Strongroom

“ In fortifications, are breastworks, walls, or bulwarks of earth, brick, wood, iron, stone, or other material. The battlement around a flat roof, or the railing of a bridge is also called a parapet. The parapets of field-works are always made of earth, which is also largely used in permanent fortifications. Earth has great advantages for this purpose, being readily obtained, easily handled, and affords good cover on account of the absence of splinters and flying fragments when struck by a shot. ”

“ But on our side all appeared near naked rock, clambering by way of scarp and shelf and overhanging boulder to a giddy altitude, where it broke against the sky in a wave of jagged masonry, hardly to be distinguished from the mountain which gave it birth.
There clung the shattered stronghold, a city in itself, still rooted in the rock from which, manured by blood, it first grew rich and lusty. It bred fierce hawks and gladsome swallows once; it breeds them still. ”

“ The roaring and crackling of the flames, the dense masses of whirling smoke, the bursting of the enemy's shells, and our own which were exploding in the burning rooms, the crashing of the shot, and the sound of masonry falling in every direction, made the fort a pandemonium. ”

“ That celebrated stronghold, which nature has made all but impregnable, and against which all the resources of the military art have been employed in vain, was taken as easily as if it had been an open village in a plain. ”

“ 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. ”

“ He gazed at the amazing walls, erected upon granite boulders two hundred to two hundred and fifty feet above the valley, and the marvel in him that never seemed to die was, at any rate, less arresting than it had ever been before.
Here, on an isolated hill, rising to a height of three hundred and fifty feet, were fortifications which in their ingenuity, massive character, and persistent repetition at every point of vantage had astonished the highest experts of modern military engineering. ”

“ The plateau is encircled by a coronet of cannon and mortars, and in the spaces between the embrasures, immense heaps of stones are piled up, to be hurled on the heads of those who ventured to approach the rocky ramparts of this aerial fortress. Down through the centre of the rock a well is bored to the depth of 1800 feet, and from this source an abundant supply of excellent water is drawn up by a wheel, like a tread-mill, worked, or rather walked, by half a dozen soldiers. ”

“ Considered in a military point of view, as a work of defence, it is well chosen, well guarded, and, with an adequate force, impregnable to any mode of attack practised by a rude, or semi-civilized people. As a natural stronghold, it has few equals; and the p016 degree of skill displayed and the amount of labor expended in constructing its artificial defences, challenge our admiration, and excite our surprise. With all the facilities and numerous mechanical appliances of the present day, the construction of a work of this magnitude would be no insignificant undertaking. ”

“ All the other wall was rough and bare; beset with great spikes and nails wherefrom depended a thousand forms of ironware, and ancient useless metal things, the broken, rusty implements of peace and war. The floor seemed, as I took in every detail of this subterranean chamber, to be bare earth, stamped hard and glossy with constant treading, while here and there in hollows black water stood in pools, and gray ashes from a furnace-fire margined those miry places. ”

“ A fortification, in its most simple form, consists of a mound of earth, termed, the rampart, which encloses the space fortified; a parapet, surmounting the rampart and covering the men and guns from the enemy's projectiles; a scarp wall, which sustains the pressure of the earth of the rampart and parapet, and presents an insurmountable obstacle to an assault by storm; a wide and deep ditch, which prevents the enemy from approaching near the body of the place; a counterscarp wall, which sustains the earth on the exterior of the ditch ”

“ The mean level of the beds is below that of the lake, As you draw near the stronghold it becomes necessary to descend into irregular chasms, Before you have time to study the topography of the place, ledges loom up fifty and sixty feet high, directly in front, and all but compel a halt. The savages, pressed by the troops, retired from ledge to ledge, and each retreat carried them to higher ground and gave them additional advantages. The stronghold proper is about the summit of several of the boldest ledges. They radiate from a common centre and are difficult of access. ”

“ The stronghold, which rises a few meters to the northeast of the spring, is a rectangular stone building of no great height, without side towers, and recalls the medieval structures on the Pilgrim Route. ”

“ I exclaimed; for, about eight miles distant from the place we stood on, there exists to this day a stronghold such as he described, a camp so colossal in its scope, so ambitious in its scheme of ramparts, that it is scarcely credible as the achievement of a primitive people, toiling almost literally with their hands alone. ”

“ The fort which is faced with brick, has only a level superficies large enough for one bastion, with a small barrack inside, the {301} whole of which is commanded by a block-house a hundred and fifty feet higher, on the sharp peak of a very steep hill, which in time of war might serve as a look out, as well as a post, as it commands a most extensive view over the surrounding wilderness of forest, as well as the meanders of the river for several miles. ”

“ The ramparts and battlements are built of unhewn stones, rudely piled one upon the other, usually cemented only with Nile mud; the thick walls of the superstructure, roofed with sun-dried mud-tiles, have for the most part fallen or are still falling. These fortresses impress one not so much by their architecture as by the boldness of their position. A naked, deep-black, glistening rock rises from the midst of the rushing waters, and bears on its summit one of these forts. ”

“ He will see at intervals what, from a little distance, seems like a solid wall of stone, laid with care, and upon which the lapse of centuries has wrought no change, so regular are the strata of which it is composed, while an occasional boulder, large as a house, and covered with moss, reminds him of the ruined tower of some stronghold. ”

“ The massive towers are connected by solid walls, constructed upon the system of fortification, which generally prevailed in the middle ages. Those walls and towers follow all the turnings and windings of the mountain; and previously to the invention of gunpowder and artillery, this fortress must have been almost impregnable. The situation of this edifice is the most delightful and commanding that can be conceived. Wherever the spectator may turn his eyes, it is impossible for him not to be struck with admiration at the picturesque beauty and fertility of the surrounding country. ”

“ The only chance of taking a fortress by direct attack was to fill up the moat with earth and faggots, and then raise ladders against the walls; or else to drive engines against the defenses, battering-rams which struck them with heavy beams, mangonels which launched stones, sows whose arched wooden backs protected troops of workmen who tried to undermine the wall, and moving towers consisting of a succession of stages or shelves, filled with soldiers, and with a bridge with iron hooks, capable of being launched from the highest story to the top of the battlements. ”

“ They have numerous, impregnable strongholds on the rocks; which you can see rising sheer up hundreds of feet, from among the woods on the slopes; and can, if pressed, shift their quarters, and move fifty miles away among the trees, while the troops are, in vain, searching for them. ”

“ The only approach to the fort is by a movable ladder, which hangs over the side like the gangway of a ship of war, and can be raised by those on the inside by means of a rope suspended over a wheel in the roof. ”

“ The Japanese might spring one of the locks, but the fortress could be instantly closed with any or all of the other sixteen. Each depression between the main shoulders of the mountains was used for the emplacement of a battery. Batteries [296] and forts were connected with barbed-wire entrenchments, and the glaces were made sheer and slippery. Some were formed of concrete, some were built crater-like of a sliding sand, so that a man advancing found himself slipping to the knees and quagmired. Around the great forts moats of unknown depth and width were built. ”

“ They differ essentially from all other constructions, because they are adaptations of naturally elevated sites for defensive purposes. The natural site is the defensive position, and the fort itself derives its form and in many cases also its character of construction from the form and nature of the eminence or promontory on which it is built. It would, therefore, be contrary to the nature of the circumstances to expect that they should exhibit any such uniformity of plan or structure as is so conspicuous in the case of the Brochs. ”

“ The thunder and thud of the batteries, the jarring and whirring of machinery, the bustle and stir of active and unceasing toil, reverberate with noisy clamour among the rocks, and proclaim that this stronghold of wild nature has been captured and occupied by man. ”

“ The fort retires within itself to face all the suffering piled on suffering: the barrages, the bombs, the flames and the gas and the suffocation, the horror of unspeakable sights and smells, and, above all, thirst, the thirst that makes men howl like wolves, and lacerates their tongues and their lips. ”

“ For the systematic attack on the stronghold a portion of it is assigned to each company, and it is a pleasing sight to see the calm and ready way in which they set to work. They crowd into the narrow, bushy paths between the koppies, and then swarm out over the rocks from whence the firing comes, and very soon the row begins. ”

“ The fall of its roof and a great portion of its walls had filled and buried it with rubbish to a depth of some twenty to forty feet, all of which has been taken away, so that the floor of the interior is now the veritable sand whereon the combatants fought and bled and rendered up their lives, while the forty or fifty entrances for emperors, senators and people, and even the underground passage for the introduction of the wild beasts, with a part of their cages, are now palpable. ”

“ With carvings red and gold upon their face.
The lofty stronghold in their midst, appeared
Like pyramid of human beings reared;
From base to summit on each side were seen
Brave men who for tljeir chief felt sorrow keen. ”

“ The great strength of modern fortification consists certainly in the glacis, or in that smoothly sloping mound which conceals and covers the rampart to87 the very chin, yet is severed from it by a deep and impassable ditch, screening it from every injury, even by the heaviest and most numerous ordnance, whilst its own gradual slope is swept by a rain and hail of cannon-balls, grape shot, and musketry, both from its own parapet and that of the superior rampart. ”

“ Many of those bluff headlands, peninsulas, and isolated hills presented all the requisite adaptations for native strongholds. They have, accordingly, been fortified with great labour and skill. Embankments and ditches enclose the whole space, varying in strength according to the natural resources of the ground. The approaches are guarded by trenches and overlapping walls, more or less numerous in different forts; and have occasionally a mound alongside of the other defences of the approach, but rising above the rest of the works, as if designed both for out-look and additional defence. ”

“ Walls and windows, massive, lofty, and nearly touching each other from above afforded a perpetual fortification; lanes innumerable, and extending from one depth of darkness and intricacy into another, a network of attack and ambush, obviously gave an extraordinary advantage to the irregular daring of men accustomed to thread those wretched and dismal dens, crowded with one of the fiercest and most capricious populations in the world. ”

“ It is a natural fortress, which our boys strengthened still further by throwing up the loose stones into handy breastworks.
Returning, I rode the whole length of the ridge held by our troops, realizing more and more the importance of that extraordinary position. It is like a shoe, of which Round Top represents the heel, and Cemetery Hill the toe. Here all our forces were concentrated on Thursday and Friday, within a space of three miles. Movements from one part to another of this compact field could be made with celerity. ”

“ The frowning fort, with its threatening armament, proclaimed that sin had entered the world with its war and blood and misery, making man the direful foe of his brother man. The crystal stream and lake; the azure of the overarching skies; the bright, serene autumnal day; the foliage, the verdure, the picturesque wigwams; the peaceful employments of the women, and the sports and shouts of the merry children, showed that our ruined Eden still retained some of those glories which embellished it before man rebelled against his Maker. ”

“ Within the land which thus lay open to his attack, we see from every height the sites, not of one or two only, but of a whole crowd of strongholds which have passed away. A very few only of these strongholds could ever have been needed for the protection of any town or for the general defence of the country. ”