"Cannonade" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in. For the first time we could now appreciate the full force of the gale. Good Heavens, how it blew! The waters seemed alive and in direst convulsion. Everywhere huge walls of breakers were constantly upheaved to be felled and shattered with a roar as of some terrific cannonade; while the air became the arena for a helter-skelter tossing of sheets of spray, clots of froth, and spirts of brine, which plentifully assailed our poor boat in their madness, and, besides partially filling her with slush, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... disembarked, forty cannons were landed, Sin[a]n himself directed every movement, and arranged his batteries and earthworks. A heavy cannonade produced no effect on the walls, and the Turkish admiral thought of the recent repulse at Malta, and of the stern face of his master; and his head sat uneasily upon his neck. The siege appeared to make no progress. Perhaps this venture, too, would have failed, but for the treachery ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole
... was made, and an assault directed to three different points. The attacking columns were covered by a furious cannonade, and yet, wonderful to relate, none of the defenders were struck. However, the lower entrenchments had to be abandoned, and M. de Parat, the French prisoner, put to death, he acknowledging the necessity of the sentence. Indeed, a crisis ...
— The Vaudois of Piedmont - A Visit to their Valleys • John Napper Worsfold
... immense slaughter; but this battle made the capture of Sebastopol, as planned by the allies, impossible. The forces of the Russians were double in number to those of the allies, and held possession of a fortress against which a tremendous cannonade had been in vain. The prompt sagacity and tremendous energy of Todleben repaired every breach as fast as it was made; and by his concentration of great numbers of laborers at the needed points, huge earthworks arose like magic before the astonished ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume X • John Lord
... place four cannons of 8 L. to cannonade any ships that might attack it. The chief difficulty of the situation was the scarcity of water. The fort was quite indispensable for if the French were to abandon the lower part of the St. John river the English would immediately take possession. The savages ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond
... This tremendous cannonade and bombardment continued till nearly noon, when it ceased; and about four o'clock the ships hauled off to ...
— The Defence of Stonington (Connecticut) Against a British Squadron, August 9th to 12th, 1814 • J. Hammond Trumbull
... the other day at Yorktown [cheers] was a stroke of the hammer on the horologe of time, which marks the coming of a new era, when national animosities shall be forgotten, and only national sympathies and good-will shall remain. It might seem, perhaps, to have in it a tone of the old "diapason of the cannonade"; but on the thoughtful ear, falls from the thundering voice of those guns, a note of that supreme music which fell on the ear of Longfellow, when "like a bell with solemn sweet vibration" he heard "once more the voice of ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... the cannonade began again, as well from the batteries planted against Chapultepec as from Steptoe's guns, which were served against the southern defences of the city in order to divert the attention of the enemy. At 8 A.M. the firing from the former ceased, and the attack commenced. Quitman ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... all right," his brother wrote home, "and has escaped amidst a terrific shower of grape and shells of every description. . . . He is now fast asleep in his tent, having been in the trenches from two o'clock yesterday morning during the cannonade until seven last night, and again from 12-30 this morning ...
— The Story of General Gordon • Jeanie Lang
... When the firing at Bedford was heard at Flat Bush, the Hessians advanced, and, attacking the center of the American army, drove them through the woods, capturing three cannon. Previously, General Grant, with the left of the army, commenced the attack with a cannonade against the Americans under lord Stirling. The object of lord Stirling was to defend the pass and keep General Grant in check. He was in the British parliament when Grant made his speech against the Americans, and addressing his soldiers said, in allusion to the ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... firing commenced on both sides, which was severely felt by the enemy. The main topsail-yard of one of the brigs was cut through, and the frigate lost her after-sails. The batteries on I'lsle d'Aix opened on the Pallas, and a cannonade continued, interrupted on our part only by the necessity we were under to make various tacks to avoid the shoals, till one o'clock, when our endeavour to gain the wind of the enemy and get between him and the batteries proved successful. An effectual ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, G.C.B., Admiral of the Red, Rear-Admiral of the Fleet, Etc., Etc. • Thomas Cochrane, Earl of Dundonald
... befell—drop o' silent in the din. Let us enter that silence ere the belchings re-begin. Through a ragged rift aslant in the cannonade's smoke An iron-clad reveals her repellent broadside Bodily intact. But a frigate, all oak, Shows honeycombed by shot, and her deck crimson-dyed. And a trumpet from port of the iron-clad hails, Summoning the other, whose flag never trails: ...
— John Marr and Other Poems • Herman Melville
... higher. All that first mirage of beauty had disappeared, and there was nothing but the monstrous shapes of bursting shells, giants of smoke that appeared one after another along the Turkish lines. All through the morning the cannonade went on. ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... attacking columns will be of great strength, and the attack will be preceded by a tremendous cannonade." ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... Dumfries where there was a Confederate fort, to which we marched to act as a support in case the Yankees came ashore. Three vessels of the Federal navy passed slowly down the river, between which and the fort there was a brief but lively cannonade; but so far as I know there was no resulting damage to ...
— Reminiscences of a Rebel • Wayland Fuller Dunaway
... showed how, in a war, there would be a cordon ('a cordong, by—-') of steamers along our coast, and 'by —-,' ready at a minute to land anywhere on the other shore, to give the French as good a thrashing as they got in the last war, 'by —-'. In fact, a rumbling cannonade of oaths was fired by the two veterans during the whole of ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... torrent on the clapboard roof was deafening, the little window panes were streaming; a dark, glistening shadow crept out from the bottom of the door and began to spread; the howling wind shook the very walls of the staunch cabin, while all about them roared the ear-splitting cannonade, the crash of splintered skies, the crackling of musketry, the rending and tearing of all the ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... "The Russian cannonade ceased after a few minutes," the Emperor resumed. "You did not remain on the surface after the first shot; you did not launch your torpedo, neither did you permit the other submarine to do so. ...
— The International Spy - Being the Secret History of the Russo-Japanese War • Allen Upward
... his clerk, and, in his pontificals, read several prayers in the established form, and then read the collect for the seventh day of September, which was the thirty-fifth psalm. You must remember, this was the next morning after we had heard the rumor of the horrible cannonade of Boston. It seemed as if Heaven had ordained that psalm to ...
— The Old Bell Of Independence; Or, Philadelphia In 1776 • Henry C. Watson
... round the horizon with momentarily increasing splendour, and at such brief intervals that the illumination might almost be said to be continuous; while the deep, hollow rumble of the thunder might very well have been mistaken for the booming of a distant cannonade. The effect of the incessant flicker of the lightning was very weird; the tremulous greenish-blue glare illuminating the ponderous masses and contorted shapes of the black clouds overhead, the surface of the ink-black sea around us, the distant ...
— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood
... disheartened pause when Morton and Burley departed. The commanders availed themselves of it to display their lines in some sort of order, and exhorted those who were most exposed to throw themselves upon their faces to avoid the cannonade which they might presently expect. The insurgents ceased to resist or to remonstrate; but the awe which had silenced their discords had dismayed their courage. They suffered themselves to be formed into ranks with the docility of a flock of sheep, but without ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... In the early light of next morning, while the mist-wraiths still clung to the hills and filled the dongas, Mac was disturbed in his breakfast preparations by the sound of a heavier cannonade than usual to the south. Going to an observation post he saw a battleship aground off Gaba Tepe Point. The morning mists had just revealed her, and now she was emptying her broadsides in rapid succession up the great valley below Kilid Bahr. Another ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie
... to sail slowly, owing to the weight of her cargo. So unaware of danger was {158} the captain that he thought Drake some messenger sent by the viceroy, and instead of getting arms in readiness and pressing sail, he lowered canvas, came to anchor, and waited![8] Drake's announcement was a roaring cannonade that blew the mast poles off the Spanish ship, crippling her like a bird with wings broken. For the rest, the scene was what has been enacted wherever pirates have played their game—a furious fusillade from the cannon mouths belching from decks and port-holes, the ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... (David was near enough to hold an easy conversation with Goliath before bringing him down), can hardly be brought within the designation. The twang of either heavy or light was but a thin contribution to the orchestra of battle compared to "the diapason of the cannonade." How much we have lost in the absence of this element of tremendous noise from the conflicts of ancient days! What a tool it would have been in Homer's hands! How trivial, to the author of the book of Job, would have seemed the noise of the captains ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... dressing-table, almost removing my chin with the razor at the same time. I suspected my nephew of a practical joke, and called out angrily to him. In an aggrieved voice he protested that he had not touched me, but had himself been hurled by an unseen agency against the wardrobe. Then came a perfect cannonade of nuts from an overhanging tree on to the wooden roof of our modest temporary abode, and still we did not understand. I had at that time an English valet, the most stolid man I have ever come across. He entered the hut with ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... to commence on all parts of the line at ten o'clock A.M. on the 22d with a furious cannonade from every battery in position. All the corps commanders set their time by mine so that all might open the engagement at the same minute. The attack was gallant, and portions of each of the three corps succeeded ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... continued Grandfather, "in March, 1776, General Washington, who had now a good supply of powder, began a terrible cannonade and bombardment from Dorchester heights. One of the cannon balls which he fired into the town, struck the tower of the Brattle Street church, where it may still be seen. Sir William Howe made preparations ...
— True Stories from History and Biography • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... But I never felt as if I could have bottled up what you knew, supposing you really knew it. Well, the long and the short of it is that I've got a conscience; and now, at last, I've also got a chance. I've been put in charge of a big independent paper, with a free hand, and we're going to open a cannonade on corruption." ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton
... the backs were not of much account. Pate M'Wherry and Luke M'Tavish did the work at half-back, but their kicking was somewhat feeble when compared with those of the Conquerors, Tom James and Willie Keith. The Conquerors were far too anxious to score, and for some time kept up a close cannonade at their opponents' goal without effect. Bob Prentice used his hands cleverly, and, though the goal was again and again endangered, not one of the forwards on my master's side could get the ball under the tape. A ...
— Scottish Football Reminiscences and Sketches • David Drummond Bone
... the organ with an execution quite worthy of the carnage of that event. The only drawback to it was that Sandy Neil, who had been detailed to announce each different part of the action, and apprise the audience of the fact that certain sounds meant "cannonade," while others symbolised the "cries of the wounded," as usual allowed his spirit of mischief to carry him away. He sang out the names of the different movements in the long-drawn-out tone associated with "calling-off" at a dance, much to the horror of the staider portion of the ...
— Duncan Polite - The Watchman of Glenoro • Marian Keith
... When for a flash, so clean-cut was the view, I'd think I saw her—knowing 'twas not true. Through my small clearing dashed wide sheets of spray, As if the ocean waves had lost their way; Scarcely a pause the thunder-battle made, In the bold clamor of its cannonade. And she, while I was sheltered, dry, and warm, Was somewhere in the clutches of this storm! She who, when storm-frights found her at her best, Had always hid her white face on ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For • Various
... Captain Winslow could not help feeling that his ship was completely in the power of the stranger. She evidently sailed two feet to his one; could shoot ahead and rake him, or could stand off and cannonade him with her long guns, without his being able to return a shot. A sturdy Briton as he was, he almost wished, for the sake of all on board, especially of the females, that it had been determined to ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... English fleet to the maritime towns of France; he likewise desired to know in what part the electress of Bavaria resided, that he might not fire into that quarter. After this declaration, which was no more than an unmeaning compliment, he began to bombard and cannonade the place with red-hot bullets, which produced conflagrations in many different parts of the city, and frightened the electress into a miscarriage. On the fifteenth, the French discontinued their firing, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... Vision of Columbus (1787), afterwards expanded into the ponderous Columbiad, to surpass Homer and all preceding epics. Barlow's classical couplets thus present a general in the Revolution, ordering a cannonade:— ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... close packing for the men to rest themselves, but the crowding was more than counter balanced by the warmth, and it was not long before all were asleep. At one o'clock in the morning, they were awakened by a tremendous cannonade. All the forts round Paris had suddenly opened fire upon the German positions. Believing that the enemy must have obtained a knowledge of the approaching sortie and were anticipating it by assaulting the forts, ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... torchlights, and the battlements were aflame with rockets; and cornet, and hautboy, and trumpet poured their music on the air; and goddesses glided out from the groves to meet her; and from turret to foundation Kenilworth trembled under a cannonade, and for seventeen days, at a cost of five thousand dollars a day, the festival was kept. Four hundred servants standing in costly livery; sham battles between knights on horseback; jugglers tumbling on the ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... of August, a cannonade was kept up against the walls by the French artillery, the Russians replying but seldom. The next morning it was discovered that Prince Bagration had marched with his army from the hills on the other side of the river to take post on the main Moscow ...
— Through Russian Snows - A Story of Napoleon's Retreat from Moscow • G. A Henty
... flanks. This clever movement so scared the Rear-Admiral that he determined to run. A shot was fired from his flagship, which killed one man and wounded another on the Royal George; whereupon the British sailors fired their guns in return, and kept up a furious, but quite harmless, cannonade for forty minutes. Not a single French ship was hit; but under cover of the thick smoke which "the engagement" occasioned, Linois and his squadron sailed away, and left the cheering Britons in the peace which they so certainly required, ...
— Terre Napoleon - A history of French explorations and projects in Australia • Ernest Scott
... July, 1857, and later Santana arrived and took charge of military operations. There were frequent artillery duels, the fourteenth anniversary of Dominican independence, February 27, 1858, being celebrated by a cannonade along the Ozama River lasting all day. Fortunately the most distinctive feature of the combats was the noise, but the Baez family suffered, two of the president's brothers being killed in the war. Baez held ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich
... which sheltered him: the infantry marched round to attack him on the other side, but he had sufficient time to retire; and the army had by this time placed itself upon a height, where he took the command of the second line. A cannonade was kept up on both sides during the whole day, and two attacks of the enemy were repulsed. A battery, placed on their left, obliged them to change their position, and, when they presented their flank, the general attacked them and forced them to retreat, ...
— Memoirs, Correspondence and Manuscripts of General Lafayette • Lafayette
... dark night, but the sky was simply on fire with searchlights and rockets, very fine behind the Forest and reflected in the river. The cannonade was incessant but one could not tell how close it was. At last, at about half-past eight, I could endure my ignorance no longer and I went down the hill towards the bridge. I had not been there more than ten minutes and had just seen a shell ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... have heard the noise of the keel cutting the waves as a bird's wing cuts the air, and he would have cried: 'Ship ahoy!' A ship was indeed quite close to Desclieux's vessel, and the token it gave of its vicinity was a cannonade which awoke up every one in a moment, both crew and passengers. It was a pirate vessel of Tunis, a poor chebeck, but formidable in the night—a time that magnifies every fear—and formidable, too, from the desperate bravery of the banditti ...
— Tales for Young and Old • Various
... embarrassing the victor whom he could not oppose, the Mayor of New Orleans had ordered the State flag of Louisiana to be hoisted upon the City Hall. His secretary, who was charged with this office, waited to fulfill it until the cannonade at English Turn had ceased, and it was evident the fleet had passed the last flimsy barrier and would within an hour appear before the city. The flag was then run up; and the Mayor had the satisfaction of creating a position of very unnecessary embarrassment for all parties by his ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan
... gun of the morning. And now, two miles down the Run, by Mitchell's Ford, rolling, echoing, and reverberating through the forests, are other thunderings. General Richardson has been waiting impatiently to hear the signal gun. He is to make a feint of attacking. His cannonade is to begin furiously. He has six guns, and all of them are in position, throwing solid shot and shells into the wood where Longstreet's men ...
— My Days and Nights on the Battle-Field • Charles Carleton Coffin
... bombardment from hundreds of guns. The allied armies had been strongly reinforced from home, and had also been joined by a Sardinian force, so that the Russians no longer ventured to attack them so frequently. At length the advances of the allies were completed, and the final cannonade took place, and lasted for three days. The storming columns then carried the main forts; and the Russians, finding that further resistance was useless, evacuated the town during the night, and the following day it was taken possession of by the combined armies. With the capture of Sebastopol, ...
— Queen Victoria • Anonymous
... could be called. It would be difficult to imagine a more desolate scene. The artillery of the first years of the seventeenth century was not the terrible enginery of destruction that it has become in the last third of the nineteenth, but a cannonade, continued so steadily and so long, had done its work. There were no churches, no houses, no redoubts, no bastions, no walls, nothing but a vague and confused mass of ruin. Spinola conducted his imperial guests along the edge ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... Donald and Mr. Henchard were inseparables. When walking together Henchard would lay his arm familiarly on his manager's shoulder, as if Farfrae were a younger brother, bearing so heavily that his slight frame bent under the weight. Occasionally she would hear a perfect cannonade of laughter from Henchard, arising from something Donald had said, the latter looking quite innocent and not laughing at all. In Henchard's somewhat lonely life he evidently found the young man as desirable for comradeship ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... of the feluccas cannonade them. When they scampered away at the sound of the terrific explosions, and at sight of the smoke and the iron balls I landed a couple of hundred red warriors and led them to the opposite end of the hill into the tunnel that ran to ...
— Pellucidar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... and suppositions are out of the question here, for we can distinctly see what is going on in the front of Breslau. I beg the other officers to state whether they do not share my opinion—whether it is not a regular cannonade that we hear, and a real fight between hostile troops that ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... looked like green bottle-glass ornamented with snow. It was bitterly cold here, and in Simplon the stoves were lighted; the champagne foamed, Eva's health was drunk, and, only think! at that very moment an avalanche was so gallant as to fall. That was a cannonade; a pealing among the mountains! It must have rung in Eva's ears. Ask her about it. I can see ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen
... hollow. Indeed, already the sharp snap of those soixante-quinze had begun to punctuate the air, and shrapnel-bursts could be seen above the evergreen tree-tops upon the snow-clad slopes, and over hollows where the enemy were massing. But now, as the enemy cannonade died down a little, and that torrent of shells which had been hurtling upon the French trenches ceased a trifle, the din of the German bombardment was rendered almost noiseless, was shut out, as it were, was eclipsed, by the demoniacal rattle of those French 75's casting shell at the advancing ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... sound of the federal hundred-pounders, with answering volleys from the fort, scarcely intermitted night or day. Sleep was for several days after her arrival out of the question. But at length she became used to the cannonade and enjoyed intermittent slumbers, from which she was sometimes awakened by the explosion of a shell which had penetrated the roof of the fort and strewed the earth with dead ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... dotting the newly mown fields. It was not difficult to distinguish Lord Howe, the centre of a group of officers. He was evidently issuing orders to re-form the broken lines. Colonels, majors, and captains were rallying the disheartened men. In the intervals of the cannonade from the fleet a confused hum of voices could be heard, officers shouting their orders. Beyond the prostrate forms, behind the low stone wall and screen of hay were the provincials, biding their time. Officers were ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... capitulate was made by Lincoln, to Sir Henry Clinton, and rejected. The batteries of the besiegers, having now obtained a decided superiority over those of the besieged, when the third parallel had opened its cannonade, and the British having crossed the wet ditch by sap, they opened a fire of rifles within twenty-five yards of the Americans. The caution of Sir Henry Clinton, in advancing so slowly, had been extreme, and the unsuspecting security of the Americans was ...
— A Sketch of the Life of Brig. Gen. Francis Marion • William Dobein James
... mutilated dead beneath the ruins of their dwellings. The booming of the cannon, from the distant batteries, was answered by the thunder of the guns from the citadel and the walls, and blended with all this uproar rose the uninterrupted shrieks of the wounded and the dying. The cannonade from the Prussian batteries was so destructive, that in a few days one quarter of the entire ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott
... risk, despatched several persons to inform the General-in-Chief of the desperate situation of the flotilla. The cannonade which Bonaparte had heard since the morning, and the explosion of a Turkish gunboat, which was blown up by the artillery of the xebec, led him to fear that our situation was really perilous. He therefore made a movement to the ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... putting up a fascine battery within two hundred and fifteen yards of the west gate," he said, "It will open fire in an hour, and then you will see a cannonade! We have two forty-two pounders there, it will be no child's play." Nothing had then hinted at the Titanic scale of modern war engines. Elizabeth's eyes dilated, but she said nothing. The General sat beside her, and asked how things ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 5 • Various
... still their terrors wield, And stain with mingled gore the embattled field. On Pennsylvania's various plains they move, And adverse armies equal slaughter prove; Columbia mourns her Nash in combat slain, Britons around him press the gory plain; Skirmish and cannonade and distant fire Each power diminish and each nation tire. Till Howe from fruitless toil demands repose, And leaves despairing in a land of foes His wearied host; who now, to reach their fleet, O'er Jersey hills commence their long retreat, Tread back the steps their chief had led before, ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... by disregarding them." It was from these steps, in front of which an open space then extended to the Tuileries gardens, that Bonaparte ordered the first cannon to be fired upon the royalists who rose against the National Convention, and thus prevented a counter-revolution. Traces of this cannonade of 13 Vendemiaire are still to be seen at the angle of the church and the Rue ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... the worship of God, and for rest to toil-worn animals—the British army beheld the chevaleresque legions of the enemy, in all its superior numbers, ranged in order of battle on the rising ground. The sun at mid-day flashed its brilliant radiance over their military casques and arms. The cannonade then became general; the Duke of Wellington exposed himself like a subaltern; his personal venture in the strife excited anxiety; it was in vain that the officers of his staff urged him to be less conspicuous, that the fate of the battle hung upon ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 566, September 15, 1832 • Various
... at once a bludgeon and a pandemonium. No one has ever been arrested in Radville, since Pete became sheriff, without the entire community becoming aware of it simultaneously. Pete's voice in moments of excitement carries like a cannonade. Legrand Gunn said that Pete had only to get into an argument in front of the Bigelow House to make the entire disorderly population of the Flats, across the river, break for the hills. (This is ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance
... even the charges of cavalry could not break it. When at last the front ranks opened under the shock of the horses, or the steel of the bayonets, the lines reformed at the end of the plain, always pitilessly barring the road. The cannonade did not slacken for ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt
... then began again; the huge stone shot of the English, which weighed one hundred and sixty-four livres, came tumbling about the heads of the besieged, to which cannonade the French promptly replied by a heavy fire. They had a kind of bomb, of which they were not a little proud, wherefrom they fired iron shot of one hundred and twenty livres in weight. The Master of Gunners of Shakespeare's play, ...
— Joan of Arc • Ronald Sutherland Gower
... they commenced to do so, Leigh called up the men with muskets from each flank, and sent word to the main body to descend the hill again, as the cannonade would cease as soon as the attack began. Three times the assault was made and repulsed, the peasants fighting with a fury that the Blues, already disheartened with their heavy losses, could not withstand. As they fell back for the third time, Leigh thought ...
— No Surrender! - A Tale of the Rising in La Vendee • G. A. Henty
... herald, there was a wild scrambling for wraps and lunch baskets. Then the darkness thickened and the storm's fury burst upon the crowd—a mad lashing of bending tree tops, a blinding whirl of dust filling the air, the thunder's terrific cannonade, the incessant blaze of lightning, the rattling of the distant rain; and above all these, unlike them all, a steady, dreadful roaring, coming ...
— A Master's Degree • Margaret Hill McCarter
... Suddenly, however, a third power took a hand in the fray, and smote both assailants and defenders with equal fury. The black clouds that had been gathering over the battle-field opened and began such a cannonade as neither side could withstand. Wind, hail, lightning, and thunder, accompanied by an ominous darkness in which friend was indistinguishable from foe, played such havoc with the puny combatants and their mimic artillery, that ...
— Manasseh - A Romance of Transylvania • Maurus Jokai
... voice—and the snowball storm hurtles through the sky. Just then the valley-mouth blew sleety in the faces of the foe—their eyes, as if darkened with snuff or salt, blinked bat-like—and with erring aim flew their feckless return to that shower of frosty fire. Incessant is the silent cannonade of the resistless School—silent but when shouts proclaim the fall or flight of some doughty ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... public upstairs. Two women who were there made the sign of the cross each time the lightning flashed—a widespread custom of the French peasantry; but a couple of men who were eating salad and bread paid no heed to the furious cannonade that was kept up by the darkened heavens. It was four o'clock, and they were having their gouter. The peasants of the Quercy do not live on the fat of the land; but they generally have five meals a day, two more than the middle-class French. They begin with soup at ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... friend Arnold, of the Howard Mission, was determined to achieve the prayer-meeting. And during the fourth week in May last, when there were many of his clerical friends in the city, Mr. Arnold thought he'd bring a heavy spiritual cannonade to bear on Allen, and see what would come of it. So, on Monday night, May 25th, after a carefully conducted preliminary season of prayer, an assaulting party was formed, including six clergymen from different parts of the country, to march upon the citadel ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... alone. New actors had appeared on the scene during my engagement with the crew. The sound of the cannonade had been heard, it seems, by a consort of his Britannic Majesty's brig * * * *;[E] and, although the battle was not within her field of vision, she despatched another squadron of boats under the guidance of the reports that boomed through ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... miles up the river to an abandoned gold mine as soon as the river, which had then only opened in places, should be entirely clear of ice. At last one morning I heard a deafening roar like a tremendous cannonade and ran out to find the river had lifted its great bulk of ice and then given way to break it up. I rushed on down to the bank, where I witnessed an awe-inspiring but magnificent scene. The river had brought ...
— Beasts, Men and Gods • Ferdinand Ossendowski
... at 4.50 a.m. and was expected to carry on for an hour or a little over, but after twelve hours of the most terrific cannonade ever experienced in this world it has not yet come to an end. Now at 5.30 an occasional shot comes from a battleship. The constant roar has made my head ache, and I am dead tired, having worked hard all day, and I must give an account ...
— The Incomparable 29th and the "River Clyde" • George Davidson
... collaborator, coadjutor, companion, helpmate, mate, team-mate, comrade, chum, crony, consort, accomplice, confederate. Attach, affix, annex, append, subjoin. Attack, assail, assault, invade, beset, besiege, bombard, cannonade, storm. ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... strained and husky from painful throats. Half the time they were blinded by the smoke and blaze of the firing. The crash did not seem so loud to them now, because they were partly deafened for the time by a cannonade of such ...
— The Rock of Chickamauga • Joseph A. Altsheler
... could travel, from the west and from the north, he could hear the cannonade, and what seemed like the clatter of hoofs, and the clash of thrown-away swords. It was possible to imagine anything when Nature was making a change so titanic. Now the water was the black horse ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson
... invasion; irruption; outbreak; estrapade[obs3], ruade[obs3]; coupe de main, sally, sortie, camisade[obs3], raid, foray; run at, run against; dead set at. storm, storming; boarding, escalade[obs3]; siege, investment, obsession|!, bombardment, cannonade. fire, volley; platoon fire, file fire; fusillade; sharpshooting, broadside; raking fire, cross fire; volley of grapeshot, whiff of the grape, feu d'enfer [Fr]. cut, thrust, lunge, pass, passado[obs3], carte and tierce[Fr][obs3], home ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... steps, in front of which an open space then extended to the Tuileries gardens, that Bonaparte ordered the first cannon to be fired upon the royalists who rose against the National Convention, and thus prevented a counter-revolution. Traces of this cannonade of 13 Vendmiaire are still to be seen at the angle of the church and ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... hundred and fifty pieces of cannon were to batter the place all at once, near enough to facilitate the assault. On the 13th of September, at 9 A. M., the Spaniards opened fire: all the artillery in the fort replied at once; the surrounding mountains repeated the cannonade; the whole army covered the shore awaiting with anxiety the result of the enterprise. Already the fortifications seemed to be beginning to totter; the batteries had been firing for five hours; all at once the Prince of Nassau, who commanded a detachment, thought he perceived flames mastering his ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... into his regiment, Sir William Napier's men became disobedient. He at once ordered a halt, and flogged four of the ringleaders under fire. The men yielded at once, and then marched three miles under a heavy cannonade as coolly as if it ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... on the other side was an overflowed small flat. It was simply hummocky solid ground with a little green grass and some water. Behind the hummocks, even after a cannonade at the reservoir, we were almost certain to jump two or three single spoonbills or teal. Why they stayed there, I could not tell you; but stay they did. We walked them up one at a time, as we would quail. The range was long. Sometimes we got them; ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... world-sound that fell upon my ear Was that of the great winds along the coast Crushing the deep-sea beryl on the rocks— The distant breakers' sullen cannonade. Against the spires and gables of the town The white fog drifted, catching here and there At overleaning cornice or peaked roof, And hung—weird gonfalons. The garden walks Were choked with leaves, and on their ragged biers Lay dead the sweets of summer—damask rose, Clove-pink, old-fashioned, ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... 9th of October his Excellency put a match to the first gun, and for four days and nights a furious cannonade went ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... steam, I have seated myself to greet you from Halifax, where we shall arrive to-night. I was glad to leave the sight of you while you were talking with Mr. Fields, whose cheerful face (and words, no doubt) caused you to smile. I was so glad to leave you smiling happily. Then came the cannonade, which was very long. And why do you suppose it was so long? Mr. Ticknor says that always they give a salute of two guns; but that yesterday so many were thundered off because Mr. Hawthorne, the distinguished United States Consul and author, was leaving the shore, and honoring her Majesty's steamship ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... hero's mind it seemed that the battle which followed must have been the most terrific cannonade that was ever heard in the world. It was not so ill at first, for it was some while before the Spaniards could get their guns clear for action, they being not the least in the world prepared for such an occasion ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard Pyle
... with the little monitors, joined in the deep harmonies of the grand chorus, till the earth trembled with the cannonade, the air grew heavy with smoke, and nothing was visible but the rapid flashes of the artillery. For a moment it seemed as if the assault of '61 was being re-enacted before me. But it is safe to add that had this been the ...
— The Flag Replaced on Sumter - A Personal Narrative • William A. Spicer
... gave a bound and backed into the battalion, lashing out with his heels. One man was ridden down; another was kicked in the chest and hurled through the ranks. The officer sank his spurs into the horse and forced him to the front again, where he stood trembling. The cannonade seemed to draw nearer. A staff-officer, riding slowly up and down the battalion suddenly collapsed in his saddle and clung to his horse's mane. One of his boots dangled, crimsoned and dripping, from the stirrup. Then out of the mist in front men came running. ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... division, under that gallant officer Sir Samuel Hood, received it next, and stood after them. At nine the enemy began to cannonade my van, which was returned with the greatest briskness. The baffling winds did not permit part of the centre division to get into action with the enemy's rear till half-past eleven; and then only the ship ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez. Vol II • Sir John Ross
... the weary look and the crooked nose, got a knot in her twine and this is how it happened. I was crossing this Minnie-something street, when a shrill siren and the cannonade of a powerful exhaust warned me to stay my tootsies. I wasn't looking for a big white aseptic machine out here or any other kind, so the blooming thing crashed into us and rather than have Bunky hurt, I ran the risk (not quite, but nearly) of losing my life, but not until ...
— Letters of a Dakota Divorcee • Jane Burr
... sound, and make allowances for the value of my copy. It is odd, though, I can well remember, when the Franco-Prussian war began, and I was in Eilean Earraid, far enough from the sound of the loudest cannonade, I could HEAR the shots fired, and I felt the pang in my breast of a man struck. It was sometimes so distressing, so instant, that I lay in the heather on the top of the island, with my face hid, kicking my heels for agony. And now, ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... had seen our disaster stood boldly in, and anchored within less than gun shot of the beach; they then very foolishly opened a brisk cannonade; but every shot was spent in vain. This exasperated the Indians, and particularly the one who had taken possession of my pistols. Casting my eye round, I saw him creeping toward me with one pistol presented, and when about five yards off, he pulled the trigger. But as Providence had, no doubt, ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman
... challenge and calmly accepting as prejudiced a twelve as perhaps, in the United States of America, ever decided whether a man should live or die. The move had hastened the day when the Government was to begin its cannonade. ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... main-top gallant sail and foresail, and at 6.05 closed within half pistol-shot distance on her adversary's port beam. [Footnote: "Autobiography of Commodore Morris" (Annapolis, 1880), p. 164.] Immediately a furious cannonade opened, each ship firing as the guns bore. By the time the ships were fairly abreast, at 6.20, the Constitution shot away the Guerriere's mizzen-mast, which fell over the starboard quarter, knocking a large hole in the counter, and bringing the ship round ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... must shell 'em out before those bridges can be finished." The elevating screws are spun in their beds, the shell fuzes cut down to the very edge. Some guns are so near the river that they are rammed with grape and canister; and so, for an hour, the thundering cannonade goes on, and the infantry crouch below, and swear and shiver, and once in a while set up a cheer when occasion seems to warrant it. And then, covered by this furious fog-bombardment, the engineers again push forward ...
— A War-Time Wooing - A Story • Charles King
... Compatriots,—I am besieged by a thousand or more of the Mexicans under Santa Ana. I have sustained a continued bombardment and cannonade for twenty-four hours and have not lost a man. The enemy have demanded a surrender at discretion; otherwise the garrison is to be put to the sword if the fort is taken. I have answered the summons with ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... hesitated; his men were few, and his position desperate. The boy plunged into the sea, amid the cheers of the sailors, and was soon lost to sight. The battle raged fiercer, and, as the time went on, defeat seemed inevitable. But, just as hope was fading, a thundering cannonade was heard from the right, and the reserves were seen bearing down upon the enemy. By sunset the Dutch fleet was scattered far and wide, and the cabin-boy, the hero of the hour, was called in to receive the honor due to him. His bearing so won the heart of the old admiral ...
— Harper's Young People, November 4, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... and suffered much. It was broad daylight before the Russians were driven back. Some of the more fiery men of the company pursued them too far, and were cut off. At last all the survivors returned to the trenches, and then the enemy commenced a furious cannonade, as if to revenge themselves for the repulse. Their sharpshooters, too, were on the alert, and if a man chanced to show the top of his shako above the earthworks, several bullets ...
— The Thorogood Family • R.M. Ballantyne
... arriving; then there was heavy work, and plenty of it, the two armies hurling each other backward turn about and about, and victory inclining first to the one, then to the other. Now all of a sudden there was a panic on our side. Some say one thing caused it, some another. Some say the cannonade made our front ranks think retreat was being cut off by the English, some say the rear ranks got the idea that Joan was killed. Anyway our men broke, and went flying in a wild rout for the causeway. Joan tried to rally them and face them around, ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc Volume 2 • Mark Twain
... slow down if it does not stop you, the advance under fire becomes almost impossible. The advantage is with the defensive. This is so evident that only a madman could dispute it. What then is to be done? Halt, to shoot at random and cannonade at long range until ammunition is exhausted? Perhaps. But what is sure, is that such a state of affairs makes maneuver necessary. There is more need than ever for maneuver at a long distance in an attempt to force the enemy ...
— Battle Studies • Colonel Charles-Jean-Jacques-Joseph Ardant du Picq
... movement disturbed, except by the attempt to place batteries on the points from which our bridges could be reached, and to command which I had already posted the necessary batteries on my own responsibility. A cannonade ensued, and they were driven off with loss, and one of their caissons exploded: we lost three or four men killed, and a few horses, in this affair. That is about all ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge
... no resting. Scarcely had the sounds of yesterday's cannonade died away, when Sherman's already jaded forces were put in motion to the north, to make sure that Burnside was set free at Knoxville; but Longstreet had already raised the siege and started east. By December 6th, ...
— History of the United States, Volume 4 • E. Benjamin Andrews
... The bombardment of the fort was kept up at intervals from batteries in its rear, as well as from the town, for six days. The Americans, though possessed of little ammunition, and having to mourn the fall of their gallant commander, sustained the cannonade with unyielding firmness until the afternoon of the 8th, when their hearts were thrilled with exultation by the answering peals of ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... storm was upon them—rain and wind, and the thunder a cannonade. Christopher, brought at last to the knowledge of its menace, picked Anne up in his arms, and ran for shelter. When they reached the house, they found Ridgeley there. He was stern. "It was a bad business to keep her ...
— The Gay Cockade • Temple Bailey
... bursting shell, while about one hundred guns on our side, mainly from this crest and Round Top, made sharp response. The earth and the air shook for miles around with the terrific concussion, which came no longer in volleys, but in a continual roar. So long and fearful a cannonade was never before witnessed on this continent. As the range was short and the aim accurate, ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... Austrian armies. Two days before, at Lodi, the Austrians tried to prevent the French from crossing the river by the narrow bridge there; but the French, commanded by a general aged 27, Napoleon Bonaparte, who does not understand the art of war, rushed the fireswept bridge, supported by a tremendous cannonade in which the young general assisted with his own hands. Cannonading is his technical specialty; he has been trained in the artillery under the old regime, and made perfect in the military arts of shirking his duties, swindling the paymaster over travelling expenses, ...
— The Man of Destiny • George Bernard Shaw
... an outrageous uproar, the grisly scream of a siren and the cannonade of a powerful exhaust, as a great white touring-car swung round us from behind at a speed that sickened me to see, and, snorting thunder, passed us "as if we ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... foot; and of the English 20,000. Ginkell opened fire on the enemy as soon as his guns were planted. Some trifling skirmishes followed. A council of war was held, and the deliberation lasted until half-past four in the evening, at which time a general engagement was decided on. A cannonade had been kept up on both sides, in which the English had immensely the advantage, St. Ruth's excellently chosen position being almost useless for want of sufficient artillery. At half-past six Ginkell ordered an advance on the Irish right centre, having previously ascertained ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... our broadside had been the preconcerted signal for a general cannonade, every battery within range on each side of the harbour now opened fire upon us, some of them, however, fortunately for us, being unable to bring more than a single gun to bear. Had the guns on shore been served ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... did he dominate her. That a thousand circumstances had mitigated her action, had goaded her, as the unwilling beast is driven through the noise and smoke of battle, until, in the fury of fear, it plunges headlong towards the murderous cannonade—that these things should be taken into account did not enter her conception of the situation. She had wronged him. That was all she felt. And now, clutching his hand, raising it to her lips, drenching it with her tears and kisses, she begged his forgiveness, humbling herself down ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston
... he could endure hardship, but saved strength for work, nursing being none of the lightest. A bedroom had been prepared for him next to the boy's: Mark had a string close to his hand whose slightest pull sufficed to ring a bell, which woke the major as if it had been the opening of a cannonade. ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... near and yet very far, and he was wondering, as were many American officers and soldiers, why the Mexicans did not cannonade the invading army while it was coming ashore. They might have done so effectively, and in a day or two they did put a few guns in position to send an occasional shot, but all the harm they did ...
— Ahead of the Army • W. O. Stoddard
... the Union batteries were ordered to be silent, for it was well known to those in command that presently there would be a powerful attack by infantry, for which the cannonade was supposed to have paved the way with death and disorder, and it was necessary that the pieces should be kept cool in order to be in efficient condition to grapple with and suppress this attack. Sometimes a regiment, stung to a frenzy of courage ...
— Aladdin O'Brien • Gouverneur Morris
... stone embankment above the black and battering sea and could not rid myself of the idea that it was an invasion of England. But as I walked along this edge I was somewhat surprised to find that as I neared a certain spot another noise mingled with the ceaseless cannonade of ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton
... flung back from the impregnable defences in the rear of Vicksburg, and great losses were inflicted on them. Grant, however, was undismayed, and, still believing that the enemy's line might be broken by assault, renewed the attempt in a gallant attack on the twenty-second of May. A furious cannonade was kept up for several hours, and then the divisions of Sherman, McPherson and McClernand were thrown forward upon the ...
— Notable Events of the Nineteenth Century - Great Deeds of Men and Nations and the Progress of the World • Various
... is ushered in with a cannonade of one hundred shots fired at midnight. The Czar formally receives the good wishes of his subjects, and the streets, which are prettily decorated with flags and lanterns, ...
— Yule-Tide in Many Lands • Mary P. Pringle and Clara A. Urann
... Fiercely the contest raged until nightfall, and vast was the consumption of gunpowder; but damage done on either side was but little. All night the belligerents rested on their arms; but, at daybreak, the roar of the cannonade recommenced. ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... three weeks, Constance was in the utmost elation, for 'On hearing the cannonade of the Autumn Manoeuvres' was in print, and Miss Hacket was so much delighted that justice should be done to her sister's abilities, that she forgot Mr. Leadbitter's disapproval, and ordered half a dozen copies of the Politician for the present, and ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge
... against each other from a certain distance; while, however, it was an express condition that we should not throw with more force than was necessary to upset the figures, as none of them were to be injured. Now the cannonade began on both sides, and at first it succeeded to the satisfaction of us both. But when my adversary observed that I aimed better than she, and might in the end win the victory, which depended on the majority of pieces remaining ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... not to come to close fight with the Spaniards; where the size of the ships, he suspected, and the numbers of the soldiers, would be a disadvantage to the English; but to cannonade them at a distance, and to wait the opportunity which winds, currents, or various accidents must afford him of intercepting some scattered vessels of the enemy. Nor was it long before the event answered expectation A great ship of Biscay, on board of which was a considerable ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... our work consists of keeping German airmen away from our lines, and in attacking them when opportunity offers. We traverse the brown band and enter enemy territory to the accompaniment of an anti-aircraft cannonade. Most of the shots are wild, however, and we pay little attention to them. When the shrapnel comes uncomfortably close, one shifts position slightly to evade the range. One glances up to see if there ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... meeting with innumerable obstacles and overcoming a host of difficulties, I succeeded, by means of all sorts of circuitous routes, in reaching my remote suburb, from which I was cut off by the fortified portions of the town, and especially by a cannonade directed from the Zwinger. My lodgings were full to overflowing with excited women who had collected round Minna; among them the panic-stricken wife of Rockel, who suspected her husband of being in the very thick of the fight, as she thought that on the receipt ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner |
