“ A Mighty Fortress, isometric tuneA Mighty Fortress, rhythmic tune A mighty Fortress is our God, A trusty Shield and Weapon; He helps us free from every need That hath us now o'ertaken. The old evil Foe Now means deadly woe; Deep guile and great might Are his dread arms in fight; On earth is not his equal. ”

“ Besides, a fortress is a place of refuge for wounded, the seat of the civil functionaries, the treasury, the point of assembly for the greater enterprises, etc., etc.; lastly, a nucleus of resistance which during the siege places the enemy’s force in a condition which facilitates and favours the attacks of national levies acting in conjunction. ”

“ Here we have an important fortress, threatened with siege for the last sixty days, suffering the assailants of the flag it defends to amass battery upon battery, and string the whole coast of low hills opposite with every variety of apparatus for its own devastation, without throwing a timely shell to prevent their establishment. ”

“ Every town shall tremble at his coming, and every fortress otherwise unconquerable he shall have in his power in the first quarter of an hour: in a word, he shall have the rule over the greatest potentates of the world, and so nobly bear sway over earth and sea that both gods and men shall rejoice thereat. ”

“ The nobles, the representatives of the Past, with their few surviving adherents, have taken refuge in their last stronghold, the fortress of the Holy Trinity, securely situated upon a high and rocky peak overhanging a deep valley, surrounded and hedged in by steep cliffs and rocky precipices. ”

“ Vauban's fortresses have had their day; who can conjecture what may be accomplished in a future war by the system of defence of which an example has just been presented?
Still the most reliable fortress for a country is a good and well-commanded army, and a well-educated, brave, and intelligent population, resolved to make every sacrifice rather than undergo the humiliation of a foreign occupation. ”

“ Each limits himself to his own fortress, which he thinks he can defend, and starves himself on siege rations while the fields wave white with grain outside. The eye is constructed to sweep round a wide range of vision ”

“ From the forest-hill the Vila told me,
That we should no longer waste our treasures
In the vain attempt to raise the fortress
On a shifting, insecure foundation.
Said the Vila of the forest-mountain,
‘Each of you a faithful wife possesses;
Each a faithful bride that keeps your dwellings:
Her who to the fortress comes to-morrow,
Her who brings their rations to the workmen—
Her immure within the wall’s foundations;
So will the foundations bear the fortress:
So Bojana’s fortress be erected.’
p. 69Now then, brothers! in God’s holy presence
Let each swear to keep the awful secret ”

“ First, it is very necessary that your Majesty order a fortress of stone built in this city, for the one here now would be exceedingly easy to take, as it is nothing more than a palisade, with but little rampart; and, as your Majesty will have been informed, we are surrounded by so many enemies. ”

“ By slow degrees, they possessed themselves of fortress after fortress, and city after city: we, the while, growing weaker, they stronger, until we were compelled to take refuge in the cities of our king. ”

“ An impartial view of such an enterprise rendered it clear that the odds were greatly in favour of a total failure. How could six men and a cripple hope to penetrate into the heart of a closely guarded fortress? ”

“ When I see ministers of religion finding fault with the Scriptures, it makes me think of a fortress terrifically bombarded, and the men on the ramparts, instead of swabbing out and loading the guns and helping to fetch up the ammunition from the magazine, are trying with crowbars to pry out from the wall certain blocks of stone, because they did not come from the right quarry. Oh, men on the ramparts, better fight back and fight down the common enemy, instead of trying to make breaches in the wall. ”

“ 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 a nunnery. ”

“ The welfare of our king, and his fortress, are things of the past. I have given him such counsel as an ancestral counselor should give. Let us now, for our part, seek another fortress in the mountains. ”

“ My fiercest foe in many a battle won,
And still with Victory’s march his countless legions stun.
XXVII.
“List to thy Destiny, and nerve thy arm
To accomplish Heaven’s designs. By fair Nivelle
Thy next great battle shall with dire alarm
Man’s bitter foes affright in Earth and Hell.
For fortress-crags and precipices fell,
Cyclopian castles hewn from solid rock,
Redoubt and natural tower where eagles dwell,
Thou’lt instant carry with resistless shock,
The arméd river ford, the plains of France bemock! ”

“ By the help of the Almighty they had constructed a fortress that was proof against calamity, and impregnable to the common vicissitudes of human life, for the vital reason it was founded and conducted on eternal prin- ciples. ”

“ The fortress in which the spectator is placed seems elevated almost into the clouds; its sides are in many parts formed of perpendicular cliffs; it is moreover surrounded with every impediment, natural or artificial, that can render access either impossible or difficult; and all this is to enable one little tyrant to resist the hostility of another, or to favour his own projects of vengeance or plunder. ”

“ To Raise a plan of a fortress, is to measure with cords and geometrical instruments, the length of the lines, and the capacity of the angles, that by knowing the length, breadth, and thickness, of all the different parts of a fortification, it may be represented upon paper, so as to find out its advantages and disadvantages. ”

“ This royal throne of kings, this sceptred isle, This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars, This other Eden, demi-paradise, This fortress built by Nature for herself Against infection and the hand of war, This happy breed of men, this little world, This precious stone set in the silver sea, Which serves it in the office of a wall, Or as a moat defensive to a house, Against the envy of less happier lands; ”

“ One fortress remains, where, intrenched by law, the privilege of classes can hold all assailants at bay, and can repair the unthrifty ravages of reckless individuals. Land, the final reservoir of natural advantage, the sure protector of privilege, is, in Europe, practically beyond the reach of the many. ”

“ If you would induce a fierce mountain tribe to come down from its fortress and settle in the plain, you do not bid it destroy the fortress. You bid it enjoy life in the city, and remember that it runs no risk in doing so, because it has its fortress to fall back upon at the first hint of danger. ”

“ For who knows but that your enemy the giant hath learned by spies or other secret means how I intend to come and destroy him, and he may by now have fortified himself in some impregnable castle or fortress, against the strength of which even the force of mine invincible arm will be of little use. ”

“ The battlements of a fortress have the spaces between equal to the breadth of the battlement, and yet the space will appear wider; at a great distance the battlements will appear very much diminished, and being removed still farther, will disappear entirely, and the fort shew only the straight wall, as if there were no battlements. ”

“ He recommends, amongst other and minor measures, the erection of a strong fortress in all the chief towns of the Kingdom, to be manned by trained bands, and to be placed in such situations as shall command the high roads. ”

“ In a sense this has always been the chief value of a fortress, but when one was dealing with smaller forces, more passionate and less constant in motive than those of to-day, and far more easily disintegrated than is a thoroughly civilised army, time was of far greater value in a campaign. ”

“ I call this a fortress, but it is a fortress which might easily have been taken, and it must have assumed its present shape at a time when people had ceased to peer through narrow slits at possible besiegers. There are slits in the outer walls for such peering, but they are noticeably broad and not particularly oblique, and might easily have been applied to the uses of a peaceful parley. This is 238 part of the charm of the place; human life there must have lost an earlier grimness; it was lived in by people who were beginning to believe in good intentions. ”

“ You also will seek a stronghold because of the enemy. 12 All your fortresses will be like fig trees with the first-ripe figs: if they are shaken, they fall into the mouth of the eater. 13 Behold, your troops in your midst are women. The gates of your land are set wide open to your enemies. ”

“ This principle of mutual support, however achieved, is called that of ‘defensive relations’, and is capable of adaptation613 to all kinds of defensive works, whether of a few men beleaguered in an improvised fortification, a considerable number in a scientifically constructed work—permanent or field fortification—a fortress with an entire army behind its ramparts, or a cordon of forts surrounding a great city. ”

“ A man in a trance saw himself locked up in a house of steel, through the walls of which, as through walls of glass, he could see his enemies assailing him with swords, spears, and bayonets; but his life was safe, for his fortress was locked within. ”

“ He goes home crowing, and you, on your side, laugh when you think how cleverly you succeeded in luring him away from his base.
There is a bright side to all things. The gentleman charged with the defence of a fortress will meet the other gentleman who has captured it and shake hands with him mid the ruins. ”