Battles of the nineteenth century, vol. 1 of 7

“BATTLES OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY”--the words are like a trumpet-call, summoning up in array before us a hundred familiar forms of great soldiers--Napoleon and Wellington, Gran...

Wellington could not have made use of such incentives to valour as Napoleon did, even if he had had them at his command. But he did not need them. It was with the British rank a...

A storm of indignation arose in England, and the public discontent was poured out on the Commander-in-chief. Lord Gough was immediately superseded by Sir Charles Napier, his pre...

The “Seven Weeks’ War,” as it has been styled by its historian, Colonel H. M. Hozier, was the first of the short, sharp, and decisive conflicts which are to be the rule in moder...

Well, we have had our glance at the wars of the century--a cursory glance enough, and attracted chiefly by the red coat of the British soldier; let us now turn over the leaves o...

Each had a crew of forty or fifty officers and men, so that the eleven little steamers brought forty-eight guns and 500 men into action. The heavier ships outside the bar were t...

The capture of the remaining forts was an easy matter. The smaller South Fort, only 400 yards from the North Fort, and commanded by its guns, was at once abandoned by the Chines...

The thirty-two men composing the vanguard of Garibaldi now dashed forward to the bridge over the Oreto. This Ponte dell’ Ammiraglio, by a strange coincidence, was the scene of t...

The command set out for “Sitting Bull’s” village shortly before noon. It was divided into three battalions--Major Reno commanding the advance, General Custer following with the...

That shabby man was General Picton, who fell next day on the very spot where he received this unmerited snubbing. He fought at Quatre Bras in plain clothes, having joined the ar...

“Squadrons, right half-wheel! Charge!” and the sabres of our light horsemen were soon busy in the valley below. The ground was very soft, for a month after the battle some of th...

Napoleon orders some guns to open on the Hussars, and one shot hits Lord Uxbridge on the right knee as, mounted on a troop horse belonging to a sergeant-major of the 23rd Light...

But von Norman had barely started on his long and perilous ride when, lo and behold! another officer, Major von Ungar, came spurring in to the quarters of the Red Prince with a...

On August 2nd Bolivar reviewed his army on the tableland between Rancas and Pasco, a little north of Reyes, situated at an altitude of 12,000 feet above the level of the sea, an...

But during the months of April, May, and June the absence of any organised body of opponents in the field allowed much telling work to be done by small parties of Southern soldi...

To the Confederate left stood Henry House. Built on a knoll, it commanded the whole field of action, and here McDowell deemed it important to plant a battery. To this ground two...

His men, bayonets at the charge, rushed to avenge their gallant dead leader. They were over the shelter trench and over the parapet, and then down in among the Turks like an ava...

There was now nothing left to Major Forbes but to save the remnant of his force, and retreat on Inyati and Buluwayo. The river was still up, and might remain so for days. It was...

Crossing the Jumna by the bridge of boats they swarmed into the courtyard of the palace, where they were eagerly joined by the royal guards. Captain Douglas, the commander of th...

A few days after this General Barnard, believing with Macbeth that “’twere well it were done quickly,” had yielded to a scheme for storming the city offright--a scheme in which...

With a way thus opened up for it, Colonel Campbell’s storming column now burst into the city, slaughtering all it met; and was only stopped in its career of conquest when it rea...

The Sonderbund leaders had been unable to find a commander among the citizens of the seceding cantons. Their choice finally fell upon Colonel Ulrich Salis-Soglio, of Chur in Gra...

The Zulu tactics were always the same. They always tried to attack in a half-circle, throwing forward both flanks of their fighting force, like two horns, which strove to encirc...

We must return to Lord Chelmsford and the column which he had led forth in the morning to the support of Major Dartnell. Between six and seven in the morning the general had joi...

Admiral Ribotti, with the rearward division of the Italian fleet, as he came into the fight encountered only the wooden squadron of Commodore Petz. Ribotti ought to have sunk th...

“Then find MacMahon, who must be already beyond Turbigo. Ask him what he counts on doing if he has the enemy in his front. Inform him of the march and position of the Guard, whi...

Emulation in great deeds is a fine thing, but when allies fight side by side there is always the fear of divided counsels, the chance of divided action in the field. The English...

The main body of the “Grand Army” had, under Napoleon, followed its advanced guard into the heart of Moravia. Its headquarters and immediate base were now at Brunn, but its posi...

The Austro-Russian cavalry rallied in support of Bagration, who was now hotly pressed by Suchet. Then came a magnificently combined movement of Dragoons, Cuirassiers, and infant...

The chief of these preliminary actions, fought on the 28th August, will always be memorable for the grand cavalry charge which closed it. Early in the morning General Graham had...

The battle had been won by the British infantry, but the artillery and cavalry (as well as a splendid body of Blue Jackets) came up to carry on the pursuit of the flying foe and...

General Lewis Wallace, in command of the Federal reserves--5,000 men--lay the other side of Snake Creek, and for his arrival Grant waited with impatience, for matters were becom...

On the left the firing gradually ceased, and Colonel McLeod, who commanded there, sent in to the general to say that he was no longer hotly attacked, but that he had altogether...

For the Prussians had soon come to see that it would be quite impossible for them to capture the Düppel redoubts save by regular process of sap and siege. The redoubts proved to...

On being informed of all this, King William telegraphed from Berlin--“To Prince Frederick Charles. Next to the Lord of Hosts, I have to thank my splendid army under thy leadersh...

With rolling volleys the Highlanders and the Guides reached and won the rocky summit. The Afghans momentarily defended the position, but the British fire swept them away, and th...

As it happened, it was--so far as tangible results were concerned--a barren success. The prize that was fought for was the possession of Venice and its territory; and by the cou...

Villarey’s brigade was now all that was left of Cerale’s division. The Austrians had been reinforced, and they promptly attacked and retook the Monte Cricol, and drove the Itali...

“1. The fort of Badajoz is to be attacked at 10 o’clock this night (6th of April). 2. The attack must be made on three points--the castle, the face of the bastion of La Trinidad...

We took the colours of the garrison and the Hesse-Darmstadt, but there were no eagles in the town. The first man to die at the Santa Maria was a Portuguese grenadier, and there...

By ten o’clock this strange company, every one with visage firmly set, began to move slowly towards the small opening left in the boom for the enemy’s own convenience. Cochrane’...

After three o’clock the bombardment slackened. The breach was considered to be wide enough to be rushed by a strong storming party on a broad front, and there were no obstacles...

These preliminaries over, the attack upon Warsaw began in earnest on the morning of the 6th September. The fighting on this day was mostly at long range, but the Russian attack...

Captain Aylmer, stooping down, removed some stones from under the foot of the gate, inserted his slabs of guncotton, packed them with stones, and ignited the fuse. While he was...

“His staff officers were a numerous, quaint, and motley crew, men of all ages and conditions, mostly devoted personal friends--not all of them available for personal strength or...

Beyond Wilna, Octave de Ségur (brother of the historian) and his 8th Hussars drew first blood from the Russians, and were sadly cut up; but Oudinot drove Witgenstein back at the...

In the centre of a vast plain, and built, like Rome, on seven hills, the two hundred and ninety-five churches and countless magnificent buildings of the “city of the gilded cupo...

Yet amid all this misery, his men wearing bed quilts, pieces of carpet, women’s clothes from the baggage waggons which they began to pillage on the 7th November, and existing to...

Gathering all the muskets he could reach, the marshal fired them through the palisade--_one_ man against _thousands_--until others came to his help; the town was attacked on the...

The story has now been told of the struggle during the first hour and a half about the storehouse and large enclosure, till the moment came when it was no longer possible to hol...

All the roads from Metz were blocked by heavy baggage, and the French army could not get away from the fortress with expedition and method. The left wing of the army was ready t...

“Seeing some of the infantry engaged on the extreme right, I went there, and met one regiment just coming out of action to recruit, being at that moment commanded by a youth of...

Deep snow lay on the ground, rutted and trampled by the passage of the guns and bullock carts; this had frozen like iron, and then been concealed by another snowstorm, so that m...

“You are aware,” he writes from on board the _Asia_, “that a treaty has been signed between England, France, and Russia for the pacification of Greece. A declaration of the deci...

Navarino was fought without any declaration of war, and the news of hostilities created great surprise in England. Many questions were asked in Parliament as to whether the Brit...