"Line of defence" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... departure three days ago, and nothing remained for the consul but to return with weary troops and little credit to Massilia, and to revile the "cowardly flight" of the Punic leader. Thus the Romans had for the third time through pure negligence abandoned their allies and an important line of defence; and not only so, but by passing after this first blunder from mistaken slackness to mistaken haste, and by still attempting without any prospect of success to do what might have been done with so much certainty a few days before, they ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... Santa Cruz stands near the sea, on a plain of about two miles square, at the foot of the mountains. The population amounts to about 6,000 souls. It has a well fortified sea-line of defence, and a mole protected by a fort. It was on landing at this mole that Nelson lost his arm, and Captain Boscawen his life. The English colours taken on that occasion are preserved as trophies in the principal church. Few persons are seen walking about during the ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman
... without a knowledge of the language of Plato and Aristotle. But an argument that is reduced to these examples must be near its vanishing point. Not one of the cases stands a rigorous scrutiny; and they are not relied upon as the main justification of the continuance of classics. A new line of defence is opened up which was not at all present to the minds of sixteenth century scholars. We are told of numerous indirect and secondary advantages of cultivating language in general and the classic languages in particular, which make the acquisition a rewarding labour, even without one particle ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain
... long, extending from Haines' Bluff to Vicksburg, thence to Warrenton. The line of the enemy was about seven. In addition to this, having an enemy at Canton and Jackson, in our rear, who was being constantly reinforced, we required a second line of defence facing the other way. I had not troops enough under my command to man these. General Halleck appreciated the situation and, without being asked, forwarded ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... be prudent, and do not allow yourself to get angry. Remember that a scene with her would compel us to change our whole line of defence, and that that is the only one which ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau
... and this loss was irreparable. Lord Grey, going his rounds in the dark, trod upon a sword point, and was wounded in the foot. The daylight brought the enemy again, who now succeeded in making themselves masters of the outer line of defence. Grey, crippled as he was, when he saw his men give way, sprung to the top of the rampart, "wishing God that some shot would take him." A soldier caught him by the scarf and pulled him down, and all that was left of the garrison fell back, ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude
... "thoroughly extirpating the nation of the Rohillas": a nation from whom the Company had never received, or pretended to receive or apprehend, any injury whatsoever; whose country, in the month of February, 1773, by an unanimous resolution of the said Warren Hastings and his Council, was included in the line of defence against the Mahrattas; and from whom the Nabob never complained of an aggression or act of hostility, nor pretended a distinct cause of quarrel, other than the non-payment of a sum of money in dispute between him ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VIII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... raised, is an idea which presents itself only when all the other ways out of the difficulty have been tried. But whoso imagines that the aesthetic fact is something pleasing to the eyes or to the hearing, has no line of defence against him who proceeds logically to identify the beautiful with the pleasurable in general, and includes cooking in Aesthetic, or, as some positivist has ...
— Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic • Benedetto Croce
... citizens of Quebec, having been afforded this opportunity, will erect a pile here worthy the site; a castellated building would perhaps be the style best adapted to this, and would come well in with the river line of defence, whose strong curtain runs parallel with the terrace, from which the windows of the Chateau look perpendicularly upon the streets ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power
... church-going habits, he is intimate) are not frequent on his lips? If so, he cannot have pursued his studies of the character on so many long-ago muster-fields and at so many cattle-shows as I. But I scorn any such line of defence, and will confess at once that one of the things I am proud of in my countrymen is (I am not speaking now of such persons as I have assumed Mr. Sawin to be) that they do not put their Maker away far from ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... Men have been hanged before to-day because they thought they could construct a better line of defence ...
— The Stowmarket Mystery - Or, A Legacy of Hate • Louis Tracy
... the matter of higher education. The world-struggle, we all feel, has shifted to another battlefield, and the future in every realm of human activity rests on the mastery of ideas. In that intellectual conflict, the primary school rooms are the trenches on the first line of defence; the college and university lecture halls stand out as the strategic heights from which the heavy artillery of ideas smashes the way to victory. Hold the college and university heights to-day, and the hinterland of industry, ...
— Catholic Problems in Western Canada • George Thomas Daly
... you, didn't we?... Well, never mind, you stood no earthly.... Days of the classics are over. Still, you fought well.... Third line of defence—ad triarios.... I remember a bit of ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh
... a doctor, Jervis," he concluded, "and you know what professional confidences are; and you will understand how greatly it is in our favour that we know exactly what the prosecution can do, while they are absolutely in the dark as to our line of defence." ...
— John Thorndyke's Cases • R. Austin Freeman
... man, and this is what she almost invariably tries to do. That is to say, she tries to get a husband, for getting a husband means, in a sense, enslaving an expert, and so covering up her own lack of expertness, and escaping its consequences. Thereafter she has at least one stout line of defence against a struggle for existence in which the prospect of survival is chiefly based, not upon the talents that are typically hers, but upon those that she typically lacks. Before the average woman succumbs in this struggle, some man or other must succumb ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... farmhouses, splintered woods, the hoof marks of Russian horses that had forded the stream under German fire, showed that the struggle had been intense along the river. The plan of battle formed in my mind. It was clear that the Germans had made the western bank a main line of defence, which, however, had been ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin
... you believe that, by to-morrow morning, Monsieur de Granville will not have taken fright at the possible line of defence that might be adopted by some liberal advocate whom Jacques Collin would manage to secure; for lawyers will be ready to pay him to place the case in their hands!—And those ladies know their danger quite as well as you do—not to say better; they will put themselves under the protection ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... have been more serious in public than his line of defence against the danger that menaced, but in friendly ears Mr Winter derided it as a practical possibility, like the ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... call and not to warn the people, and sweet Peace and blessed Silence brood over the shrapnel-scarred veld. The aasvogels feast undisturbed on bloated carcasses of horses and cattle lying on the debatable ground between the Line of Investment and the Line of Defence, the barbel in the river leap at the flies, and partridge and wild guinea-fowl drink in the shallows, and bathe in the dry ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... than to indulge in his professional smile, over the frank showing of the General's hand, and the voluntary betrayal of his line of defence. He filed away the note among the papers relating to the case, took his hat, walked across the street, rang the bell, and sent up his card to Mr. Belcher. That self-complacent gentleman had not expected this ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland
... former accessions of territory were small beside it, and to his eyes it seemed the fertile Canaan of French enterprise. Yet the very magnitude of this new success made for the undoing of New France, by scattering her feeble forces over the length and breadth of a continent and distending her line of defence so far that it could be easily pierced. La Salle, however, was driven irresistibly forward by the hot ambition which ruled him. His romantic vision pictured a greater New France in the valley of the Mississippi, governed by himself—a prosperous trading colony shipping ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... winter quarters. The Royal Highlanders were stationed at Brunswick, and Fraser's Highlanders quartered at Amboy. Afterwards the Royal Highlanders were ordered to the advanced posts, being the only British regiment in the front, and forming the line of defence at Mt. Holly. After the disaster to the Hessians at Trenton, the Royal Highlanders were ordered to fall back on the light ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... the autumn of 1794. The duke of York had already returned to England. A line of defence was, nevertheless, taken up by the British under Wallmoden, by the Dutch under their hereditary stadtholder, William V. of Orange, and by an Austrian corps under Alvinzi; the Dutch were, however, panic-struck, and negotiated a separate treaty ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... and stopped on the south bank of the North Anna, two or three miles in front of the Junction, and was taking the river for a new line of defence. Presently the Federal Army came up pushing on, for the same point, and found us, already ahead, in front, and across their track! Then they went at the same old game of trying to break through us. They got across the river on our right, and on our ...
— From the Rapidan to Richmond and the Spottsylvania Campaign - A Sketch in Personal Narration of the Scenes a Soldier Saw • William Meade Dame
... to keep her place among first-class nations; useful in opening up, with the bayonet's point, those foreign markets so essential to her iron and cotton lords—nay, to all her lords? England was on her trial; England's Government was on its trial; and the Queen's speech was to shadow forth their line of defence for past legislation, and to indicate those future measures which were to stay the famine, and prevent its recurrence. Here is the portion of the ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke
... the coming towards camp of a couple of Boers bearing a white flag; but they were only allowed to approach within the first line of defence. ...
— The Kopje Garrison - A Story of the Boer War • George Manville Fenn
... concentrated on the station and its approaches. Our cavalry rode through the Leicestershires' lines as those warriors moved up to an advanced line of defence. They brought a wounded prisoner. The enemy instantly shrapnelled them, and they scattered, the prisoner, for all his broken leg, keeping his seat excellently and riding surprisingly fast. Luck had been with the battalion this day, and it now remained with them. Many had rifles hit. Fowke, ...
— The Leicestershires beyond Baghdad • Edward John Thompson
... fire from the enemy—who fell back upon a stronger position. Nothing daunted, our men brought up their guns and prepared to repeat their success. The Boers resisted fiercely, but were eventually driven back to a third line of defence. Night was rapidly descending, but this notwithstanding, the Light Horse were ordered to complete their victory. It was in this last rush that their daring leader was struck down. The third position was actually taken; but the disappearance of the light rather handicapped the gunners. ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... plenty more of the same sort for an accuser like you to urge; the subject is all handles; you can take hold of it anywhere. I have been looking about for my best line of defence. Had I better turn craven, face right-about, confess my sin, and have recourse to the regular plea of Chance, Fate, Necessity? Shall I humbly beseech my critics to pardon me, remembering that nothing is in a man's own choice— we are led by some stronger power, one of the three I mentioned, ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... some of the men sewed loops or tags of lamp-wick on to the sides of the trousers, to connect with corresponding attachments on the blouse. As an additional security, others wore an outside belt which was, even if the blouse slipped up for some distance, a line of defence against the drift-snow. ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... that the letters were written with a fountain-pen, and Blade always uses one. That, however, is not evidence, as millions of people use fountain-pens. By the way, what is your line of defence?" he enquired. ...
— Malcolm Sage, Detective • Herbert George Jenkins
... courage or help, painted out of the abundance of their own heart's sadness. This contrast carries much teaching to the children of to-day if they can understand it, for each one who sets value upon faith and hope and resolution and courage in art is a unit adding strength to the line of defence against the invasions of sadness ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart
... part, it is not impossible that the gun went off by accident, and that, mere boy as you must have been at that age, you were so frightened at what had taken place, that you absconded from fear. It appears to me that that should be our line of defence." ...
— The Poacher - Joseph Rushbrook • Frederick Marryat
... even contains a bitter, nauseous, or pungent juice, while at times, as in the pine-apple, the prickly pear, the sweet-sop, and the cherimoyer, the entire fruit is covered with sharp projections, stinging hairs, or knobby protuberances, on purpose to warn off the unauthorised depredator. It was this line of defence that gave the banana in the first instance its thick yellow skin; and, looking at the matter from the epicure's point of view, one may say roughly that all tropical fruits have to be skinned before they can be eaten. They are all adapted for being cut up with a knife ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... litter, herself veiled to the eyes. Sitting with her was a vast old Turkish woman, whom in the harem they called the Mother of Flowers. Mules bore the litter, eunuchs on mules surrounded it. On all sides, a third line of defence, rode the janissaries, hooded in white, on white Arabian horses. So they came swiftly to Tortosa, whose lord, in strict alliance with him of Musse, little knew that in paying homage to the shrouded cage he was cap-in-hand ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... without resistance, and regarded merely as an extension of parliamentary privileges. The truth is that the old parliamentary oligarchy abandoned their first line of trenches because they had by that time constructed a second line of defence. It consisted in the concentration of colossal political funds in the private and irresponsible power of the politicians, collected by the sale of peerages and more important things, and expended on the jerrymandering ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... morning of the 11th the batteries opened fire on the enemy's second line of defence; at the same time Outram himself led a strong body of Infantry along the river with the object of securing the approaches to the bridges. On reaching the Fyzabad road, about half a mile from the iron bridge, Outram placed the 1st Bengal Fusiliers in a mosque, with orders to entrench ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... coats and trousers. The mad rush of modernity with its levelling tendency really is killing off what is quaint, out of the way, and racy of the soil. But why visit the sins of modernity upon an international language? The last sentence of the indictment itself suggests the line of defence. "You are hammering the last nail into the coffin of the old, ...
— International Language - Past, Present and Future: With Specimens of Esperanto and Grammar • Walter J. Clark
... this selection, such as mountains, rivers, roads, forests, cities, fortifications, military depots, means of subsistence, &c. If the frontier of a state contain strong natural or artificial barriers, it may serve not only as a good base for offensive operations, but also as an excellent line of defence against invasion. A single frontier line may, however, be penetrated by the enemy, and in that case a second or third base further in the interior becomes indispensable ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck
... one hundred and fifteen pieces of heavy cannon, and defended by twenty-five thousand Arabs and Turks; the harbour protected by nineteen gun-boats, two galleys, two schooners of eight guns each, and a brig mounting ten guns, ranged in order of battle, forming a strong line of defence, at secure moorings, inside a long range of rocks and shoals, extending more than two miles to the eastward of the town, which form the harbour, protects them from the northern gales, and renders it impossible ...
— The Medallic History of the United States of America 1776-1876 • J. F. Loubat
... So I thought at the moment. I didn't believe her. I thought that she was putting up an unusual line of defence to excuse her own gross carelessness. But I was evidently wrong. The girl seems to have been telling the truth. I think I mentioned to you the state in which I found my ...
— The Simpkins Plot • George A. Birmingham
... private Secretary was about to return to Bosna Serai, having fulfilled a mission on which he had been sent to the camp of the Commander-in-Chief. My object was to return to Mostar by way of Nevresign, which, as well as being new ground to me, forms a portion of the projected line of defence. After waiting no less than five hours and a half for an escort of Bashi Bazouks, who, with true Turkish ideas of the value of time, presented themselves at 12.30, having been warned to be in attendance at 7 A.M., we at length got under weigh. These irregulars were commanded ...
— Herzegovina - Or, Omer Pacha and the Christian Rebels • George Arbuthnot
... that his enemies would carry out their threat of accusing him, and he carefully mapped out his line of defence. He would prove that he had innocently walked into a trap, set for him by a band of conspirators, who had planned to assassinate the Czar, and that he had used every argument to dissuade them from their murderous ...
— Rabbi and Priest - A Story • Milton Goldsmith
... adopted a line of defence that greatly embarrassed the prosecuting officers. They declared themselves to be the Baron de Sainte-Hermine, the Comte de Jayat, the Vicomte de Valensolle, and the Marquis de Ribier, and to have no connection with the pillagers of diligences, whose names were ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... defend the dogmas of Rome. The eagerly-awaited "Defence" did not get printed, and would remain in Pope Leo's hands for a year yet. But Basel knew, through More and Erasmus,—whose canny smile probably discounted its critical quality,—pretty much its line of defence. Nor was Froben's circle one whit more surprised than its royal author when its immediate reward was that formal style and title—Defender of the Faith,—to which a few years more were to ...
— Holbein • Beatrice Fortescue
... buildings, occupied by the garrison, and storehouses. On the upper level, some forty feet higher, stood the palace of the rajah. It communicated with the courtyard, below, by a broad flight of steps. These led to an arched gateway, with a wall and battlements; forming an interior line of defence, should an assailant gain a footing in the lower portion ...
— With Clive in India - Or, The Beginnings of an Empire • G. A. Henty
... second day of September, the main German armies in Belgium, that had held the line at the Lys, retired to their second line of defence at the Dendre, but almost before they could deploy the British were upon ...
— The Sequel - What the Great War will mean to Australia • George A. Taylor
... to dismiss so vague and childish a fancy from his breast, and rather to think of what line of defence it would be best for him to pursue. This subject being at length exhausted, Paul recurred to Mrs. Lobkins, and inquired whether Dummie had lately honoured that lady with ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... along, some filled with provisions, others with the furniture and effects of the houses now being pulled down outside the enciente, or from the villas and residences at Sevres Meudon and other suburbs and villages outside the line of defence. ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... encamp. He set to work with all speed to repair the walls of the City, which had been first erected by Aurelian and afterwards repaired by Honorius at dates respectively 260 and 130 years before the entry of Belisarius. Time and barbarian sieges had wrought much havoc on the line of defence, the work of repair had to be done in haste, and to this day some archaeologists think that it is possible to recognise the parts repaired by Belisarius through the rough style of the work and the heterogeneous nature of the materials employed in ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... sustained with firmness. They continued to labour until they had thrown up a small breast work stretching from the east side of the redoubt to the bottom of the hill, so as to extend considerably their line of defence. ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 1 (of 5) • John Marshall
... completely riddled by shots and shells; the bursting of these latter had disabled great numbers of the garrison. By seven o'clock the besieged had begun to retire from the most damaged part of their works; by half-past eight the whole outer line of defence was abandoned, and by nine the fire of the fort was extinct. The Turkish general, finding opposition hopeless, had sent to the Dey for commands; and in reply was ordered to retreat with his whole remaining force to the Cassaubah, and ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms
... through galleries, from which an occasional window showed a deep chasm of many hundred feet beneath, and continuing until we entered a tower which terminated the passage upon a perpendicular peak that enfiladed the outer line of defence, and at the same time from its great height commanded the main approach, we descended a rude flight of steps, and presently entered a grand hall supported upon numerous arches which appeared to connect two peaks of the mountain. Descending from this solid work, we entered upon a plot of grass which ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... that term, if you can. If therefore there be any truth in the assertion that "good work rarely sells," it would appear that I must, on behalf of certain of my brother dramatists, either bow my head in frank humiliation, or strike out some ingenious line of defence. ["Hear! Hear!"] ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... hills facing north, and it was here that the French lines ran when the great attack began in the third week of February. On this side the Germans have advanced rather less than two miles; they have not reached the Charny Ridge, which is the true and last line of defence of the Verdun position, and they have not captured the two hills to the north, which are the advanced position, ...
— They Shall Not Pass • Frank H. Simonds
... bastioned wall or rampart line of defence, which sometimes surrounds the body of a place; when only flanked by turrets it is ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... Siahji, the grandson or nephew of Jai Chand, the last king of Kanauj, who had been drowned in the Ganges while attempting to escape, accomplished with about 200 followers—the wreck of his vassalage—the pilgrimage to Dwarka in Gujarat. He then sought in the sands and deserts of Rajputana a second line of defence against the advancing wave of Muhammadan invasion, and planted the standard of the Rathors among the sandhills of the Luni in 1212. This, however, was not the first settlement of the Rathors in Rajputana, for an inscription, dated A.D. 997, among the ruins of the ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... of Sablons, and disposed them, with the five thousand men of the conventional army, on all the points from which the convention could be assailed. At noon on the 13th Vendemiaire, the enclosure of the convention had the appearance of a fortified place, which could only be taken by assault. The line of defence extended, on the left side of the Tuileries along the river, from the Pont Neuf to the Pont Louis XV.; on the right, in all the small streets opening on the Rue Saint Honore, from the Rues de Rohan, de l'Echelle and the Cul-de-sac Dauphin, to the Place de la Revolution. ...
— History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814 • F. A. M. Mignet
... It was about this time that our rations began to be diminished, and we had completely run out of all extras. The post of the examining guard was on the road just inside the ridge which formed our general line of defence, but by night we moved out as a piquet about half a mile on to the veld into a spruit which ran under the Harrismith line, whence we patrolled out to Brooke's Farm, and the surrounding country. I think this was the worst post we had ...
— The Second Battalion Royal Dublin Fusiliers in the South African War - With a Description of the Operations in the Aden Hinterland • Cecil Francis Romer and Arthur Edward Mainwaring
... and resolute was the attack that, for a time, it carried all before it. Daun's line of defence was broken, most of his cannon silenced, and for a time the Prussians advanced, carrying all before them. Had Ziethen been doing his part, instead of idly cannonading Lacy, the battle would have been won; but his inactivity ...
— With Frederick the Great - A Story of the Seven Years' War • G. A. Henty
... centre forward, Hogson and Bernard on his right and left, and other big fellows to complete the line of hostile forwards, the home team seemed to stand no chance against their opponents. The visitors bowled them over like ninepins, and rushed through their first line of defence as though it never existed. But Mr. Blake stood firm, and kept his ground like the English squares at Waterloo. Attack after attack swept down upon him only to break up like waves on a rock, and the ball came flying back with a shout of "Now, then! Get away, Birches!" Twice the Horace House ...
— The Triple Alliance • Harold Avery
... the reader) becomes armed into courage to wander for days in their sylvan recesses. The mountains of the Vosges, on the eastern frontier of France, have never attracted much notice from Europe, except in 1813-14 for a few brief months, when they fell within Napoleon's line of defence against the Allies. But they are interesting for this among other features, that they do not, like some loftier ranges, repel woods; the forests and the hills are on sociable terms. "Live and let live" is their motto. For this reason, in part, these tracts in Lorraine were a favourite hunting-ground ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... regiment of Uncle Sam's bluecoats, cheering and singing as new troops only do. There were no signs of the devastations of war until we approached the Monocacy river. During their campaign in Maryland, the rebels at one time made this river their line of defence: it was supposed that they would make here a stand against McClellan's advance from Washington. They had burnt the woodwork of the bridge, twisted the long iron rods of the structure to one side, destroyed all the railroad building, engines, and ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... designs. The trenches themselves were constructional works of art; switch lines were thrown out as an extra precaution; in front of the most important strategical positions, machine-gun posts and strong points abounded in unlimited quantities. It was the Hun's last and most powerful line of defence this side of the Franco-German frontier. This "Hindenburg" line stretched from a point between Lens and Arras where it joined the northern trench system, which had been occupied for the past two years, down to St. Quentin, ...
— How I Filmed the War - A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man Who - Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc. • Lieut. Geoffrey H. Malins
... well known that their tastes were anything but Franciscan, that their palates were fastidious, their nerves delicate, and their affections lavished on parrots and little dogs. If anything was to be achieved, a line of defence must at once ...
— The Saint • Antonio Fogazzaro
... prejudiced the cause of Mr. Oxford, especially when the bloodhounds failed and Priam persisted in his invisibility. If a man was an honest man, why should he flee the public gaze, and in the night? There was but a step from the posing of this question to the inevitable inference that Mr. Oxford's line of defence was really too fantastic for credence. Certainly organs of vast circulation, while repeating that, as the action was sub judice, they could say nothing about it, had already tried the action several times in their ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett
... some little shot. I proposed, as they had closed the casements, and as the shutters were on the outside, to fire a volley. It was thought a good trick, and accordingly I went into my bedroom and fired." Mr. Leeds very superfluously complained to the President. Landor adopted the worst possible line of defence, and so the University ...
— Oxford • Andrew Lang
... slightly shorter than our own, our right overlapping, but they have a stronger reserve force protecting the centre. Now notice the situation here," and he traced it with his pencil. "Your regiment is practically to the rear of their main line of defence, but the nature of the ground renders them safe. There is a, deep ravine here, trending to the southeast, and easily defended. Now note, ten miles, almost directly south of Three Corners, on the open pike, the first ...
— Love Under Fire • Randall Parrish
... enemy's present line of defence," said he. "It is the wall of the great Convent of the Madonna. If we can carry it the city must fall, but they have run countermines all round it, and the walls are so enormously thick that it would be an immense labour to breach it with artillery. ...
— The Adventures of Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle
... charge to the Grand-Jury, June 7th, 1854, I made ready for trial, and in three or four days my line of defence was marked out—the fortifications sketched, the place of the batteries determined; I began to collect arms, and was soon ready for his attack. When that Grand-Jury, summoned with no special reference to me, refused ...
— The Trial of Theodore Parker • Theodore Parker
... two days the Danes were occupied in the manufacture of war-engines for battering down the walls. Edmund and Egbert utilized the time in instructing the soldiers who did not form part of the regular band, in the formation of the quadruple line of defence which the Danes had found it so impossible to break through, so that if more than one breach was effected, a resistance similar to that made at the gate could be offered at all points. The skins of the oxen killed for the use of the garrison ...
— The Dragon and the Raven - or, The Days of King Alfred • G. A. Henty
... being made, mostly by the right wing of the army, the left wing was engaged in constructing a strong line of defence, stretching from the White-Oak Swamp to the Chickahominy, consisting of six redoubts connected by rifle-pits or barricades. General Barnard says,—"The object of these lines (over three miles long) was to hold our position of the left wing against the concentrated force of the enemy, until ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... his cause. Taking the direction of affairs wholly upon himself and asking no advice from his Greek captains, he failed to show any of the qualities of a great commander, and was speedily involved in difficulties with which he was quite incapable of dealing. Having had his first line of defence partially forced by a bold movement on the part of the Argives under Nicostratus, instead of trying to redeem the misfortune by a counter-movement, or a concentration of troops, he hastily abandoned to his generals the task of continuing the resistance ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson
... that was still alarming. It was that knowledge which urged on those ever active military preparations, for placing that district of France that had been ravaged by the Hun in the Great War in a state of complete fortification as a second line of defence should ...
— The Doctor of Pimlico - Being the Disclosure of a Great Crime • William Le Queux
... Lenoir shall be summoned to give evidence," repeated young Jack, who had been told by Delamarre what line of defence to adopt. ...
— Jack Harkaway's Boy Tinker Among The Turks - Book Number Fifteen in the Jack Harkaway Series • Bracebridge Hemyng
... North would give them the valley of the Hudson. The failure of Burgoyne's expedition in 1777 prevented the success of this manoeuvre. The war was then transferred to the Southern colonies, with the intention to roll up the line of defence, as the French line had been rolled up in 1758; but whenever the British attempted to penetrate far into the country from the sea-coast, they were eventually worsted ...
— Formation of the Union • Albert Bushnell Hart
... finds no advocates, because it conflicts strongly with men's feelings of humanity and perceptions of social expediency; but the principle of justice which it invokes is as true and as binding as those which can be appealed to against it. Accordingly, it exerts a tacit influence on the line of defence employed for other modes of assessing taxation. People feel obliged to argue that the State does more for the rich than for the poor, as a justification for its taking more from them: though this is in reality not true, for ...
— Utilitarianism • John Stuart Mill
... magistrate goes to confirm this statement. It is extraordinary to what meanness, subterfuge, and even perjury, a man will sometimes resort, in order to avoid paying so little as 1s. 6d. a week towards the keep of his own child. Often the line of defence is a cruel attempt to blacken the character of the mother, even when the accuser well knows that there is not the slightest ground for the charge, and that he alone is responsible for the woman's fall.[5] Also, if the case is proved, and the order made, many such men will ...
— Regeneration • H. Rider Haggard
... guns were captured, and as soon as the square had been formed up again in order these were turned against the position the Arabs had now taken up in rear of their first line of defence. In the centre of the position they now occupied was a brick building, where an engine for pumping up water for irrigation purposes had formerly stood. The Arabs had loopholed the walls and surrounded the building with rifle-pits. Here they ...
— The Dash for Khartoum - A Tale of Nile Expedition • George Alfred Henty
... is ready for her. She has accepted the challenge; and though her army is not great, she is yet not unprepared. Between the enemy and Britain's shores there lies that mighty, invisible and invincible line of defence, the British navy. With the French armies on the one side and the Russian on the other, Germany can not last. In these days, with the terrible engines of destruction that science has produced, wars will be short and sharp. Germany will get her medicine and I hope ...
— The Major • Ralph Connor
... to these native lords of the continent. In 1637, when Capt. John Mason marched against Sassacus, at the head of ninety men, he had with him half the fighting force of the Connecticut Colony. In 1653 a wall was built across Manhattan Island to keep out the savages; though, when we say that the line of defence just covered the present course of Wall Street (which derives its name from that circumstance), our readers may not fail to wonder whether the savages were not the rather kept in by it. In 1675, when the ...
— The Indian Question (1874) • Francis A. Walker
... arrangement would require the establishment of a few depots of arms and supplies, from which communications should be opened to the posts. The accompanying skeleton map presents a view of the relative positions of the posts and depots, and of the communications from them to the line of defence for the speedy transportation of succours and supplies. A regular force of five thousand men would be sufficient to garrison these posts, and, with a competent reserve at Jefferson barracks, and an effective force at Baton Rouge, ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... Thurtell and Hunt were sentenced to be hanged, but Hunt escaped with transportation. Thurtell made his own speech for the defence, which had a great effect upon the jury, until the judge swept most of its sophistries away. It was, however, a very able performance. Thurtell's line of defence was to declare that Hunt and Probert were the murderers, and that he was a victim of their perjuries. If hanged, he would be hanged on circumstantial evidence only, and he gave, with great elaboration, the details of a number of cases ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... these parts, descending from a side glacier high up at the back of the hills on our right, cut clean across the valley, like a great gash. The sides of the nullah were extraordinarily precipitous, and on the edge furthest from us stone sangars were already built as a second line of defence. Shere Ali occupied the village in front of the nullah, and we encamped six miles down the valley, meaning to attack in the morning. But the Chiltis abandoned their traditional method of fighting behind walls and standing on the defence. A ...
— The Broken Road • A. E. W. Mason
... laboratory manges to exist among us, becauseof the secrecy in which it was surrounded, and the general confidence which it claimed as its due. Reform canot make headway so long as the dungeon is dark and the laboratory is locked. The strongest line of defence is the maintenance of ignorance, even though we have the curious anomaly, existing nowhere else, of Science covering herself with darkness and hiding behind ignorance. It was one of the ablest advocates for vivisection that America has produced, ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell
... his knife and rushed at Edgar. The latter also snatched his knife from his girdle, shifted it into his left hand, and threw himself into the usual boxing attitude with his left foot forward. The Maltese paused in his rush. This line of defence was altogether new to him. He had been engaged in many a fierce fray, but his opponents had always, like himself, fought with their ...
— At Aboukir and Acre - A Story of Napoleon's Invasion of Egypt • George Alfred Henty
... told him that this line of defence was distasteful to her, that he had no right to make a personal matter of an abstract question of justice. It was through those personalities that he had ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... of three weeks France was still in the throes of mobilization: the original scheme of defence along the Franco-German frontier had been upset by the German attack through Belgium; and second thoughts had fared little better at Namur. The shortest line of defence after the Germans had broken through at Lige was one running from Antwerp to Namur, and the shortest line is imperative for the weaker combatant. But the Germans were well across it when they entered Brussels, and ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard
... about seven miles. It is actually about eight miles if measured from the extreme south point of the first line of defence northwards to the river. Razzak evidently did not include the walls of Anegundi, the northern lines of which lie two miles farther still to ...
— A Forgotten Empire: Vijayanagar; A Contribution to the History of India • Robert Sewell
... have, in some measure, though in very different measure, of reconstructing themselves when injured. It has been dealt with in a masterly manner by Driesch; and we may at once say that we do not think that Loeb has in any way contraverted his argument, nor even entered the first line of defence of that which is built up around what he calls by the somewhat ...
— Science and Morals and Other Essays • Bertram Coghill Alan Windle
... diplomacy was taking effect in a distant quarter, and raising up against Russia an old and formidable enemy. Turkey declared war against her. This was a powerful diversion, and obliged Russia to strip her western frontiers to secure a line of defence ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... armed guard, enough to deal with the handful of men who could be detached for such a dare-devil enterprise. But in the fleet of Knossos was her fate; and if once the fleet failed, she had no second line of defence on which to rely against any serious attack. There is every evidence that the fleet did fail at last. The manifest marks of a vast conflagration, perhaps repeated more than once during the long history of the palace, ...
— The Sea-Kings of Crete • James Baikie
... long and stormy, but was peculiarly memorable for the skill with which Mr. Daubeny's higher colleagues defended the steps they were about to take. The thing was to be done in the cause of religion. The whole line of defence was indicated by the gentlemen who moved and seconded the Address. An active, well-supported Church was the chief need of a prosperous and intelligent people. As to the endowments, there was some confusion of ideas; but nothing was to be done with them inappropriate to religion. Education ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... rear-guard resisting Howard's advance at Tilton, and his left under Polk holding some high hills west of Camp Creek in front of Resaca which commanded the railroad bridge over the Oostanaula. With the latter exception his chosen line of defence was on the broken ridge between the Connasauga River and Camp Creek, which were nearly parallel to each other for ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... bearing the most valuable of the household chattels, and these were so stacked in the centre of the enclosure that they would be safe so long as the palisade kept the enemy at bay, and would afterwards act as a line of defence. ...
— Mass' George - A Boy's Adventures in the Old Savannah • George Manville Fenn
... of course, I stood up for you. That's your only line of defence, you know. She sees for herself that you needed money like every one else, and that from that point of view maybe you were right. I proved to her as clear as twice two makes four that it was a mutual bargain. She was a capitalist and you were a sentimental buffoon in her ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... region. But the position which they occupied on the most exposed side of Egypt was regarded as permanently endangering the security of the country: her liberty would be imperilled should they revolt during a war with the neighbouring empire, and hand over the line of defence which was garrisoned by them to the invader. Amasis therefore dispossessed their inhabitants, and transferred them to Memphis and its environs. The change benefited him in two ways, for, while securing himself from possible treason, he gained a faithful guard for himself ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 9 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... line of defence, to use discreetly and at your discretion. If the other side are bent on fighting, I should reserve the defence. If they seem open to reason, I should point out that ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... given up as untenable by the other of the two great champions above referred to, and an attempt was made by him to form the diminishing number of thinking men supporting the old theological view on a new line of defence. ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... their way back into the bazaar, but the entrance was guarded by the troops and held against all assaults till about 10.45. The left flank of the company was then turned, and the pressure became so severe that they were withdrawn to a more interior line of defence, and took up a position along the edge of the "Sappers' and Miners' enclosure." Another company held the approaches from the north camp. The remainder of the regiment and No.5 company Sappers and Miners, were kept in readiness to reinforce any part ...
— The Story of the Malakand Field Force • Sir Winston S. Churchill
... quadrangle with a large round tower at each corner: in the centre of the east and west side are massive gate-houses defended by portcullises; from the projecting corner towers all the intervening wall was commanded. The gateways communicate with the second line of defence or middle ward. This completely encircles the inner ward, on a much lower level; it is a narrow space bounded by a wall, with low, semi-circular bastions at the corners; it is commanded at every point from the inner ward; the ...
— Mediaeval Wales - Chiefly in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries: Six Popular Lectures • A. G. Little
... had underrated the cunning of these English, for it appears that there was not one line of defence, but three, and it was the third, which was the most formidable, through which I was at that instant passing. As I rode, elated at my own success, a lantern flashed suddenly before me, and I saw the glint of polished gun-barrels and the ...
— The Great Shadow and Other Napoleonic Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... our first line of defence, fighting all the time. The Grays occupy La Tir, which will be out of the reach of our guns. Your house will no longer be in danger, and we happen to know that Westerling means to make ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... of the second line of defence has been gained is suddenly made known by a contrasting wind from a new quarter, coming over with the curve of a cascade. These novel gusts raise a sound from the whole camp or castle, playing upon it bodily as upon a harp. It ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... of September, the Allied armies had crossed the Aisne, but were held up by the enemy line of defence which, ran along the heights from east of Compiegne to north of Rheims. There was dogged fighting, with attacks and counter-attacks, but little or no progress was made. The Germans had regained the initiative, ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... This line of defence may, as against Home Rulers, be disposed of at once by an argumentum ad hominem. No politicians have made freer use of prediction. Every Gladstonian speech is in effect a statement that is a prophecy of the benefits which Home Rule will confer on the United Kingdom. Gladstonian ...
— A Leap in the Dark - A Criticism of the Principles of Home Rule as Illustrated by the - Bill of 1893 • A.V. Dicey
... advancing upon Washington, awaited an attack from the Union army, making Bull Run his line of defence, throwing up breastworks, cutting down trees, and sheltering his men beneath the thick growth of the ...
— My Days and Nights on the Battle-Field • Charles Carleton Coffin
... holds her head very straight, pushed well back on her shoulders so that a good deal of her neck is visible below her chin. I felt at once that she was the sort of woman who could do what she liked at me. I attempted my only possible line of defence. ...
— Lalage's Lovers - 1911 • George A. Birmingham
... east of my position; it is a little village elbowed in a pass in the Biggarsbergen. By taking this point one could hold the key to our entire extended line of defence, as was subsequently only too clearly shown. I pointed this out to some of our generals, but a commandant's opinion did not weigh much just then; nor was any notice taken of a similar warning from Commandant Christian Botha, who held a position ...
— My Reminiscences of the Anglo-Boer War • Ben Viljoen
... this outer line of forts a second line of defence was formed by the Ruppel and the Nethe, which, together with the Scheldt, make a great natural waterway around three sides of the city. Back of these rivers, again, was a second chain of forts completely encircling the city on a five-mile radius. The moment that the first German soldier ...
— Fighting in Flanders • E. Alexander Powell
... have borne for you to do anything—-queer'- —and there was a look in Gillian's face that went to Jane's heart, and under other circumstances would have produced a kiss, but she rallied to her line of defence. ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... that the armies of Brest, Cherbourg, and the west were all upon him. All through the night the battle went on, without interruption. The Republican columns could gain no ground, and were frequently obliged to give way; but behind the Vendean line of defence, panic was gaining ground among the fugitives. Three or four thousand escaped by the road to Laval, but the retreat of the rest was ...
— No Surrender! - A Tale of the Rising in La Vendee • G. A. Henty
... Gardens a line of Mendoza's men fought from behind the first barricade, while others dragged tables and bedding and chairs across the green terraces and tumbled them down to those below, who seized them and formed them into a second line of defence. ...
— Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... fully the arguments of the manuscript in his hand, and instead of a first-hand knowledge of Minturno and Scaliger had only the commonplaces of Plutarch. In spite even of Plutarch, allegory, not moral example, is his main line of defence. His fundamental basis is the stock Horatian "omne tulit punctum qui miscuit utile dulci," or as Harington paraphrases, "for in verse is both goodness and sweetness, Rubarb and Sugarcandie, the pleasant and ...
— Rhetoric and Poetry in the Renaissance - A Study of Rhetorical Terms in English Renaissance Literary Criticism • Donald Lemen Clark
... was in favour of the lawyer. "I do not quite see the full significance of the line of defence, but I think I must allow the question," was the judge's gentle and reluctant reply, for he was greatly impressed by this witness, by his transparent honesty ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... have found. There was a man called Cary who had gone home from Kingston. He had a bald head and blue eyes; he must remember me. If he would corroborate! And the lawyer, when he came, might take another line of defence. It began to fall dusk slowly, through the small ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... blackened, calcined posts told him that he had emerged from the kraal, and that he was on the line formerly occupied by the stockade. For another fifty or sixty yards he held on, until the smoke cleared considerably; then changing direction, he began to circumvent the abandoned line of defence until he came ...
— Wilmshurst of the Frontier Force • Percy F. Westerman
... Mr. Hollywell. 'I give away twenty or thirty of those packets every week. Now look inside. What have you? Oh, H.M.S. Majestic. That's one of a series of photos of "Britain's first line of defence." Lots of people go on buying those cigarettes just to get a complete collection of the photos. We supply an album to keep them in for one and sixpence. There's another of our makes which has pictures of actresses and pretty women. They are extraordinarily ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham
... to watch the copyists and reckon the Baedekers. That perhaps was the moral of a menaced state of health—that one would sit in public places and count the Americans. It passed the time in a manner; but it seemed already the second line of defence, and this notwithstanding the pattern, so unmistakable, of her country-folk. They were cut out as by scissors, coloured, labelled, mounted; but their relation to her failed to act—they somehow did nothing for her. Partly, no doubt, they didn't so much ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume 1 of 2 • Henry James
... stung by this witness's defeat of her, she had an impulse to turn about, point her finger at Blake in the audience, and cry out the truth to the court-room and announce what was her real line of defence. But she realized the uproar that would follow if she dared attack Blake without ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott
... go to meet the enemy by sea as far from Greece as possible. As this met with great opposition, he, together with the Lacedaemonians, led a large force as far as the Vale of Tempe, which they intended to make their first line of defence, as Thessaly had not at that time declared for the Persians. When, however, the armies were forced to retire from thence, and all Greece, up to Boeotia, declared for the Persians, the Athenians became more willing to listen to Themistokles about ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... generally supposed to have been thrown up by the Romans. There are still the remains of towers here and there, which give to it, when first beheld, its civic character; and it was, I believe, made use of, so recently as 1683, as a line of defence against the Turks. Moreover Deutsch Altenburg has its objects of interest also;—a tumulus, or mound, sixty feet in altitude, but of a date to which tradition goes not back; while the church of St. John, which crowns an eminence near, is accounted one of the ...
— Germany, Bohemia, and Hungary, Visited in 1837. Vol. II • G. R. Gleig |
