Deeds that Won the Empire Historic Battle Scenes

The tales here told are written, not to glorify war, but to nourish patriotism. They represent an effort to renew in popular memory the great traditions of the Imperial race to...

The hero of that historic fight wore a singularly unheroic aspect. Wolfe's face, in the famous picture by West, resembles that of a nervous and sentimental boy--he was an adjuta...

Hawke, too, was a great man in the age of little men. The fame of the English navy had sunk to the lowest point. Its ships were rotten; its captains had lost the fighting tradit...

Wellington's engineers attacked the city at the eastern end of the oval, where the Rivillas served it as a gigantic wet ditch; and the Picurina, a fortified hill, ringed by a di...

The great floating mine drifted on through blackness and storm till, just as it struck the boom, Cochrane, who previously made his five assistants get into the boat, with his ow...

One of the dramatic incidents of the siege was the assault made by Kleber's troops. They had not taken part in the siege hitherto, but had won a brilliant victory over the Arabs...

The fight between the two ships was marked by many heroic incidents. During the action the very invalids in the sick-bay of the _Phoenix_ crept from their cots and tried to take...

On the night of June 22 the two fleets actually crossed each other's tracks. The French fleet, including the transports, numbered 572 vessels, and their lights, it might be imag...

At nine o'clock Soult launched an attack at the bridge, the point where Beresford expected him, but it was only a feint. Beresford, however, with all his faults, had the soldier...

The answering thunder of the _Chesapeake's_ guns, of course, rolled out, and then, following quick, the overwhelming blast of the _Shannon's_ broadside once more. Each ship, ind...

Meanwhile the other two attacks had broken into the town; but at the great breach the dreadful fight still raged, until the 43rd, coming swiftly along the ramparts, and brushing...

"In both the passes, and on the heights above them, there was desperate fighting. They fought on the mountain-tops, which could scarcely have witnessed any other combat than tha...

Lyons crept in at sunset to the shore, and hid his two boats behind a point from which the fort was visible. A little after midnight, just as the moon dipped below the horizon,...

"On the same day, and at the same hour, was killed Colonel Thomas Lloyd. He likewise had been a long time in the 43rd. Under him Freer had learned the rudiments of his professio...

Almost at that moment, however, the warlike genius of Wellington changed the aspect of the scene. He fed the attacks on Soult's right and left, and the deepening roar of the bat...

More ink has, perhaps, been shed about Waterloo than about any other battle known to history, and still the story bristles with conundrums, questions of fact, and problems in st...

The head of the French column was falling to pieces, but the main body was yet steady, and the cuirassiers covering its flank were coming swiftly on. But at this moment there br...

But the cavalry was coming on again in solid squadrons, a column so deep that when the leading files were within sixty yards of Mercer's guns the rear of the great mass was stil...

Napoleon's strategy throughout the brief campaign was magnificent; his tactics--the detailed handling of his troops on the actual battlefield--were wretched. "We were manoeuvred...

Saumarez had strengthened his squadron by the addition of the _Superb_, with the _Thames_ frigate, and at twenty minutes to nine P.M., vainly searching the black horizon for the...

Meanwhile Nelson had reached the scene; and, like his ship, worn out with labours, sailed for Portsmouth, for what proved his last visit to England. On August 13, Villeneuve sai...

In the whole heroic fight there is no finer bit of heroism than that shown by the _Redoutable_. She was only a 74-gun ship, and she had the _Victory_, of 100 guns, and the _Témé...