"Cannon" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Vincent Wingfield had discharged his duties upon General Stuart's staff. On the first day the work had been slight, for General Stuart, with the cannon, remained in the rear, while Jackson's infantry attacked and carried the Federal intrenchments. Upon the second day, however, when Stuart assumed the command, Vincent's duties had been onerous and dangerous in the extreme. He was constantly carrying orders ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... your heart of hearts how Justice, radiant, beneficent, as the all-victorious Light-element, is also in essence, if need be, an all-victorious Fire-element, and melts all manner of vested interests, and the hardest iron cannon, as if they were soft wax, and does ever in the long-run rule and reign, and allows nothing else to rule and reign,—you also would talk of impossibility! But it is only difficult, it is not impossible. Possible? It is, with whatever difficulty, ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... or the lover of the picturesque happy. The huge armaments of continental Europe are an oppressive and sinister spectacle, and I have rarely derived a high order of entertainment from the sight of even the largest masses of homesick conscripts. The chair a canon—the cannon-meat—as they aptly term it in French, has always seemed to me dumbly, appealingly conscious of its destiny. I have seen it in course of preparation—seen it salted and dressed and packed and labelled, as it were, for consumption. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... every effort to stay its progress the fire continued to rage throughout the whole of Monday and Tuesday. By this time Lombard Street, Cannon Street and Gracechurch Street had been reduced to ashes. The houses on London Bridge were attacked and Southwark threatened with destruction. On Wednesday the flames devastated Cornhill and the Exchange. The following day they got hold of St. Paul's (at that time ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume II • Reginald R. Sharpe
... European equilibrium is therefore a chimera, because no state can be prevented from having an internal growth, as great as may be. Thus, in the summer of 1853, we heard the London Times sometimes preach that every cannon-shot fired by the English at the Russians might kill an English debtor or an English customer. The Venetians entertained a similar view at the beginning of the fifteenth century. Compare M. Sanudo in Muratori, Scriptores, XXII, 950 ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... lived and of the people from whom he sprang. All modest as he was, he had given up everything at the call of duty. All simple and kindly as he seemed to be, he had at the head of charging squadrons captured cannon, and with more heroic endurance had lain without complaint in the cell of solitary confinement. He carried about with him in the simple modesty of his everyday life the heart that at a moment's notice was ready to still its beating at the call ...
— Memorial Addresses on the Life and Character of William H. F. Lee (A Representative from Virginia) • Various
... Castle, with its Dahlgren guns peeping out through the yellow stones, and its tall sentinel lighthouse, stands guard over the narrow entrance of the harbor; the battery of La Punta on the opposite shore answering to the Moro. There are also the long range of cannon and barracks on the city side, and the massive fortress of the Cabanas crowning the hill behind the Moro. All these are decorated with the red and yellow flag of Spain,—the banner of blood and gold. So many and strong fortifications show how ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... as a man sensible of fresh morning air looks back on the snoring bolster. Many of the graver were glad of a change. After all that maundering over the blessed peace which brings the raisin and the currant for the pudding, and shuts up the cannon with a sheep's head, it became a principle of popular taste to descant on the vivifying virtues of war; even as, after ten months of money-mongering in smoky London, the citizen hails the sea-breeze and an immersion in unruly brine, despite the cost, that breeze ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... was really a castle,—not simply a country mansion so called, but a stone edifice with battlements and a round tower at one corner, and a gate which looked as if it might have had a portcullis, and narrow windows in a portion of it, and a cannon mounted upon a low roof, and an excavation called the moat,—but which was now a fantastic and somewhat picturesque garden,—running round two sides of it. In very truth, though a portion of the castle was undoubtedly old, and had been built when strength was needed for defence and probably for ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... Wardle's sister suffered under such a dreadful state of nervous alarm, that Mr. Tupman found it indispensably necessary to put his arm round her waist, to keep her up at all. Everybody was excited, except the fat boy, and he slept as soundly as if the roaring of cannon were his ordinary lullaby. ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... order for the approaching campaign. He replenished his treasury with a large amount of silver which he drew from the mines of La Plata. Saltpetre, obtained in abundance in the neighborhood of Cuzco, furnished the material for gunpowder. He caused cannon, some of large dimensions, to be cast under the superintendence of Pedro de Candia, the Greek, who, it may be remembered, had first come into the country with Pizarro, and who, with a number of his countrymen,—Levantines, ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... wind was gone in a few moments, as if it were a single huge cannon shot. It whistled off to the eastward, but left in its path a trail of torn and fallen trees. Then in its path came the sweep of the great rain; the air grew darker, the thunder ceased to crash, the lightning ...
— The Young Trailers - A Story of Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... power. No purpose can be assigned for their adoption. No object can be guessed that was to be accomplished. They become words, so arranged that they sound like sense, but when examined fall meaninglessly apart. Under the decision of the Supreme Court they are Quaker cannon—cloud forts—"property" for political stage scenery—coats of mail made of bronzed paper— shields of gilded ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... I had come in sight of her house, and suddenly I trembled like a green horse before a cannon. My courage ran out so fast that I was soon left without any, and my legs had carried me as far as St. James's Church before I could bring them up. Then I was sure, for the first time, that she did not love me. In front of the church I halted, reflecting that I had not remained in ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... one of those dreams that I nursed and never told. Let me make a clean breast of it now, and say, that, so late as to have outgrown childhood, perhaps to have got far on towards manhood, when the roar of the cannon has struck suddenly on my ear, I have started with a thrill of vague expectation and tremulous delight, and the long-unspoken words have articulated themselves in the mind's dumb ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... batteries lying off the shore. In the dark the American force of twelve hundred men under Colonel Prescott marched to this neck of land and then advanced half a mile southward to Breed's Hill. Prescott was an old campaigner of the Seven Years' War; he had six cannon, and his troops were commanded by experienced officers. Israel Putnam was skillful in irregular frontier fighting, and Nathanael Greene, destined to prove himself the best man in the American army next to Washington ...
— Washington and his Comrades in Arms - A Chronicle of the War of Independence • George Wrong
... (as sure a sign of a hopeless fool in a man who cannot see that every other man is equally an instrument of that Power as it is a guarantee of wisdom and goodwill in the man who respects his neighbor as himself) he attempted to fight Drake on the assumption that a cannon was a weapon that no real gentleman and good Catholic would condescend to handle. Louis XIV. tried again two centuries ago, and, being a more frivolous fool, got beaten by Marlborough and sent his great-grandson ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... main end of her wars and her diplomacy for many centuries before the great Revolution was to obtain such colonies, and to secure from weaker nations trade concessions and openings—peaceably if possible, at the mouth of the cannon if necessary." ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... appearance to the brig, although there was nothing warlike about it. However, a sixteen-pound gun was placed on her forecastle; its carriage was so arranged that it could be pointed in any direction. The same thing can be said of the cannon as of her ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... place, Steadfast and stern as the rocks that guard her, Tremble and thrill and leap in their veins, As the blood of one man through the beacon-lit border! Like a fire, like a flame, At the sound of her name, As the smoky-throated cannon mutter it, As the smiling lips of a nation utter it, And a hundred rock-lights write it in fire! Daughter of Empires, the Lady of Lome, Back through the mists of dim centuries borne, None nobler, none gentler that brave name have worn; Shrilled by storm-bugles, ...
— The Coming of the Princess and Other Poems • Kate Seymour Maclean
... to wage warre with Spaine, with the meanes of Spaine. To which I aunswere, that if either I had ben followed the first morning of our comminge before the harbor when I bare with it, or if we had entred the same Sundaie in the afternoone when we were vnder saile, and within cannon shot of the enemies fleete, or after the men of warre were taken and burnt, the nexte daie if anie shipping had gone vp as I vrged by mine owne speech sent by Sir Anthonie Ashlie, who being secretaire at wars was to record euerie mans seruice or omission; if anie of these ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of - The English Nation, Vol. 11 • Richard Hakluyt
... night; they haunted her like a favourite air, they clung about her like a favourite perfume. Their minister was a marrowy expounder of the law, and my lord sat under him with relish; but Mrs. Weir respected him from far off; heard him (like the cannon of a beleaguered city) usefully booming outside on the dogmatic ramparts; and meanwhile, within and out of shot, dwelt in her private garden which she watered with grateful tears. It seems strange to say of this colourless and ineffectual woman, but ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... authority, and Russian learning. From its churches are promulgated the authoritative utterances of the Greek Metropolitan, within its triangular walls is found the most characteristic Muscovite architecture, behind its portals stand the largest bell ever cast and the largest cannon ever founded until the most recent times; statues of Russian heroes adorn its open spaces, the splendors of its palaces are lavished with Muscovite profuseness, the edicts of the White Czar thunder over his many million subjects from its walls. Clustered about the Kremlin ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... ranks of the 'boodlers,' don't it? Well, I don't give a cooky for ethics so long as I know I'm right. I'd have been a simp, as Biff Bates calls it, to go among that crowd of hungry law jugglers with kind words and the ten commandments. I'm not using crossbows against cannon, and as a result I'm winning. I got my measure through, and now I think we'll put Stone and his crew of freebooters on the grill, with some extra-hot coals for my friend De Graff and the other saintly sinners who have been playing into Stone's hands. ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester
... homeward route. The inflexible General, supposing that the regulars would be obedient to military discipline, and that it would be for their interest to retain in the camp those whose departure would endanger all their lives placed them upon the bridge, with cannon loaded to the muzzle with grape-shot. They were ordered mercilessly to shoot down any who should attempt to cross without his permission. In Crockett's ludicrous account of ...
— David Crockett: His Life and Adventures • John S. C. Abbott
... Creeks themselves as the last stand of their nation: for, contrary to the usual practice of the Indians, they made every preparation for defence, but none for retreat. Their resistance was proportionably desperate and bloody. For several hours they supported a continued fire of musketry and cannon without shrinking; till at length the American General, finding that he had lost a great number of men, and that he could not otherwise dislodge the enemy, gave orders for a general assault. The breast-work was carried by storm; and the Indians, broken ...
— The Life, Studies, And Works Of Benjamin West, Esq. • John Galt
... a plantation in Virginia, remembers when Lee was fighting near Danville, and how frightened the negroes were at the sound of the cannon. "They cay'd the wounded by the 'bacco factory," he said, "on de way ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration
... down upon the riflemen, and had been killed. It was late in the evening when the advance parties crossed the bridge over the creek and sought safety behind the lines. Indefatigable General Knox had concentrated thirty pieces of cannon at the bridge—"A very pretty battery," ...
— For Love of Country - A Story of Land and Sea in the Days of the Revolution • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... passports, sea-letters, and other documents described in the article of this treaty; and to prevent all disorder and violences, the vessels of war and private armed vessels making the visit shall constantly remain out of cannon-shot from the armed vessels, and shall send their boats to them, but they shall not board them with more than two or three men for the purpose of examining their papers abovementioned. Nevertheless, it shall not ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. VIII • Various
... flickering with flashes where the bulk of the insurgent infantry began firing in retreat; the marines' fusillade broke out from Paradise village; rifle after rifle cracked along the river-bank. Suddenly the deep report of a cannon came echoing landward from the sea; a shell, with lighted fuse trailing sparks, flew over us with a rushing whistle and ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... with which the guard defend the royal person in battle; some lances, covered with red and green velvet, and the body-armour of Henry VIII.; many and very beautiful arms, as well for men as for horses in horse-fights; the lance of Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, three spans thick; two pieces of cannon, the one fires three, the other seven balls at a time; two others made of wood, which the English has at the siege of Boulogne, in France. And by this stratagem, without which they could not have succeeded, they struck ...
— Travels in England and Fragmenta Regalia • Paul Hentzner and Sir Robert Naunton
... below. Both before and behind, a large court is enclosed by a low wall of loose stones, with little turrets at the corners, and two doorways in the principal. In the front court are some old brass and iron cannon, lying dismounted—trophies of Turkish war. Behind is an attempted kitchen garden. The remainder of Cettigna is small, hardly worth mentioning—six or seven houses with an upper floor, and about twice as many ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... was transported with the honour that was done me, and burning with envy against my competitor, I was awakened by the noise of the cannon which were then fired for the taking of Mons. I should have been very much troubled at being thrown out of so pleasing a vision on any other occasion; but thought it an agreeable change, to have my thoughts diverted from the greatest among the dead and fabulous heroes to the most ...
— Isaac Bickerstaff • Richard Steele
... He always gives an order as tho hed given it an hour before an nobodied paid any attenshun to him. It didnt sound reasonable to me cause it was gettin dark then an it would be time to turn in before we could get any place. Bein a cannon ear tho an not havin anything to do with the horses I didnt say anything. Willin. ...
— "Same old Bill, eh Mable!" • Edward Streeter
... Had a cannon suddenly exploded at Chauvelin's feet he would, I think, have felt less unnerved. For the space of two heart-beats he stood there, rooted to the spot, his eyes glued on his arch-enemy, that execrated Scarlet Pimpernel, whose mocking glance, ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... establishment with the solicitude of a friend and the tenderness of a father. The Lords of the Treasury allowed fifty pounds per month for its sustenance: the Marquis of Buckingham made them a present of a brass cannon and a stand of colors. When the Bourbons were restored in 1814 they relieved the government from this charge, and the institution was dissolved in 1820; in 1822 "Tyler's Green House," as it was called, was sold in lots, ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... stirred in the morning, I ran to her and had a good cry. She threatened all sorts of things for the man who had caused me such torture, and declared that he believed everything he heard. He did not seem to remember how many hundred miles away Sonora was, nor how many loaded cannon there were at the Fort. I felt better satisfied, however, when she told me that she had made up her mind to start for ...
— The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate • Eliza Poor Donner Houghton
... which they had thus voluntarily placed themselves, neither made the slightest movement; and the long barrels of their rifles stood forth in front of them, as motionless as bronze cannon set in battery. ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... of his father the Sun. Only the general outline of the lion can now be traced in his weather-worn body. The lower portion of the head-dress has fallen, so that the neck appears too slender to support the weight of the head. The cannon-shot of the fanatical Mamelukes has injured both the nose and beard, and the red colouring which gave animation to his features has now almost entirely disappeared. But in spite of this, even in its ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... it is a celestial kind of hydrogen of which it seems impossible to get too much at one inhalation. In an hour Margaret was able to converse with comparative calmness on the resuscitation of Larry O'Rourke, whom the firing of a cannon had brought to the surface as if he had been in reality ...
— A Rivermouth Romance • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... and Sweden, a large metal crucifix on the lid. The third, that of Count Magnus, as it appeared, had, instead of that, a full-length effigy engraved upon it, and round the edge were several bands of similar ornament representing various scenes. One was a battle, with cannon belching out smoke, and walled towns, and troops of pikemen. Another showed an execution. In a third, among trees, was a man running at full speed, with flying hair and outstretched hands. After him followed ...
— Ghost Stories of an Antiquary • Montague Rhodes James
... low: it is surrounded with a deep and wide canal, but the best defence of this settlement is its extreme unhealthiness. The citadel, or castle, stands on the right of the city: in it are deposited a vast quantity of cannon and other munitions of war: the governor-general, and the rest of the company's servants, have apartments in it, and here the governor and council meet twice a ...
— An Historical Journal of the Transactions at Port Jackson and Norfolk Island • John Hunter
... between the white race and the red must be close at hand; but neither he nor any one in that region knew that it was already ended. There had not been a single sign or sound to tell when the conflict was actually going on. It was said that the roar of the cannon was heard much farther away, as far even as Monk's Mound, where the Trappists—those most ill-fated of Kentucky pioneers—had found temporary refuge. But if this be true, it must have been by reason of the fact that sound carries ...
— Round Anvil Rock - A Romance • Nancy Huston Banks
... black with a dense body of men, all of whom faced the gloomy building beyond, and each of whom carried a special constable's baton in his hand. The long railway bridge running close by was occupied by a detachment of infantry, and from the parapet of the frowning walls the muzzle of cannon, trained on the space below, might be dimly discerned in the darkness. But the crowd paid little attention to these extraordinary appearances; their eyes were riveted on the black projection which jutted from the prison wall, and which, shrouded in dark drapery, loomed with ghastly significance ...
— The Dock and the Scaffold • Unknown
... running the gauntlet of the smirking attendants, the possibility of meeting some of the exultant dramatic critics, most of whom were there to cut him to pieces, revolted him. Their joyous grins were harder to face than cannon, therefore he cowered in his place during the long wait, his mind ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... Danube, and contains only a few edifices which are worthy even of the epithet creditable. The white pinnacle from which it takes its name—for the city grouped around the fort was once called Beograd ("white city")—now looks grimy and gloomy. The Servians have placed the cannon which they took from the Turks in the recent war on the ramparts, and have become so extravagantly vain in view of their exploits that their conceit is quite painful to contemplate. Yet it is impossible to avoid sympathizing to some ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... for money. His habits were severely simple, and he was the most generous of men. He valued the acquisition of money on the turf, because there it was the test of success. He counted his thousands after a great race, as a victorious general counts his cannon ...
— The Portland Peerage Romance • Charles J. Archard
... she be placed in the militia to enforce the results of a ballot? Is there any one of us who believes that? Is there anybody here who would be glad to see a woman in the train-band, on the muster-field, at the cannon's mouth, or on the decks of your war-ships? That is what your argument means, if it means ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... We'd learned our lesson about mobocrat milishies. Well, Brockman, when he got our defy, sent out his Warsaw riflemen as flankers on the right and left, put the Lima Guards to our front with one cannon, and marched his main body through that corn-field and orchard to the south of here to the city lines. Then we had it hot. Brockman shot away all his cannon-balls—he had sixty-one—and drew back while he ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... met Sir John Robinson, and so with him by coach to White Hall, still a vain, prating, boasting man as any I know, as if the whole City and Kingdom had all its work done by him. He tells me he hath now got a street ordered to be continued, forty feet broad, from Paul's through Cannon Street to the Tower, which will be very fine. He and others this day, where I was in the afternoon, do tell me of at least six or eight fires within these few days; and continually stirs of fires, and real fires there have been, in one place or other, almost ever since the late great fire, ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... frantic zeal each breast inspires, 25 And shudd'ring demons fan the impious fires, The bloody signal waves, the banners play, The naked sabres flash their streaming ray; The martial trumpet's animating sound, And thund'ring cannon, rend the vault around; 30 While fierce in sanguine rage the sons of Spain Rush on Peru's unarm'd, devoted train; The fiends of slaughter urg'd their dire career, And virtue's guardian spirits dropp'd ...
— Poems (1786), Volume I. • Helen Maria Williams
... cannon, of rifles, of swords; drawings of soldiers in various gay uniforms, all carefully coloured by hand. There were pictures of ships, from the sterns of which the crescent flag floated lazily; sketches of great, ugly-looking ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... thence, from stream to stream and lake to lake, toiled painfully towards their goal. At length, they neared Fort Hayes. It was a stockade with four bastions, mounted with cannon. There was a strong blockhouse within, in which the sixteen occupants of the place were lodged, unsuspicious of danger. Troyes approached at night. Iberville and Sainte-Helene with a few followers climbed the palisade on one side, while the rest of the party ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman
... distance,' as Humboldt says, 'equal to that between Vesuvius and Paris,' the inhabitants, not only of Caracas, but of Calabozo, situate in the midst of the llanos, over a space of four thousand square leagues, were terrified by a subterranean noise, which resembled frequent discharges of the loudest cannon. It was accompanied by no shock, and, what is very remarkable, was as loud on the coast as at eighty leagues inland; and at Caracas, as well as at Calabozo, preparations were made to put the place in defence against an enemy who seemed to be advancing with heavy ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... Saturday, the 6th, we drove down the boulevards to see the field of action on the terrible Thursday (the only day on which there was any fighting of consequence), counting the holes in the walls bored by the cannon, and looking at the windows smashed in. Even then, though the asphalte was black with crowds, the quiet was absolute, and most of the shops reopened. On Sunday the theatres were as full as usual, and our Champs-Elysees had quite its complement of promenaders. Wiedeman's prophecy had not been ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... change the custom for worlds, just as one would not change the old box pews of St. Michael's or replace the cannon on the Battery with ...
— The Ghost Girl • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... cannon now reposing in our historical rooms was used to break up 'pestilent abolition meetings' in our own midst. Thus I have endeavored to give you some idea of an interesting phase in the history of our Commonwealth, that may not be familiar to all, and which I would term as ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... duties." "Then a person could have escaped without their seeing him?" "A whole regiment of persons might have escaped. You will understand the situation exactly if I compare this corridor to a long cannon, the room at the end being the breech-loading chamber. Two guards were inside the room, and two others stood outside the door that communicated with this corridor. These four men were killed instantly. Of the guards inside the room not a vestige has been found. ...
— Jennie Baxter, Journalist • Robert Barr
... uncounted voices, the booming of several cannon held in readiness for just this very purpose, the bleating of horns, and everything else that could be utilized to create a racket, the Riverport shell shot pass the deciding stakeboat, fully a length ahead of ...
— Fred Fenton on the Crew - or, The Young Oarsmen of Riverport School • Allen Chapman
... The village would be at his heels. Seized with an unreasoning passion, he whirled about and shot the cur dead. It was a mad act, and he instantly repented it. Never had there been another rifle shot so loud. It crashed like the report of a cannon. Mountain and valley gave it back in a multitude of echoes, and on the last dying echo came, not a single war whoop, but the shout of many, the fierce, insistent, falsetto yell that has sounded the ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler
... the burning of Cazimir Liszinski in 1689, whose ashes were placed in a cannon and shot into the air. This Polish gentleman was accused of atheism by the Bishop of Potsdam. His condemnation was based upon certain atheistical manuscripts found in his possession, containing several novel doctrines, ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... whose sides and ends sloped at an angle of thirty-four degrees and were covered with iron plating, six inches thick on the forward end and five inches thick on the other end and the sides. With the inclination given, a cannon ball striking would be likely to be turned upward by the iron surface, instead of penetrating. The sloping sides of the house were carried down beyond the point where they met those of the vessel, until two feet below the water. There they turned and struck in ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan
... place our sea port towns out of the danger of insult. Measures have been already taken for furnishing them with heavy cannon for the service of such land batteries as may make a part of their defense against armed vessels approaching them. In aid of these it is desirable we should have a competent number of gun boats, and the number, to be competent, must be considerable. If ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Thomas Jefferson • Thomas Jefferson
... Bordeaux. That year the French laid siege to Chandos's castle of Saint-Sauveur-le-Vicomte. The siege was as long and as elaborately organised as the great siege of Calais. A ring of bastilles was erected round the doomed town, and cannon discharged huge balls of stone against its ramparts. After nearly a year's siege the garrison agreed to surrender on condition of a heavy payment. With the fall of the old home of the Harcourts the English ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... to the battle-field. As we approach, the thunder of the cannon becoming plainer and plainer is soon followed by the howling of shot, which attracts the attention of the inexperienced. Balls begin to strike the ground close to us, before and behind. We hasten to the hill where stands the General ...
— On War • Carl von Clausewitz
... proceeds to describe. He had first a set of small cones set up, which were successively knocked down as the change in the plane of the pendulum slowly brought the pointer under the bob to bear on cone after cone. Secondly, a small cannon was so placed that the first touch of the pendulum pointer against a platinum wire across the touch-hole completed a galvanic circuit, and so fired the cannon. Lastly, a candle was placed so as to throw the shadow of the pendulum bob upon a ground-glass screen, and so to exhibit the gradual ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 447, July 26, 1884 • Various
... Spain, the largest contributions of war conscripts came from the countries with the largest populations. With the exception of Spain, all of the great powers of Europe provided the "cannon fodder"; the human beings which Europe's "great powers" assembled to take part in this profligate orgy of mass murder which went on for more than four years, from ...
— Civilization and Beyond - Learning From History • Scott Nearing
... Note 4 M, p. 550. The garrison of Quebec, during the winter, repaired above five hundred houses which had been damaged by the English cannon, built eight redoubts of wood, raised foot-banks along the ramparts, opened embrasures, mounted artillery, blocked up all the avenues of the suburbs with a stockade, removed eleven months' provisions into the highest parts of the city, and formed a magazine of four thousand ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... marshes, had been an island at high water. It was still called Isle au Tantramar. Among the trees, under rude lean-to tents and improvised shelters of all sorts, were gathered the women and children of Beausejour, out of range of the cannon balls that they knew would soon be flying over their homes. The weather was balmy, and their situation not immediately painful, but their hearts were a prey ...
— The Raid From Beausejour; And How The Carter Boys Lifted The Mortgage • Charles G. D. Roberts
... was a soldier bold, And used to war's alarms; But a cannon ball took off his legs, So he laid ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... lodgings in Cannon-streete, who used me very kindly with wine and good discourse, particularly upon the ill method which Col. Birch and the Committee use in defending of the army and the navy; promising the Parliament to save them a great, deal of money, ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... been laid out on a regular town-plan, no discoverable trace of such plan survived, nor could any existing street be said to run to any serious extent on Roman lines. Mr. Davidge devises a rectangular plan of oblong blocks, and finds vestiges of Roman streets in the present Cheapside, Cannon Street, Gracechurch Street, and Birchin Lane. In a later number of the same journal (Aug. 29, p. 52) I have given some reasons for not accepting this view. First, Mr. Davidge's list of four survivals would be too brief to prove much if the survivals were proved. Secondly, Roman structural ...
— Roman Britain in 1914 • F. Haverfield
... pardon Mr Blackwood should his temper be a little ruffled, when he compares his trouble and responsibility, and limited sale, with the sans souci and universal market of Reprint & Co.; but surely, old Christopher North should smile with inward satisfaction when, not by cannon, or carnage, but as the result of a greatness thrust upon him, he finds his empire, like her Majesty's, the girdle of the earth, and his sovereignty recognised, in the world of letters, where hers can claim no subjects, and demand no homage. That crutch is now ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... note of battle. He had always found something or some one to fight from the very beginning, and now, in his old age, he was fighting still. His had never been the din and crash of warfare by sword and cannon, but the subtler, deeper combat of the pen. In his active days he had got through a vast amount of work—that unchronicled work of the Foreign Office which never comes, through the cheap newspapers, to the ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... he and his four hundred and fifty men would do what they could to defend the town. They were encamped on an estate called 'Little England,' a short distance southwest of Hampton, and had a heavy battery of seven guns, the largest an eighteen-pounder cannon. ...
— Elsie's Vacation and After Events • Martha Finley
... to their oars with a will, and the boat leaped upon the water. They had rowed for fifty yards when suddenly far away a cannon boomed. The crew stopped, and every one in the boat strained his eyes seawards. Some one whispered, and Hillyard held up his hand for silence. Thus they sat immobile as figures of wax for the space of ten minutes. Then ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason
... fence, with square wooden buildings at two of the corners. These took my attention directly, for they looked like strong, square, wooden towers, trying to be like the sides of a man-of-war, inasmuch as they were fitted with portholes, out of which projected the muzzles of small cannon. I could see that there was a rough trail leading up to a grim gateway in the square fence, and that the nearer we got to the place, the bigger and stronger that fence looked, and that inside was quite a large square with huts and other buildings, and what ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... to the purpose to undertake a subtle analysis of the nature of causation, and to explain that it does not, properly speaking, involve compulsion, but simply means invariable antecedence. Let it be that a cannon-ball does not really knock down the wall against which it strikes, and that it would be more correct to say that the ball impinges and the wall falls; though, seeing that the wall would not have fallen unless the ball had impinged, the ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... and by the deterioration in the character of the Oude troops raised to supply their places, the tallookdars became stronger and stronger. They withheld more and more of the revenue due to Government, and expended the money in building forts and strongholds, casting or purchasing cannon, and maintaining large armed bands of followers. All that they withheld from the public treasury was laid out in providing the means for resisting the officers of Government; and, in time, it became a point of honour to pay nothing ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman
... heretofore unfelt, The spacious city, and in progress passed 50 The prison where the unhappy Monarch lay, Associate with his children and his wife In bondage; and the palace, lately stormed With roar of cannon by a furious host. I crossed the square (an empty area then!) [G] 55 Of the Carrousel, where so late had lain The dead, upon the dying heaped, and gazed On this and other spots, as doth a man Upon a volume whose contents he knows Are memorable, but from him locked up, ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... had espoused. As evening approached the force marched out in silence, orders having been given that there should be no shouting, lest they should betray their whereabouts. The force amounted to eight hundred foot and one hundred and fifty horse, and with it three pieces of cannon. They took up their position at a cross road behind hedges, and in the narrow way behind which it was supposed that the Duke of Albemarle would come, the foot lying in the field with their arms in rank and file, the horsemen holding their bridles in their hands. Every moment they ...
— Roger Willoughby - A Story of the Times of Benbow • William H. G. Kingston
... suite, under universal cannon-salvos, arrived, Sunday the 12th; to stay till Wednesday (three days) with his august Son-in-law and Daughter here. Durchlaucht Lippe presents himself at Court, the rest of us not; privately settles with the Prince: "Tuesday night, eve of his ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. X. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—At Reinsberg—1736-1740 • Thomas Carlyle
... towns had submitted, some after firing a gun or two, others without resistance; that the Rhingrave de Salm had evacuated Utretcht, with part of the troops under his command, leaving behind him one hundred and forty-four pieces of cannon, with great warlike stores; that the standard of Orange was hoisted everywhere; that no other cockade could be worn at the Hague; that the States General were to assemble that night for reinstating the Stadtholder in all his rights. The letter ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson
... enchanted region, and seems to be commander-in-chief of all the powers of the air, is the apparition of a figure on horseback, without a head. It is said by some to be the ghost of a Hessian trooper, whose head had been carried away by a cannon-ball, in some nameless battle during the Revolutionary War, and who is ever and anon seen by the country folk hurrying along in the gloom of night, as if on the wings of the wind. His haunts are not confined to the valley, but extend at times to the adjacent roads, and ...
— The Legend of Sleepy Hollow • Washington Irving
... was a "find." The Scottish youth was filled with an immense longing for home; and as his homesickness grew, he poured more and more into Jan's attentive ears his knowledge of the world from which he had come. He told him the history of the old brass cannon that lay abandoned among the vines and bushes, where a fort had stood at Churchill many years before. He described the coming of the first ship into the great bay; told of Hudson and his men, of ...
— The Honor of the Big Snows • James Oliver Curwood
... to plant the plains of Buttereaux with cypress-trees and close them in with rails. The Place had been a scene of too much horror to remain open for Public amusement. The fine Hopital de la Charite, against which the besiegers directed their heaviest cannon in spite of the Black ensign, which it is customary to hoist over buildings of that nature during a Siege, is much damaged, though scarcely so much as I should have expected. The Romantic Castle of the Pierre Suisse is no ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley
... wagon gets the head knocked off 'm!" cried Jack. "Besides, there's no milk! No eggs! No nothing! Go 'way! I'm sick! That's all there is," and something which looked like a cannon-ball shot out of the front end of the wagon, followed by a paper bag which might have been the wadding used in the Cannon. "That's all! Lemme 'lone!" And we heard Jack tie down the front of the cover and roll over on ...
— The Voyage of the Rattletrap • Hayden Carruth
... rapidly carried on. The thatch was conveyed to a distance from the house, that it might not be employed for smoking us out, while all the men able to use saws and hammers set to work to fit and nail up the timbers. Every door and window was so strongly barricaded, that a cannon-shot only could have knocked ...
— The Young Llanero - A Story of War and Wild Life in Venezuela • W.H.G. Kingston
... the hill the veterans of the Grand Army have erected barracks, and there they annually assemble, build their camp fires, recount old scenes, fight mimic battles, and close up their ranks thinned by time. The approach to their camp is guarded by cannon, used to salute some honored comrade, and overlooked by an observatory on ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2 • Various
... the crowds waited expectantly. Shortly after 2 o'clock the booming of cannon and later the sound of military music conveyed to the people of Brussels the intimation that the triumphant march of the enemy on the ancient ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various
... against. That's why it's good to have a fellow like this Englishman, who has really been right in the thick of it, relate his own experiences. While he was talking you could almost hear the thunder of cannon and the bursting of shells. I tell you, we fellows felt like shouldering our guns, and ...
— The Outdoor Girls in Army Service - Doing Their Bit for the Soldier Boys • Laura Lee Hope
... speeding down Cannon Street, along the Strand, and the gaudier thoroughfares of the West, in a taxicab, to ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton
... criminals—Catholics both—and their attendant priests were seated, was guarded by soldiers with fixed bayonets; indeed, the whole regiment then lying in the city was massed in front and behind, with a cold, frightful glitter of steel. Besides the foot soldiers, there were dragoons, and two pieces of cannon; a whole little army, in fact. With a slenderer force battles have been won which have made a mark in history. What did the prisoners think of their strange importance, and of the tramp and hurly-burly all around? When the procession moved out of the city, it seemed ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... illness and my watching over him night and day, keeping firearms out of reach. I have never seen—and hope I never may—any other being age so swiftly and perceptibly. I had attributed his worn appearance in Fort Douglas to the cannon accident and trusted the natural robustness of his constitution would throw off the apparent languor; but as autumn wore into winter, there were more gray hairs on his temple, deeper lines furrowed his face and the erect ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... glorious Fall! Thou may'st not to the fancy's sense recal; The thunder-riven cloud, the lightning's leap, The stirring of the chambers of the deep, Earth's emerald green, and many-tinted dyes, The fleecy whiteness of the upper skies, The tread of armies thickening as they come, The boom of cannon and the beat of drum, The brow of beauty and the form of grace, The passion and the prowess of our race, The song of Homer in its loftiest hour, The unresisted sweep of human power, Britannia's trident on ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... its weight miles distant, while in Batavia, 100 miles away from the scene of the disaster, it fell to the depth of several inches. The explosions were so loud as to be distinctly heard in Hindostan, 1,800 miles away, and at Batavia the sound was like the constant roar of cannon in a field of battle. Finally the whole island was blown to pieces, and now came the most awful contest of nature—a battle of death between Neptune and Vulcan; the sea poured down into the chasm millions of tons, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 841, February 13, 1892 • Various
... great general. He also can light his cigar, when the battle's on, with the friction of a passing cannon-ball. ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... deputed by President Davis to return to the Northern States, and make large purchases and contracts "for machinery and munitions, or for the manufacture of arms and munitions of war;" as also to obtain "cannon and musket-powder, the former of the coarsest grain," and to engage with a certain proprietor of powder-mills for the "establishment of a powder-mill at some point in the limits of our territory." This letter gives a good idea of the business-like qualities brought by Mr. Davis to his high ...
— The Cruise of the Alabama and the Sumter • Raphael Semmes
... without danger be ignited in a large closed vessel full of air, because the pressure against the sides of the vessel exerted by the explosion is not more than the pressure of the air compressed by the explosion. If a piece of card board, or even of paper, is placed in the middle of the bore of a cannon charged with powder, the cannon will almost certainly burst, because the powder in detonating acts upon a body in repose which can only be put in motion in a period of time infinitely little by the intervention of a force infinitely great. The piece of paper is therefore ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 417 • Various
... made a breach in the walls with his cannon, and then entered the city through it, together with his whole army.—When he had made every necessary regulation here, he departed to subdue other places, leaving a strong garrison at once to overawe and defend, under the command of his lieutenant-general ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... September she describes the excitement in Boston, the Governor mounting cannon on Beacon Hill, digging intrenchments on the Neck, planting guns, throwing up breastworks, encamping a regiment. In consequence of the powder being taken from Charlestown, she goes on to say, a general alarm spread through all the towns and was soon caught in Braintree. ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... right there and then to be a burglar. I went on tiptoe as softly as I could, and was right in the middle of the kitchen floor when I stumbled over a little stool and it made a noise. It was not much of a noise, but to me it seemed like the shot out of a cannon. I thought it would wake up the whole house, but nobody but mother woke, and she said, "Who's there?" I said nothing, only stood still and waited for her to fall asleep again. As I stood there a voice—and surely it was the voice of God—seemed to say, "Go back to bed ...
— Dave Ranney • Dave Ranney
... thunderbolt of wood and steel collided with any other train, with the force and weight gathered by its plunge down the mountain, it would drive through such obstruction like a projectile from Tom's own big cannon. ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Locomotive - or, Two Miles a Minute on the Rails • Victor Appleton
... informd, with equal Ceremony. His Colleagues arrivd in the Dusk of the Evening and without Observation. He is the most happy who has the greatest Share of the Affections of his Fellow Citizens, without which, the Ears of a sincere Patriot are ever deaf to the ROARING OF CANNON AND THE CHARMS OF MUSICK. I have not seen nor heard of any Dangers on the Road that should require Guards to protect one. It is pretty enough in the Eyes of some Men, to see the honest Country Folks gapeing & staring at a Troop of Light Horse. But it is well if it is not some times attended ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, vol. III. • Samuel Adams
... besiegers constructed great engines, such as were used in those days, in the absence of cannon, for throwing rocks and heavy beams of wood, to batter the walls. These machines also threw a certain extraordinary combustible substance called Greek fire. It was this Greek fire that, in the end, turned the scale of victory, for ...
— Richard II - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... heard a fearful detonation as if a hundred cannon had been fired at once, or a subterranean mine had been exploded—the whole surface trembled and shook. The effect of this thunderous convulsion was fearful—the ice opened in a cleft three thousand yards long, and between the edges of the floes ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... Scudder smiled as he thought of the half-dismantled fort, the two moldy brass cannon, cast in Manila a century previous, and the shiftless garrison. A wild thought of accepting the Commander's offer literally, conceived in the reckless spirit of a man who never let slip an offer for trade, for a moment filled his brain, ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... cannon had been dubbed when what was left of Company C, Second Infantry, came marching back ...
— Bart Stirling's Road to Success - Or; The Young Express Agent • Allen Chapman
... struck by a cannon-ball on the head, just as he was giving an order, at the Battle of the Nile. Fifteen months afterwards he was trephined at Greenwich Hospital, having been insensible all that time. Immediately after the operation his consciousness returned, and he at once began carrying ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... that due provision should be made for physical necessities. Why should not the State have an armory for the repair of arms, for the alteration of old models so as to make them conform to the improved weapons of the present day, and for the manufacture on a limited scale of new arms, including cannon and their carriages; the casting of shot and shells, and the preparation ...
— Speeches of the Honorable Jefferson Davis 1858 • Hon. Jefferson Davis |
