Now, in order to clearly understand what is about to follow, the reader must picture to himself in this silent street, in this darkness of the night, at from sixty to eighty yards apart, within speaking distance, these two redoubts facing each other, and able as in an Iliad to address each other.

Near this northern extremity lies the little rocky islet so often mentioned, or the spot which Napoleon, fifteen years later, selected as the advanced redoubt of his insular empire.

Assaulted on two sides, they were quickly driven from all their pits and earthworks except one large central redoubt.

Not infrequently the soldiers had to rescue a comrade who had sunk to the waist in the morass, but they continued to push forward steadily, facing machine-gun fire from hidden redoubts and battling their way past with bombs and rifle fire.

Deep trenches surrounded inaccessible redoubts, while thick barricades, with pointed palisades, defended the approaches to the heights, from the summits of which Wallenstein calmly and securely discharged the lightnings of his artillery from amid the dark thunder-clouds of smoke.

This was formed under the fire of the regular artillerists in a little redoubt in Coffee's front and that of some cannon taken from a man-of-war, placed in a battery on the river and served by sailors.

After renewing the action, and repulsing the enemy, he marches in the direction in which he had sent Labienus, drafts four cohorts from the nearest redoubt, and orders part of the cavalry to follow him, and part to make the circuit of the external fortifications and attack the enemy in the rear.

But what you will not learn is that this great fortification is not yet connected with its outer redoubts by the subterranean passages which were a part of the original scheme.