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Rampart

noun
1.
An embankment built around a space for defensive purposes.  Synonyms: bulwark, wall.  "They blew the trumpet and the walls came tumbling down"






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Rampart" Quotes from Famous Books



... was crime, who was already "wanted" for some offence or other, whether it ranged from murder in the first degree to some petty piece of sneak thievery. Stangeist, the Indian chief, the lawyer whose cunning brain had stood as a rampart between the underworld and a prison cell, was himself now in the Tombs with the certainty of the electric chair before him; and with him, the same fate equally assured, were Australian Ike, The Mope, and Clarie Deane! Aristocrats of the Bad Lands, peers of that inglorious realm were those four—and ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard

... moving with catlike grace. The dark faces under the fezzes were changed by the fervor of battle; the bared teeth shone out beside the locks of the rifles. These thin, hard bodies, buffeting her about, formed round her a rampart from which the blades of steel were answered ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman

... him the service of a friend, for it carried him far from Vera, from Malinovka, from the precipice, from the fantastic vision of last night. When the ringing of many bells awoke him he lay for several minutes under the soothing influence of the physical rest, which built a rampart between him and yesterday. There was no agony in his awakening moments. But soon memory revived, and his face wore an expression more terrible than in the worst moments of yesterday. A pain different from yesterday's, a new devil had hurled itself upon him. ...
— The Precipice • Ivan Goncharov

... said I, "who am I to talk? I am in the luck to be a private soldier; I have no parole to give or to keep; once I am over the rampart, I am as free as air. I beg you to believe that I regret from my soul the use of these ungenerous expressions. Allow me.... Is there no way in this damned house to attract attention? Where ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... glory and satisfaction of governing it; that none but timorous princes, or tyrants, or faint-hearted women, ever stood in fear of their successors; and that the affections of the people were a firm and impregnable rampart to every sovereign, who, laying aside all artifice or by-ends, had courage and magnanimity to put his sole trust in that honorable and sure defence.[***] The queen, hearing of these debates, sent for the speaker; and after reiterating her former prohibition, she bade him inform the house, that ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume

... already floated on the first curtain of the rampart when Pierre D'Aubusson rallied the knights for one last desperate effort. "Shall it be said in days to come that 'the Religion' recoiled before a horde of Moslem savages; that the banner of Saint John was soiled by their infamous ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey

... To the master of sciences, Declare ye mysteries That relate to the inhabitants of the world; There is a noxious creature, From the rampart of Satanas, Which has overcome all Between the deep and the shallow; Equally wide are his jaws As the mountains of the Alps; Him death will not subdue, Nor hand or blades; There is the load of nine hundred wagons In the hair of his two paws; There is in his ...
— The Mabinogion • Lady Charlotte Guest

... Hardy, the parlor-broke friend and lover, slipped away before any of them were stirring and rode far up along the river. What a river it was now, this unbridled Salagua which had been their moat and rampart for so many years! Its waters flowed thin and impotent over the rapids, lying in clear pools against the base of the black cliffs, and the current that had uprooted trees like feathers was turned aside ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge

... the standard from the hands of a fugitive, rallied two hundred troopers round him, saved a battery of five pieces of cannon, and covered the passage of the army. Remaining almost alone in the rear, he made himself a rampart of his dead horse, and wounded three of the enemy's hussars. Wounded in many places by gun-shot and sabre wounds—his thigh entangled beneath a fallen horse—two fingers of his right hand severed—his forehead cut open—his ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine

... intersection of the seven valleys of Lavedan, had formerly been the key of the mountain districts. But, in Bernadette's time, it had become a mere dismantled, ruined pile, at the entrance of a road leading nowhere. Modern life found its march stayed by a formidable rampart of lofty, snow-capped peaks, and only the trans-Pyrenean railway—had it been constructed—could have established an active circulation of social life in that sequestered nook where human existence stagnated like dead water. Forgotten, therefore, Lourdes remained slumbering, happy ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola

... not a funeral note, As his corse to the rampart we hurried; Not a soldier discharged his farewell shot O'er the grave where ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For • Various

... 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, carrying their commander with them into the keep. The gate was rammed close, but Guise could now finish his ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude

... over the frozen hills. Before him sprang the rampart of the mountains, magnificently drawn against the eastern sky. To either hand lay the fallow fields, rolled the brown hills, rose the shadowy bulk of forest trees, showed the green of winter wheat. The ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston

... head looked again at the heath, its bleak contours mounting gradually till they showed an ugly ridge beyond which the downs swelled up soft and vague against the hanging curtain of clouds. And he thought of what lay on the far side of this long grass rampart of down country—the fat-soiled valley, the other railway line, the trains from the West of England, full of queer people, running by night as well as ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell

... Vosges you cannot thus see from a half-height; there is no platform, and that is perhaps why the Vosges have not impressed travellers as they should. But you can so watch the grand chain of old volcanoes which are the rampart of Auvergne. You can stand upon the high wooden ridge of Foreze and see them take the morning across the mists and the flat of the Limagne, where the Gauls fought Caesar. Further south from the high ...
— First and Last • H. Belloc

... to bring it in here, Mrs. Cathcart," he said, "and make your drawing-room smell like a pot-house. But, you see, there was a positive stampede for the hearth-rug in the hall. A modest man, such as myself, hadn't a chance. There's a regular rampart, half the county in fact, before that fire. So I thought I'd just slope in here, don't you know? It looked awfully warm and inviting. And then I wanted to pay my respects to Mrs. Ormiston too, and talk to this young chap about Eton ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet

... Hunter marked that mountain high, The lone lake's western boundary, And deemed the stag must turn to bay, Where that huge rampart barred the way; Already glorying in the prize, Measured his antlers with his eyes; For the death-wound and death-halloo Mustered his breath, his whinyard drew:— But thundering as he came prepared, With ready arm and weapon bared, The wily quarry shunned ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott

... within this circle, feeling that I had neglected nothing which could preserve me from the cruel destiny with which I was threatened. The serpent failed not to come at the usual hour, and went round the tree, seeking for an opportunity to devour me, but was prevented by the rampart I had made; so that he lay till day, like a cat watching in vain for a mouse that has fortunately reached a place of safety. When day appeared he retired, but I dared not to leave my fort until the ...
— The Arabian Nights - Their Best-known Tales • Unknown

... he has no alliances, and he must diplomatize; and the German is a strong one; a relative too; he is the Saxon's cousin, to say the least. This German has the habit of pushing past politeness to carry his argumentative war into the enemy's country: and he presents on all sides a solid rampart of recent great deeds done, and mailed readiness for the doing of more, if we think of assailing him in that way. We are really like the poor beasts which have cast their shells or cases, helpless flesh to his beak. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... itself, statue-guarded and palm-studded, is one of the show-places of the city; and the aquarium building, standing isolated near its centre, is worthy of its surroundings. As seen from the bay, it gleams white amid the half-tropical foliage, with the circling rampart of hills, flanked by Vesuvius itself, for background. And near at hand the picturesque cactus growth scrambling over the walls gives precisely the necessary finish to the otherwise rather severe type of the architecture. The ...
— A History of Science, Volume 5(of 5) - Aspects Of Recent Science • Henry Smith Williams

... the drum called from the rampart, and once more, with patient mien, The Commander and his daughter each ...
— California, Romantic and Resourceful • John F. Davis

... and the giants set out for the castle at once. It was surrounded by a very high rampart, so high that even the giants could not touch the top of it. 'How am I to get ...
— The Crimson Fairy Book • Various

... (then a captain) thus relates the incident: "I commanded an eighteen pounder in the left wing of the fort. Above my gun on the rampart, was a large American flag hung on a very high mast, formerly of a ship; the men of war directing their fire thereat, it was, from their shot, so wounded, as to fall, with the colors, over the fort. Sergeant Jasper of the Grenadiers leapt over the ramparts, and deliberately walked the whole length ...
— The Life of Francis Marion • William Gilmore Simms

... awhile and breathed us, and handled our weapons some half a furlong from the alien host. They had no earth rampart around them, for that ridge is waterless, and they could not abide there long, but they had pitched sharp pales in front of them and they stood in very good order, as if abiding an onslaught, and moved not ...
— The House of the Wolfings - A Tale of the House of the Wolfings and All the Kindreds of the Mark Written in Prose and in Verse • William Morris

... yielded, for his poor thin legs were yet trembling with the successful effort they had made under the inspiration of fear, and now that spur was gone, the dyke seemed a rampart insurmountable, and he dared not ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald

... second reigning emperor who crossed the ocean, Hadrian, came himself to Britain, brought the Sixth Legion to replace the Ninth, and introduced the frontier policy of his age. For over 70 m. from Tyne to Solway, more exactly from Wallsend to Bowness, he built a continuous rampart, more probably of turf than of stone, with a ditch in front of it, a number of small forts along it, one or two outposts a few miles to the north of it, and some detached forts (the best-known is on the hill above ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various

... This rampart enclosed seven hills. In the centre of the city extended a pool vast as the sea; from one bank it was impossible to discern an elephant standing up on the other. It contained very many kinds of fishes. In the midst of it rose a very ...
— Malayan Literature • Various Authors

... place. Bells should have tolled, cannon thundered, and thousands should have followed his bier. But now, alas, by night, by stealth, without even a single drum tap, in fear and dread, we crept breathless to the rampart. This, or any one of a hundred other paraphrases, will suffice to render the vocal movement slow. And so it is with all slow time. Let it be remembered that a profound or sublime thought may be uttered in fast time; but that when we dwell upon that thought, when we hold it before the mind, the ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck

... green leaves of sprawling creepers. Soon across the sky to the north a dark, blurred line rose, stretching out of sight east and west. It grew clearer as the train sped on, more distinct. It was the great northern rampart of India, the Himalayas. Then, seeming to float in air high above the highest of the dark mountain peaks and utterly detached from them, the white crests of the Eternal Snows shone fairy-like against ...
— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly

... one has come upon some sound particular in a tainted whole. To what is said in 2Samuel v. 9, "So David dwelt in the stronghold (Jebus), and he called it the city of David, and he built round about from the rampart and inward," there is added in 1Chronicles xi. 8, the statement that "Joab restored the rest of the city (Jerusalem)." This looks innocent enough, and is generally accepted as a fact. But the word XYH for BNH shows the comparatively modern date of the statement, and on closer consideration ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen

... the window and looked out over the vast green sweep of the Paddock Close running away up the gorse-crowned hillside that rose like a rampart at the back. ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant

... view of the stage therefrom was perfect. But the Alderman's view was far from perfect, since he had to peer as best he could between and above the shoulders of several men, each apparently, but not really, taller than himself. By constant slight movements, to comply with the movements of the rampart of shoulders, he could discern fragments of various advertisements of soap, motor-cars, whisky, shirts, perfume, pills, bricks and tea—for the drop-curtain was down. And, curiously, he felt obliged to keep his eyes on the drop-curtain and across the long intervening vista of hats and heads ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett

... bump and she fell towards him. He stretched out his arm and held her firm and secure. He wanted her to feel that it was a rampart and not an insidious outpost of passion ...
— Balloons • Elizabeth Bibesco

... vain. The Chondawat chief was already in Ontala. First of the stormers with scaling-ladders, he was shot dead by the defenders ere reaching the top of the rampart, and his corpse fell back among his dismayed followers. Then the chief of Deogurh, rolling the body in his scarf, tied it upon his back, fought his way to the crest of the battlements, and hurled the gory body of his chieftain into ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne

... the drawers, too, had been dragged out to be dusted, and were standing on end all about her, a veritable rampart of defence. ...
— Caps and Capers - A Story of Boarding-School Life • Gabrielle E. Jackson

... proper consists of two metallic bullheads rampart. They stand on their bosoms, with their tails tied together at the top. Their mouths are abnormally distended, and the water gushes forth from their tonsils in a ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye

... are at the service of those who intrench themselves behind the impregnable rampart of duty ill-defined, complicated or contradictory. But it is not that which occupies me to-day; it is of plain, I had almost said easy duty, that I ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner

... our people with a force of marvellous potency. If His Majesty the Sultan were to give us Palestine, we could in return undertake to regulate the whole finances of Turkey. We should there form a portion of a rampart of Europe against Asia, an outpost of civilization as opposed to barbarism. We should as a neutral State remain in contact with all Europe, which would have to guarantee our existence. The sanctuaries of Christendom would be safeguarded by assigning to them an extra-territorial status such as ...
— The Jewish State • Theodor Herzl

... one should have been far away from these huge rampart-streets, these stifling burrows of commerce. But here toil and stress went on as usual, and Piers Otway saw it all in a lurid light. These towering edifices with inscriptions numberless, announcing every imaginable form of trade with every ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing

... through much striking scenery, perhaps the finest point being a magnificent Gap in the hills, guarded and defined by three colossal headlands, one of them a vast long rampart, the other two gigantic counterscarps. The immediate approach to Letterkenny, too, from the west is charming, passing in full view of the extensive and beautiful park and the large mansion of Colonel Stewart of the Guards, and skirting the well-kept estate of ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (1 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert

... insanity, would give us but a poor opinion of the general intelligence of the country, did we not know that they were due to the necessities of "Our Own Correspondent." At one time, it is Fort Sumter that is to be bombarded with floating batteries mounted on rafts behind a rampart of cotton-bales; at another, it is Mr. Barrett, Mayor of Washington, announcing his intention that the President-elect shall be inaugurated, or Mr. Buchanan declaring that he shall cheerfully assent to it. Indeed! and who gave them any choice in ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various

... turn, emerged from the wood, he was greatly surprised no longer to see the man. He was seeking him with his eyes when, suddenly, he gave a stifled cry and, with a backward spring, made for the line of trees which he had just left. On his right, he had seen a rampart of high walls, flanked, at ...
— The Hollow Needle • Maurice Leblanc

... they rose, like mighty billows, mounting higher until the tallest, dimly outlined in a thickening purplish haze, cut the sky, a rampart vision could not pierce. They seemed alive, those hills, the thick untouched growth stirring ceaselessly under the wind, a restless sea of sunlit green with flashes of white from laurel thickets and soft glintings ...
— The House of Toys • Henry Russell Miller

... they came to a place where the cliffs appeared to rise less precipitously. After careful clambering for some minutes they discovered a sort of gap in the rampart, up which they climbed, amid rugged and broken masses, until they reached a somewhat level plateau, or shelf, covered with small bushes. Here they ...
— The Crew of the Water Wagtail • R.M. Ballantyne

... rascal, disposed to weep. And yet, somehow, they both felt that the storm was breaking, and that clear weather was at hand. There was nobody in the shop just then; and the two, standing behind the rampart of freshly-baked cakes that was high heaped up upon the counter, embraced each other and mingled tears, which they knew—by reason of the womanly instinct that was in them—were tears ...
— A Romance Of Tompkins Square - 1891 • Thomas A. Janvier

... out to meet the emperor at the head of nearly ten thousand troops; but his Berbers refused to fight, the thousands of Christian slaves in the Kasaba (or citadel), aided by treachery, broke their chains and shut the gates behind him; and, after defending his rampart as long as he could, the Corsair chief, with Sin[a]n and Ayd[i]n "Drub-Devil," made his way to Bona, where he had fortunately left fifteen of his ships. The lines of Kheyr-ed-d[i]n's triple wall may still be traced across the neck of land which separates the lake of Tunis ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole

... clatter of my horse's shoes. Now and then a mule or a donkey trotted by, with panniers full of vegetables, of charcoal or of bread, between which on the beast's neck sat perched a man in a short blouse. I came to the old rampart of the town, now a promenade; and at the gate groups of idlers, with cigarettes between ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham

... carry the double ladders, for the walls were high, and others were told off to bring up the fascines, and so, leaving our main battle to wait out of shot, and come on as they were needed, the Maid and Pothon ran up the first rampart, she waving her standard and crying that all was ours. As we ran, for I must needs be by her side, the din of bells and guns was worse than I had heard at Orleans, and on the top of the church towers were men-at-arms waving flags, as if for a signal. Howbeit, we sprang into the fosse, under shield, ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang

... water could be obtained, without which they could not hold out more than a single day, and because the koppie whereon grew the strange-looking euphorbia known as the Tree of Doom afforded a natural rampart against attack. ...
— The Wizard • H. Rider Haggard

... forests, and the tumultuous dashing of the waves which break at a distance upon the cliffs; but near the ruined cottages all is calm and still, and the only objects which there meet the eye are rude steep rocks, that rise like a surrounding rampart. Large clumps of trees grow at their base, on their rifted sides, and even on their majestic tops, where the clouds seem to repose. The showers, which their bold points attract, often paint the vivid colours of the rainbow on their green and brown declivities, ...
— Paul and Virginia • Bernardin de Saint Pierre

... the sunset dilating through her tears, "don't you see that I can bear to think such things only because they're impossibilities? It's easy to look over into the depths if one has a rampart to lean on. What I most pity poor Arthur for is that, instead of that woman lying there, so dreadfully dead, there might have been a girl like me, so exquisitely alive because of him; but it seems cruel, doesn't it, to let what he was not add ever so little ...
— Sanctuary • Edith Wharton

... robs life of its terrors and death of its sting. Why fear what life may bring when the Father has arranged each successive step of its pathway! Why dread Judas or Caiaphas, Herod or Pilate since the Father lies between the soul and them as a rampart of rock! Why lose heart amid the perplexities and discouragements, whose dark shadows lie heavily on the hills, when in the green pastures of the valley the Father's love tends the sheep! Ask Christ to reveal the Father to you. Live in His everlasting ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer

... taken at once to divert the ants from their course. At Hewet's suggestion it was decided to adopt the methods of modern warfare against an invading army. The table-cloth represented the invaded country, and round it they built barricades of baskets, set up the wine bottles in a rampart, made fortifications of bread and dug fosses of salt. When an ant got through it was exposed to a fire of bread-crumbs, until Susan pronounced that that was cruel, and rewarded those brave spirits with spoil in the shape of tongue. Playing ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf

... palisade, haha, stockade, stoccado[obs3], laager[obs3], sangar[obs3]; barrier, barricade; boom; portcullis, chevaux de frise[Fr]; abatis, abattis[obs3], abbatis[obs3]; vallum[obs3], circumvallation[obs3], battlement, rampart, scarp; escarp[obs3], counter-scarp; glacis, casemate[obs3]; vallation[obs3], vanfos[obs3]. buttress, abutment; shore &c. (support) 215. breastwork, banquette, curtain, mantlet[obs3], bastion, redan[obs3], ravelin[obs3]; vauntmure[obs3]; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... masonry, enormously thick and of great height; its two extremities being surmounted by pointed towers, connected by a covered walk along the top of the wall, which, even at that height, is fully six feet wide and nearly a hundred in length. This was the rampart behind which the Greifensteins had dwelt in security through many generations, in the stormy days of the robber barons. So sure were they of their safety, that they had built their dwelling-place on the other side ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford

... standards of green. It sometimes seems as if one can almost see her selecting the easiest point of attack, marshalling her forces, running her parallels with Boadicea-like skill, and carrying her streaming banners, more real than Macbeth's "Birnam-Wood" to crowning rampart and lofty parapet. ...
— The Hudson - Three Centuries of History, Romance and Invention • Wallace Bruce

... & Co. druggists, corner of Rampart and Hospital streets, New Orleans, in the "Commercial Bulletin," ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... women and children. They had among them sixty firelocks, and as many pikes and swords. Round the agent's house they threw up with great speed a wall of turf fourteen feet in height and twelve in thickness. The space enclosed was about half an acre. Within this rampart all the arms, the ammunition and the provisions of the settlement were collected, and several huts of thin plank were built. When these preparations were completed, the men of Kenmare began to make vigorous reprisals on their Irish neighbours, ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... room was a terrace of the Italian kind, the four pillars of which were wreathed with vine branches, while its vine-clad arbour and wide parapet were overgrown with moss and wild flowers. A little hedge of hawthorn, which had been respected for ages, made a kind of rampart around the fisherman's premises, and defended his house better than deep moats and castellated walls could have done. The boldest roisterers of the place would have preferred to fight before the parsonage and in ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - NISIDA—1825 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... man, swung from column of fours into battalion front, halted, and then—cr-r-rick! boooo-m-m-m!—came to order arms. The sides of the room were lined with a solid rampart of white and gray and gold. Barclay was aware of the First Sergeants, scurrying from their positions to report, of their voices, and those of the Majors and the Adjutant, and, finally ...
— The Lieutenant-Governor • Guy Wetmore Carryl

... a ruinous state, the palisade on the water side broken down, and three breaches in the rampart. In the driving rain, urged by the sick Laudonniere, the men, bedrenched and disheartened, labored as they might to strengthen their defences. Their muster-roll shows but a beggarly array. "Now," says Laudonniere, "let them which have bene bold to say ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various

... departed, marching to a certain place that men call the Sacred Hill, that is distant from the city about three miles, and is on the other side of the river Anio. There they made a camp with trench and rampart, and abode in this place many days, doing nothing either for good or evil. But when the nobles saw what had been done, they were in great fear what this thing might mean, but doubted not that Rome must ...
— Stories From Livy • Alfred Church

... stone, and had a large lock attached; but I could see no trace of any human being. I proceeded on from thence and saw a hillock, the earth of which was in colour black as surma; [348] when I passed over the hillock, I saw a large city, surrounded with a rampart with bastions at regular intervals; and a river of great width flowed on one side of the city. Proceeding on, I reached a gate, and invoking God, I entered it. I saw a person who was dressed in the garment ...
— Bagh O Bahar, Or Tales of the Four Darweshes • Mir Amman of Dihli

... sides of this little phalanx, which they vainly attempted to shake, although the ordnance was rapidly weakening its strength. File after file the men were swept down, their bodies making a horrid rampart for their resolute brothers in arms, who, however, rendered desperate, at last threw away their most cumbrous accoutrements, and crying to their leader, "Freedom or death!" followed him sword in hand, and bearing like a torrent upon the enemy's ranks, cut their way through the forest. ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter

... hoisted on the cliff?" The doctor shook his head, and Steve gazed up and along the top of the long, level height, which looked like a mighty rampart at the foot ...
— Steve Young • George Manville Fenn

... entrenchment and rampart between England and Wales, 100 m. long, extending from Flintshire as far as the mouth of the Wye; said to have been thrown up by Offa, king of Mercia, about the year 780, to confine the marauding Welsh ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... the north-east, the gateway 120 feet long; whence, turning to the right, you mount a terrace, running parallel to the rampart till you come to the angle, on which there is a round tower, now called the Witches' Tower, from which the terrace runs away to the left at right angles, and continues on a level parallel to the rampart, which ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, - Issue 553, June 23, 1832 • Various

... Marching from Dublin south, on September 23d, his army took forts in Wicklow, Arklow, and Enniscorthy; and on October 1st the general encamped before Wexford, an important seaport at the southeastern corner of the island. The town was strong, with a rampart fifteen feet thick, a garrison of over two thousand men, one hundred cannon, and in the harbor two ships ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various

... here at dark. But hide yourselves under the rampart, or ye will be drenched. What a storm! Hail ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz

... of the belfry tower behind the rampart of sandbags the grey-painted 77 mm. showed its square shield, and a crew of five ...
— With Haig on the Somme • D. H. Parry

... time the men were pouring in behind and fast filling the ditch. A fire-ball came crashing over the rampart, rolled down the grass slope and lay sputtering, and in the infernal glare he saw all his comrades' faces—every detail of their dress down to the moulded pattern on their buttons. "Fourth! Fourth!" some one shouted, and then voice ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch

... blue sky yielded to the on-sweep of clouds. Like angry surf the pale gleams of gray, amid the purple of that scudding front, swept beyond the eastern rampart of the valley. The purple deepened to black. Broad sheets of lightning flared over the western wall. There were not yet any ropes or zigzag streaks darting down through the gathering darkness. The storm center was still ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey

... the island of Elba: that he held in execration such an execrable crime, and would not commit it; and that, after having once saved the life of Napoleon, he came to place himself near his person, to make a rampart for him with his body in case of necessity. He delivered to the grand Marshal a memorial of Maubreuil's, and divers papers, of which the Emperor directed me to give him an account. I examined them all ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon

... the Gauls invaded Rome, a detachment in single file scaled the hill on which the capitol stood, so silently that the foremost man reached the summit without being challenged; but while striding over the rampart, some sacred geese were disturbed, and by their cackle aroused the guard. Marcus Manlius rushed to the wall, and hustled the Gaul over, thus saving ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer

... became a fashionable pose. When strolling actors played American airs in a Toronto theater they were hissed; and when a Canadian stood up to those airs, he was hissed. Special interests became intrenched behind a triple rampart of fashion and administration and loyalty. Details of the revolt need not be given here. A great love is always the best cure for a puny affection—a Juliet for a Rosalind; and when a pure patriotism ...
— The Canadian Commonwealth • Agnes C. Laut

... abruptly recalled Agricola, and his northern conquests—all beyond the Tweed, if not all beyond Cheviot—were abandoned. The next advance followed more than fifty years later. About A.D. 140 the district up to the Firth of Forth was definitely annexed, and a rampart with forts along it, the Wall of Antoninus Pius, was drawn from sea to sea (see BRITAIN: Roman; and GRAHAM'S DYKE). At the same time the Roman forts at Ardoch, north of Dunblane, Carpow near Abernethy, and perhaps one or two ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various

... part of an hour to get our rude rock rampart in such condition as to satisfy the military taste of the Chevalier even measurably, and during that time we toiled as men must when their lives are soon to depend upon the result of ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish

... cloud-like peak, which formed the most distant object in the view, ran the imaginary line that divided Italy from the regions of the north. Drawing nearer, and holding its course on the opposite shore, the eye embraced the range of rampart-like rocks that beetle over Villeneuve and Chillon, the latter a snow-white pile that seemed to rest partly on the land and partly, on the water. On the vast debris of the mountains clustered the ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper

... which the trees are poppy and mandragora, all thronged with bats; this is the only winged thing that exists there. A river, called the Somnambule, flows close by, and there are two springs at the gates, one called Wakenot, and the other Nightlong. The rampart is lofty and of many colours, in the rainbow style. The gates are not two, as Homer says, but four, of which two look on to the plain Stupor; one of them is of iron, the other of pottery, and we were told that these are used by the grim, the murderous, ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata

... feet in diameter, and originally about 40 feet high. The wall is 15 feet thick at the base, and 13 feet at the level of the rampart walk—dimensions of unusual solidity even at the Norman period, and rare indeed in England under Henry III. or the Edwards. The battlements have been replaced by a modern wall, but the junction with the old work may ...
— The Hawarden Visitors' Hand-Book - Revised Edition, 1890 • William Henry Gladstone

... of the Gulf of Gascony were the "Sinus Aquitanicus" of the ancients. A colossal rampart of rocks and sand dunes stretches all the way from the Gironde to the Bidassoa, without a harbor worthy of the name save at Bayonne and Saint-Jean-de-Luz. Here the Atlantic waves pound, in time of storm, with all the fury with which they break upon ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various

... the garrison, and the inhabitants, whom the shouts and artillery of the barbarians had at first affrighted, recovering courage through the imminence of danger, and the necessity of conquering or dying, ran upon the rampart, and vigorously repulsed the assailants; overthrowing their ladders, or tumbling their enemies headlong from them, insomuch that not a man of them entered the town, and great numbers of them lay dead or dying ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden

... foundation; partition; defense, breastwork, rampart, battlement, bulwark, parapet, fortification. Associated Words: mural, murage dado, buttress, coping, intramural, wainscot, alcove, niche, abutment, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming

... Bastile, crossed the Pont d'Austerlitz, gained the Boulevard de l'Hopital and continued walking to the Invalides, to the Avenues Jena and Wagram, and from the Place des Ternes, all along the exterior rampart. And as I walked, my entangled thoughts gradually disengaged ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 2 • Various

... is seen; all smooth The rampart and the path, reflecting nought But the rock's sullen hue. "If here we wait For some to question," said the bard, "I fear Our choice may ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri

... and the highest one hundred and twenty cubits in height. But, in the vicinity of the gate of Benjamin, the wall arose by no means from the margin of the fosse. On the contrary, between the level of the ditch and the basement of the rampart sprang up a perpendicular cliff of two hundred and fifty cubits, forming part of the precipitous Mount Moriah. So that when Simeon and his associates arrived on the summit of the tower called Adoni-Bezek-the ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... directing the head of the jolly-boat right towards the face of the frowning cliff nearest to them; but still, for some time, there was no increase in their rate of speed, the short chopping waves that formed the backwater of the surges, which had already expended their strength on the rocky rampart of the coast, militating against any slight advantage they gained by the current ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson

... dire a calamity. The Russians, who were prepared for the explosion, waving their swords, with loud outcries rushed in at the breach. But the Kezanians, soon recovering from their consternation, with their breasts and their artillery presented a new rampart, and beat back the foe. Thus, day after day, the horrible carnage continued. Within the city and without the city, death held high carnival. There were famine and pestilence and misery in all imaginable forms within the walls. In the camp of the besiegers, there were ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott

... the castle. One to the north, leading to a rampart having many large cannon. Another westwards, leading to the Bazar, called the Cichery gate, within which is the judgment-seat of the casi, or chief judge in all matters of law; and beside this gate are two or three murderers, or very large pieces of brass cannon, one of which ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr

... in less than a month. I therefore determined, as soon as possible, to complete my breach in the wall, and escape without the aid of any one. The thing was possible; for I had twisted the hair of my mattress into a rope, which I meant to tie to a cannon, and descend the rampart, after which I might endeavour to swim across the Elbe, gain the Saxon frontiers, and ...
— The Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck - Vol. 2 (of 2) • Baron Trenck

... hilly ranges, lying parallel to the frith, and intersected by the rivers Ness, Nairn, Findhorn, Lossie, and Spey running across it to the sea. The grounds behind the lowlands appear, as seen from the coast, to be only a narrow ridge of bold alpine heights, rising like a rampart to guard the orchards, and woods, and fields: but these really form long and broad mountain masses, receding, in all the wildness and intricacy of highland arrangement, to a distant summit line. Some of the broad clifts and long narrow vales of these mountains form ...
— The Rain Cloud - or, An Account of the Nature, Properties, Dangers and Uses of Rain • Anonymous

... lucky enough to find a tree which served them as a citadel against the assaults of a certain fox. He, one night, having made the round of the rampart and seen each turkey watching like a sentinel, exclaimed, "What! These people laugh at me, do they? And do they think that they alone are exempt from the common rule? No! by ...
— The Original Fables of La Fontaine - Rendered into English Prose by Fredk. Colin Tilney • Jean de la Fontaine

... be jovial, as if people, after an oppressively expensive dinner, can be jovial to order. The wine goes round, and laudations go with it; the professed diners-out enquire the vintage; the Honourable Mr Sniftky intrenches himself behind a rampart of fruit dishes, speaking only when he is spoken to, and glancing inquisitively at the several speakers, as much as to say, "What a fellow you are, to talk;" the host essays a bon-mot, or tells a story bordering on the ideal, which he thinks is fashionable, and shows ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various

... experience. The knowledge came upon me by degrees. As I began to go forward with the hand of my estranged companion, a world of tumbled stones was visible, pillared with the weedy uprights of the staging: overhead, a flat roof of green: a little in front, the sea-wall, like an unfinished rampart. And presently in our upward progress, Bob motioned me to leap upon a stone; I looked to see if he were possibly in earnest, and he only signed to me the more imperiously. Now the block stood six feet high; ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... sun, so that twilight seems already to have fallen. Observing that the burghers, with their wives and children, the work of the day being done, are all wending toward the western gate, he goes along with the stream till, passing underneath the heavy portcullis and through the outer rampart, he finds himself in the plain outside, across which a rugged bridle-path leads to a large quadrangular meadow, rough and more or less worn, where a considerable crowd has already assembled. This is the Allerwiese, or public pleasure-ground of the town. Here there are not only high festivities ...
— German Culture Past and Present • Ernest Belfort Bax

... hastened up by a back staircase to defend his sovereign; and, with the aid of some of the gentlemen who had come with the Marshal de Noailles, drew the king back into a recess formed by a window; and raised a rampart of benches in front of him, and one still more trustworthy of their own bodies. They would gladly have attacked the rioters and driven them back, but were restrained by Louis himself. "Put up your swords," said he; "this crowd is excited rather than wicked." And he addressed those who ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge

... shade of anxiety clouded the blue eyes as she went round to the back of the cabin and looked toward the dense forest which bounded her vision on the north. Stout-hearted though she was, Goodwife Pepperell could never forget the terrors which lay concealed behind that mysterious rampart of green. Not only were there wolves and deer and many other wild creatures hidden in its depths, but it sheltered also the perpetual menace of the Indians. Toward the east, at some distance from the cabin, corn-fields stretched to salt meadows, and beyond, across the bay, she ...
— The Puritan Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins

... carried from point to point in a litter, cheering on his men, while the three Amazons exposed themselves fearlessly to the fire. The ladder parties, however, rushed forward unchecked and, in spite of the opposition of the enemy, scaled the stockade at one point, and won a footing on the rampart of earth behind it. Others pressed after them and, soon, a destructive fire was opened upon the crowded mass, pent up between the outer stockade and the next. The Burmese method of forming stockade behind stockade was useful, against a foe of no greater dash and energy than ...
— On the Irrawaddy - A Story of the First Burmese War • G. A. Henty

... upon the Friant division. The squares remained immovable, keeping up a continuous fire, enveloped in smoke, and scarcely distinguishing the mass of the enemies who were falling at their feet. When the clouds began to disperse, a rampart of corpses surrounded all the French corps; in the distance were seen the enemy in flight. Kleber order a pursuit, which was continued during three days. When the general-in-chief at length reached the ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt

... Port Arthur during the Russo-Japanese war, thousands of lives were expended upon the retention and assault of 203 Metre Hill. It was the most blood-stained spot upon the whole of the Eastern Asiatic battlefield. General Nogi threw thousands after thousands of his warriors against this rampart while the Russians defended it no less resolutely. It was captured and re-captured; in fact, the fighting round this eminence was so intense that it appeared to the outsider to be more important to both sides ...
— Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War • Frederick A. Talbot

... and red, appeared before the fort in August, made their camp behind the ridge of a hill that overlooked it, and marched towards the rampart; but being met by a discharge of cannon-shot, they gave up all thoughts of an immediate assault, began a fusillade under cover of darkness, and kept the garrison on the ...
— A Half-Century of Conflict, Volume II • Francis Parkman

... series of corners radiating from a central irregular street. A few mansions were on the hillside to the right, brush-crowded sand banks on the left; the perfect curve of hills, thick with pine woods and dense green undergrowth, rose high above and around all, a rampart of splendid symmetry. ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton

... the interior of the town has few attractions in itself, we resolved to skirt it, and continue our way along the ramparts. They extend a long way, and are extremely pleasant in their whole extent. Remnants of ancient towers and rampart walls appear here and there, the river runs clear and bright beneath, and beyond are gently undulating hills; while, occasionally, heaps of grey rocks, of peculiar forms, some looking like temples, others like towers, rise suddenly from their ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello

... terminated, for the English were so penned up against the wall that there was no footing for more to join them. The suddenness of the attack drove the enemy back some little distance, and this enabled a score of those upon the ladders to make their way onto the rampart. ...
— A March on London • G. A. Henty

... thirteenth day of the siege and the fourth anniversary of Burgoyne's surrender, a red-coated {134} drummer boy stands on the rampart and beats a parley. A white flag is raised on the British works. The roar of the cannon ceases. Cornwallis sends an officer to ask that fighting be ...
— Hero Stories from American History - For Elementary Schools • Albert F. Blaisdell

... rampart is the highway leading to Brussels, and here," the captain rushed over the plain of Waterloo, "here in the grass we have the Forest of Soignies. On the highway to Brussels, and in front of the forest, the English are stationed—you ...
— Tales of Two Countries • Alexander Kielland

... to run swiftly enough into the harbour, because the mouth of it was too narrow, took shelter under a very spacious terrace, which had been thrown up against the walls to unload goods, on the side of which a small rampart had been raised during this war, to prevent the enemy from possessing themselves of it. Here the fight was again renewed with more vigour than ever, and lasted till late at night. The Carthaginians suffered very much, and the ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin

... capital of Persia, stands on a plain near the Elburz Mountains, 70 m. S. of the Caspian Sea; is surrounded by a bastioned rampart and ditch, 10 m. in circumference, and entered by 12 gateways; much of it is of modern construction and handsomely laid out with parks, wide streets, and imposing buildings, notable among which are the shah's palace ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... and after a ride of two or three hours over a rough country, we entered the fortifications of this chief citadel of Greece. It is now guarded by a handful of soldiers, two or three neglected cannons thrust their muzzles idly over the rampart, and shepherds with their flocks roam at will within. A sharp wind was sweeping over the summit, and the mountains and islands—Parnassus, Cyllene, Helicon, Pentclicon, Salamis, AEgina—were veiled ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various

... prayer like that in this country. The soul went streaming from her mouth like blown smoke. And again, one night, very late, I was going to bed, and leaned out of my window for air. Before me, across back yards, leafless trees, and a litter of packing-cases and straw, rose up a dark rampart of houses, in the midst of it a lit window. I saw a poorly furnished sitting-room—a table with a sewing machine, a paraffin lamp, a chair with an antimacassar. A man in his shirt sleeves sat there by the table, smoking a pipe. ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett



Words linked to "Rampart" :   embankment, fortification, merlon, earthwork, munition, battlement, crenelation, Antonine Wall, bailey, crenellation, fraise, Great Wall, Great Wall of China, wall, Chinese Wall



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