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Fortress   Listen
noun
Fortress  n.  (pl. fortresses)  A fortified place; a large and permanent fortification, sometimes including a town; a fort; a castle; a stronghold; a place of defense or security.
Synonyms: Fortress, Fortification, Castle, Citadel. A fortress is constructed for military purposes only, and is permanently garrisoned; a fortification is built to defend harbors, cities, etc.; a castle is a fortress of early times which was ordinarily a palatial dwelling; a citadel is the stronghold of a fortress or city, etc.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Fortress" Quotes from Famous Books



... like a prince his triumph would achieve; And like a miser in the dark his joys would hide. Love is most bold: He leads his dreams like armed men in line; Yet when the siege is set, and he must speak, Calling the fortress to resign Its treasure, valiant love grows weak, And hardly dares his purpose to unfold. Less with his faltering lips than with his eyes He claims the longed-for prize: Love fain would tell it all, yet leaves ...
— Music and Other Poems • Henry van Dyke

... walked along the ramparts of the fortress with a firm step. As he passed by the barracks of the Porta Molina, where the Tyrolese prisoners were confined, they fell on their knees and wept aloud. Andreas turned quickly to Manifesti the, priest. "Your reverence," he said, "you will distribute ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach

... had failed; the Pretender had been consigned to a fortress; the eagle had found a home in the public slaughter-house of Boulogne-sur-Mer, which it adorned for many years, and where it fed as it had never probably fed before; and these, the faithful followers, le Colonel Voisil, ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al

... Espana asks me for bronze artillery with which to fortify the fortress of San Juan de Ulua, sending me twenty-four thousand pesos for the expense of it. Although the ships have arrived so late that I have had no time to cast it in the quantity and of the quality that he asks, I am sending him the equivalent ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXIII, 1629-30 • Various

... students and the men of letters there is unquestionably an organised conspiracy, which has perhaps leaders outside the literary circle. . . . The police are powerless. They arrest any one they can lay hands on. About eighty people have already been sent to the fortress and examined, but all this leads to no practical result, because the revolutionary ideas have taken possession of all classes, all ages, all professions, and are publicly expressed in the streets, in the barracks, and in the Ministries. I believe the police itself is carried away by ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace

... to Denham and me, "you two deserve great credit for hunting out the old underground tank of this ancient fortress. Now, with plenty of provisions and fodder for the horses, we might hold this place for any length of time. I think the General ought to know of it, and place two or three companies of foot here. I see that good shelter might be contrived by drawing ...
— Charge! - A Story of Briton and Boer • George Manville Fenn

... built the sewers built also a strong fortress on the top of one of the hills. This fortress was called the Capitol, and the hill was called the Capitoline Hill. He also ordered that a wall should be built all around the seven hills to enclose the city, but it was not ...
— Rafael in Italy - A Geographical Reader • Etta Blaisdell McDonald

... we might manage a lion from this fortress. Unless the fellow found the stage, he could hardly board us, and a plank or two thrown from that, would make a draw-bridge of it at once. Look yonder! there is something moving on the bank, or my eyes are ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper

... back to the time of Sultan Selim I. This Sultan conquered Egypt and over-threw the dynasty of the Mamelukes. He found at Cairo the Caliph Mohammed XII., and brought him as a prisoner to Constantinople. He was kept at the fortress of the Seven Towers for several years, and then sent back to Egypt with a small pension. While Selim was in Cairo, the Shereeff of Mecca presented to him the keys of the holy cities, and accepted him as their protector. ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various

... 7-pounder toy guns and six machine guns, but the spirit of the men and the resource of their leaders made up for every disadvantage. Colonel Vyvyan and Major Panzera planned the defences, and the little trading town soon began to take on the appearance of a fortress. ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle

... spinnerets and continued throughout the interior of the burrow. It is easy to imagine how useful this cleverly-manufactured lining must be for preventing landslip or warping, for maintaining cleanliness and for helping her claws to scale the fortress. ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre

... Michel sent ships to help convey the armies of William to Hastings, and when the yoke of the Normans on England was young two sons of the Conqueror waged battle here, and Henry besieged Robert or Robert besieged Henry. When Philip Augustus burned it and it was the only Norman fortress that withstood Henry the Fifth, and many years later, in Maupassant's "Notre Coeur," a certain Madame de Burne entered a room of one of its hotels and there blew out a candle. But above all I recall, and ninety-five out ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice

... the strength or weakness of a fortress is always measured by the estimate and counterpoise of the forces that attack it —for a man might reasonably enough despise two culverins, that would be a madman to abide a battery of thirty pieces of ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne

... be the first sounds that disturbed his repose while a guest of the Baron of Bradwardine. The notes which suggested this vision continued, and waxed louder, until Edward awoke in earnest. The illusion, however, did not seem entirely dispelled. The apartment was in the fortress of Ian nan Chaistel, but it was still the voice of Davie Gellatley that made the following lines resound ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott

... his orders, informed them that the king would pass in the course of the night by Stenay, and would be at Montmedy the next evening; he ordered General Klinglin to prepare under the guns of the fortress a camp of twelve battalions and twenty-four squadrons; the king was to reside in a chateau behind the camp: this chateau would thus serve as head quarters, and the king's position would be at once more secure and more dignified surrounded by his army. The generals did ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine

... during the fight the valiant bull hippo quitted his watery fortress and charged resolutely at his pursuers. He had broken several of their lances in his jaws, other lances had been hurled, and, falling upon the rocks, they were blunted and would not penetrate. The fight had continued for three hours, and the sun was about to set; accordingly ...
— In the Heart of Africa • Samuel White Baker

... years was at last finished. Carrying his formidable manuscript with him,—and how formidable the manuscript which melts down into three solid octavo volumes is, only writers and publishers know,—he knocked at the gate of that terrible fortress from which Lintot and Curll and Tonson looked down on the authors of an older generation. So large a work as the "History of the Rise of the Dutch Republic," offered for the press by an author as yet unknown to the British public, ...
— Memoir of John Lothrop Motley, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... now made to carry the fortress by storm. The aunts cringed before the new master and tried to prove to him that they could not be dispensed with, by treating him as if he were a child. His sisters mothered him more than ever, and Louisa began to devote a great deal of attention to her dress. She laced herself tightly ...
— Married • August Strindberg

... triangle, whose narrower point was opposite to the roadway of the bridge. The men occupying the outer lines stood with their large shields locked together so closely that they made a strong rampart or shield fortress, behind which the archers and spearmen might remain in safety while assailing their advancing foes. It was considered very important in the early part of a battle that the shield fortress should not be broken or opened, nor could such a breach be easily effected except by overpowering strength ...
— Olaf the Glorious - A Story of the Viking Age • Robert Leighton

... again, shot through a grim fortress, crossed a boundary line, and were in Switzerland. Vive Switzerland! land ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... St. Fillan the Leper. Church here since c. 550. Associated with a fortress on Dunfillan. Now ...
— Chronicles of Strathearn • Various

... half-embodied centuries of deadly sin gnawing their spleens or shrieking their infamous carouse over again. So at least I found it. Without baring myself to the charge of any sneaking kindness for bloodshedding, I may own to the fascination of the precipitous fortress-town huddled red and grey on its three red crags, and of its suggestion of all the old crimes of Italy from Ezzelino's to Borgia's, of all unhappy deaths from Pia de' Tolomei's to Vittoria's, the White Devil of Italy. Its air seemed "blood-boltered" (like the shade of the hunted Banquho), ...
— Earthwork Out Of Tuscany • Maurice Hewlett

... Syrian plains and deserts. Of Christian knights and ladies also, and their loves and sufferings in England and the East; of the fearful lord of the Assassins whom the Franks called Old Man of the Mountain, and his fortress city, Masyaf. Of the great-hearted, if at times cruel Saladin and his fierce Saracens; of the rout at Hattin itself, on whose rocky height the Holy Rood was set up as a standard and captured, to be seen no more by Christian ...
— The Brethren • H. Rider Haggard

... English and the French. But in 1744 fighting began again in earnest. The French and Indians attacked the New England frontier towns and killed many people. But the New Englanders, on their part, won a great success. After the French lost Acadia they built a strong fortress on the island of Cape Breton. To this they gave the name of Louisburg. The New Englanders fitted out a great expedition and captured Louisburg without much help from the English. But at the close of the war (1748) the fortress was given back to the French, to the disgust ...
— A Short History of the United States • Edward Channing

... brethren, that the voice from those lips dry with thirst, which was low and weak, was the voice that spoke to the sea, 'Peace! be still,' and there was a calm; that said to demons, 'Come out of him!' and they evacuated their fortress; that cast its command into the grave of Lazarus, and he came forth; and which one day all that are in the grave shall hear, and hearing shall obey. 'Give Me to drink.' 'I that ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren

... like a coward, giving you up in this way. Yes—giving you up; for you have a traitor in your fortress who has offered me the keys, who offers them to me now. But I do not trust you; and I can't trust myself. The curse of luxury is on you, the curse of ambition on me. If we had found each the other younger; if I had lived less alone, more in the ordinary habit of dependence upon others; if you had ...
— The Great God Success • John Graham (David Graham Phillips)

... decks. The fleet was entering Hampton Roads. Upon the right, basking in the golden sunset as in the light of an eternal calm, a stupendous fortress lay, like some vast monster of old time, asleep. Frank shivered with strange sensations as he gazed upon that immense and powerful stronghold of force; trying to realize that, dreaming so quietly there in the sunset, those gilded walls, which seemed those of an ancient city of ...
— The Drummer Boy • John Trowbridge

... Zoological Gardens was begun in 1828, and amongst the first arrivals were the lions from the Tower, for, from ancient days, lions and bears kept the old royal fortress lively. Great sums of money have been spent in securing fine specimens, and now Britons have the satisfaction of knowing that our Zoo is second to none. Amongst recent arrivals at the gardens were two young gorillas from Western Africa, who reached ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various

... has imagination, she has in hours of doubt some sense of humiliation in the vast surrender of marriage. This accounts for certain of the cases of celibate women, who miss the complete life and have no ready traitor within the guarded fortress to open the way to love. Some such instinctive limitations beset Leila Grey. The sorrow of a great, a nearer and constant affection came to her aid. To think of anything like love, even if again it questioned her, was out of the question while before her eyes James ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell

... force had been making a demonstration against the narrow bridge of rock that led to the fortress, and had succeeded so well, according to a prearranged plan, that almost the entire garrison had crossed the plateau to that side, when shouts of triumph arose from the ravines. The enemy had entered them and was smashing the boats of Kaupepee to fragments. That cry of defiance was ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner

... just captured the fortress of Sisauranum, when he was told of his wife's arrival; whereupon he immediately ordered his army to turn back, disregarding the interests of the Empire for the sake of his private feelings. Certain matters had indeed happened, as ...
— The Secret History of the Court of Justinian • Procopius

... deeper in the dark. What may be the third objection to the King of the Thieves?" "The third objection," said Father Brown, still in meditation, "is this bank we are sitting on. Why does our brigand-courier call this his chief fortress and the Paradise of Thieves? It is certainly a soft spot to fall on and a sweet spot to look at. It is also quite true, as he says, that it is invisible from valley and peak, and is therefore a hiding-place. ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton

... household bread; Ask we for flocks these shingles dry, And well the mountain might reply,— "To you, as to your sires of yore, Belong the target and claymore! I give you shelter in my breast, Your own good blades must win the rest." Pent in this fortress of the North, Think'st thou we will not sally forth, To spoil the spoiler as we may, And from the robber rend the prey? Aye, by my soul!—While on yon plain The Saxon rears one shock of grain; While of ten thousand herds, there strays But one ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous

... happy face. While looking upon his countenance, radiant with a serene energy, while listening to his voice, the tone of which has, so to speak, the accent of goodness, we see that the soul has remained entire in the half-destroyed covering. The fortress is a little damaged, as Father Chaufour says, but ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... exciting the King of the Huns to invade the Eastern Empire; and a trifling incident soon became the motive, or pretence, of a destructive war. Under the faith of the treaty of Margus, a free market was held on the northern side of the Danube, which was protected by a Roman fortress surnamed Constantia. A troop of Barbarians violated the commercial security, killed or dispersed the unsuspecting traders, and levelled the fortress with the ground. The Huns justified this outrage as an act of reprisal, alleged that the Bishop of Margus had entered their territories ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various

... prehistoric times, the fierce conflicts of ancient Aryan races, Pandavas and Kauravas, around which the poetic genius of India has woven the wonderful epos of the Mahabharata. Only a couple of miles south of the modern city, the walls of the Purana Kilat, the fortress built by Humayun, cover the site but have not obliterated the ancient name of Indraprasthra, or Indrapat, the city founded by the Pandavas themselves, when Yudhisthira celebrated their final victory by performing ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol

... Charles XII, killed by a musket ball, when besieging a "petty fortress" in Norway in the winter of ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift

... are doing. The nobles, weak and exhausted, have fled for refuge to the famous fortress of the Holy Trinity,[1] and await our arrival, as men wait the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... an agricultural and industrial army, or at least enough specialists to form such an army out of the available material in the country. For every battle fought a road was made;[A] for every rebel fortress shelled a factory was built, a harbor developed, or more miles of fallow ...
— In Morocco • Edith Wharton

... TICONDEROGA (May 10).—Ethan Allen and Benedict Arnold led a small company of volunteers to surprise this fortress. As Allen rushed into the sally-port, a sentinel snapped his gun at him and fled. Making his way to the commander's quarters, Allen, in a voice of thunder, ordered him to surrender. "By whose authority?" exclaimed the frightened officer. "In the name of the Great Jehovah ...
— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.

... came a feeling akin to despair. The brightness of nature served rather to convert the ship into a prison. Storm and stress, whether of the elements or of the less candid foes who lurked unseen on the neighboring shores, made the Kansas a veritable fortress, a steel refuge seemingly impregnable. But the knowledge of the vessel's helplessness, and of the equally desperate hazard which beset her inmates, was rendered only more poignant by the smiling ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy

... the stronghold in which he had long been a prisoner. He had been disappointed that the command of the large contingent of the nizam was given to Colonel Arthur Wellesley; and when after the capture of the fortress the same officer obtained the governorship, Baird judged himself to have been treated with injustice and disrespect. He afterwards received the thanks of parliament and of the East India Company for his gallant bearing ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various

... such hill in the basin of the Rejang (Sarawak), Bukit Batu by name, consists of a mass of porphyry some 1500 feet in height, and several miles in diameter, with very precipitous sides. This has been used again and again as a place of refuge by recalcitrant offenders, being so strong a natural fortress that it has never been possible to carry it by assault. On the last occasion on which Bukit Batu was used in this way, two Iban chiefs established themselves on the hill and defied the government of Sarawak ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall

... built up in the West, For what purpose the wind knows best, Who changes his mind continually. And the empty other half of the sky Seemed in its silence as if it knew What, any moment, might look through A chance gap in that fortress massy:— Through its fissures you got hints Of the flying moon, by the shifting tints, Now, a dull lion-color, now, brassy Burning to yellow, and whitest yellow, Like furnace-smoke just ere flames bellow, All a-simmer with intense strain To let her through,—then blank again, At the hope of her ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke

... designed for the French forces on the Ohio. The great loss sustained by the enemy at this place facilitated the reduction of Fort Duquesne, against which General Forbes was advancing with great vigilance and considerable force. This fortress the enemy, after a few skirmishes, determined to abandon; and having burnt their houses, and destroyed their works, fell down the Ohio river in boats to their strong-holds erected beyond the Cherokee mountains. No sooner was the British flag erected on Fort Duquesne, ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 2 • Alexander Hewatt

... steeps, and beckoned to the horsemen behind to come on; and the driver repeatedly cracked his whip. Silence settled down on the party within the carriage; for all understood that they drew near the fortress. In silence they wound through the defile, till all egress seemed barred by a lofty crag. The road, however, passed round its base, and disclosed to view a small basin among the mountains, in the midst of which rose the steep which bore the fortress of Joux. At the foot ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau

... well avenged their insulted faith and country at Alcazarquibir, and in that low shady quinta, embowered amongst those tall alcornoques, once dwelt John de Castro, the strange old viceroy of Goa, who pawned the hairs of his dead son's beard to raise money to repair the ruined wall of a fortress threatened by the heathen of Ind; those crumbling stones which stand before the portal, deeply graven, not with "runes," but things equally dark, Sanscrit rhymes from the Vedas, were brought by him from Goa, the most brilliant scene of his ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow

... for his skill and ingenuity as a builder, they may be seen from what follows. He was born at Melassa, but recognizing the natural advantages of Halicarnassus as a fortress, and seeing that it was suitable as a trading centre and that it had a good harbour, he fixed his residence there. The place had a curvature like that of the seats in a theatre. On the lowest tier, along the harbour, was built ...
— Ten Books on Architecture • Vitruvius

... rights. But, like most general pictures, its impression may be diminished by its generality. We shall therefore make no apology for introducing, on the authority of an Englishman who had been twelve years in Poland, a few facts to give the character of precision and truth to the outline. In the fortress of Zamosc twelve state prisoners were found, some of whom had been incarcerated for six years without having undergone a trial, and whose names were only known to the commander of the castle. In the dungeons of Marienanski, in Warsaw, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, Number 489, Saturday, May 14, 1831 • Various

... the lad held his stirrup for him, and gently restrained little Gertrude, who was in danger of being trampled on by the pawing charger, Lord Montacute looked for a moment very intently at the pair, and then let his glance wander for a moment over the grand fortress of Dynevor and the ...
— The Lord of Dynevor • Evelyn Everett-Green

... the conditions of the armistice, only verbally denouncing the boy as he wriggled out of his fortress; I did not understand what he said, I only gathered by his grimaces and gestures that he was annoyed over the ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai

... latter structure is the most important object in the town, to which, in all probability, it gave origin. The remains surround a considerable extent of ground, and prove it to have been a very strong and important fortress. Borlase, who examined the building with great attention about the middle of the last century, thus ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, - Issue 553, June 23, 1832 • Various

... club-room, stopped short, and with a hollow trembling voice said, "Mr. Selwyn! Mr. Walpole's compliments to you, and he has got a house-breaker for you!" A squadron immediately came to reinforce me, and having summoned Moreland with the keys of the fortress, we marched into the house to search for more of the gang. Colonel Seabright with his sword drawn went first, and then I, exactly the figure of Robinson Crusoe, with a candle and lanthorn in my hand, a carbine upon my shoulder, ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole

... great ring mountain Plinius, more than thirty miles across, and bearing an unusual resemblance to a fortification. Mr. T. G. Elger, the celebrated English selenographer, says of Plinius that, at sunrise, "it reminds one of a great fortress or redoubt erected to command the passage between the Mare Tranquilitatis and the Mare Serenitatis." But, of course, the resemblance is purely fanciful. Men, even though they dwelt in the moon, would not build ...
— Pleasures of the telescope • Garrett Serviss

... advice is to remain here. The logs of this blockhouse are still green, and it will not be easy to set them on fire; and I can make good the place, bating a burning, ag'in a tribe. The Iroquois nation cannot dislodge me from this fortress, so long as we can keep the flames off it. The Sergeant is now 'camped on some island, and will not come in until morning. If we hold the block, we can give him timely warning, by firing rifles, for instance; and should he determine to attack the savages, as a man of his temper will ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper

... the document proceeded from the coterie to which he belonged. From that moment he was carefully watched, till one night he was unexpectedly roused from his sleep by a gendarme and conveyed to the fortress. ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace

... cutting 500 feet deep. The cliffs drop down quite perpendicularly for 200 feet, and the remaining distance to the bed of the stream is a rough slope, quite bare in places, and in others densely grown over with trees; but on every side the fortress-like scarps are as stern and bare as any that face the ocean. Looking north or south the gorge seems completely shut in. There is much the same effect when steaming through the Kyles of Bute, for there the ship seems to be ...
— Yorkshire Painted And Described • Gordon Home

... more of Gibraltar for another six hundred years. Algeciras had become a fortress of great strength and magnificence, and Gibraltar was a mere sort of outlying post. Ferdinand the Fourth of Spain besieged Algeciras for years, and could not take it; but a part of his army attacked Gibraltar, and captured ...
— Held Fast For England - A Tale of the Siege of Gibraltar (1779-83) • G. A. Henty

... that these unregenerate spirits had still a lurking desire for an occasional social evening at the Coach and Horses, in spite of the charms of a gothic chimney, and a porch that was massive enough for the dungeon of a mediaeval fortress. Miss Granger and the curate played into each other's hands, and between the two the model villagers underwent a kind of moral dissection. It was dreary work altogether; and Daniel Granger had been guilty of more than one yawn before it was all over, even though he had the new delight ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon

... climb. Accordingly, Alfred urged the pony across the flat plain of the ancient riverbed toward the nearest and only break in the cliff. Fifteen miles below was the regular passage. Otherwise the upper mesa was as impregnable as an ancient fortress. The Mexicans had by this time succeeded in roping some of the scattered animals, and were streaming over the brow of the hill, shouting wildly. Alfred looked back and grinned. Tom ...
— Blazed Trail Stories - and Stories of the Wild Life • Stewart Edward White

... side were forty-seven disciplined men splendidly armed, and ensconced moreover in a building possessing for the purpose of the hour the strength of a fortress. It stood on the brow of a hill overlooking the country in every direction; it consisted of two storeys with four windows in each, in front and rere; each gable being also pierced by a pair of windows. There were six little children in the house when the police ...
— Speeches from the Dock, Part I • Various

... defeat of Guthrum, he gave hostages to Alfred; and it is probable that, if any treaty was made between them, it was made immediately after the battle; and not that Alfred came from his fortress of AEthelingay to meet Guthrum at Cirencester, where his army lay ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 197, August 6, 1853 • Various

... for that fresh check by devastating Lower Styria. He crossed the Danube by a bridge of boats at Parkany; but the Poles vigorously disputed the passage with him, and he again lost more than eight thousand men taken or slain by the Christians. Shortly after, the fortress of Gran opened its gates to Kara Mustapha. The Grand Vizier barbarously put to death the officers who had signed the capitulation; he threw upon his generals the responsibility of his reverses, and thought to stifle in blood the murmurs of his accusers. The army marched in disorder ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson

... very dark: Jack and Murray and their companions, in perfect silence, climbed up the rugged precipice which formed the outworks of the island fortress. They knocked their knees and cut their shins against the sharp points of the rocks, and scratched their hands and faces with the thorny plants which grew out of the crevices; but, undeterred by these obstacles, they boldly scrambled on till they saw some ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston

... to the building of two classes of public halls—the town hall proper or Podest, and the council hall, variously called Palazzo Communale, Pubblico, or del Consiglio. The town halls, as the seat of authority, usually have a severe and fortress-like character; the Palazzo Vecchio at Florence is the most important example (1298, by Arnolfo di Cambio; Fig. 155). It is especially remarkable for its tower, which, rising 308 feet in the air, overhangs the street nearly 6feet, ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin

... the way to Fortress Monroe, he became very troublesome. The President was much engaged in conversation with the party who accompanied him, ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure

... they did so Wallace reunited his bands, and pressed hard upon them. At Linlithgow he fell upon their rear and inflicted heavy loss, and so hotly did he press them that the great army was obliged to retreat rapidly across the Border, and made no halt until it reached the fortress of Carlisle. ...
— In Freedom's Cause • G. A. Henty

... quotation here, as the record of the place is so woven into the lives of its bishops, that the brief summary of the ecclesiastics who held the see includes all we need of the history of the city. In this kingdom within a kingdom, a cathedral surrounded by a fortress, its inhabitants were naturally split into factions; the soldiers and the clergy failed to agree, and in spite of the document quoted below, there is little doubt that political rather than climatic reasons led to the removal of the cathedral. ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Salisbury - A Description of its Fabric and a Brief History of the See of Sarum • Gleeson White

... Britain. Secretary Stanton appointed him on a civil commission to report concerning the condition of the Army of the Potomac. He was introduced to President Lincoln, and made excursions to Harper's Ferry and Fortress Monroe. Concerning General McClellan, he wrote to ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns

... enemies. From the gate the wall bent around the edge of the hilltop, shutting it in. In two places had been towers for watchmen. Inside this great wall the king's palace and a few houses had been safe. Outside, other houses had been built. But in time of war all the people had flocked into the fortress. The gate had been shut. The warriors had stood on the wall ...
— Buried Cities: Pompeii, Olympia, Mycenae • Jennie Hall

... of his castle, and said, "Arthur, what requirest thou of me, since nothing remains to me in this fortress, and I have neither joy nor pleasure in it; neither ...
— Celtic Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)

... the system consists in producing a shattering of the rock by the action of a heavy mass let fall from a convenient height, and acting like a projectile of artillery upon the wall of a fortress. ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 822 - Volume XXXII, Number 822. Issue Date October 3, 1891 • Various

... what are you building? A prison; a mere garden-house of lustful delights; or a temple fortress in which God may dwell reverenced, and you may abide restful? Observe that whilst all men are thus unconsciously and habitually rearing up a permanent abode by their transient actions, every life that is better than a brute's ought to have for its aim the building up ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... chance I stumbled on a fellow I had known in Paris and Vienna—a fellow named Reschia, Lieutenant Reschia. He was on General Radetsky's staff when I knew him first—an empty-headed fellow rather; but a man's glad to meet anybody in a place like Itzia; and when he asked me to dine with him at the fortress, I was jolly glad to go. 'We've got an old file here,' he told me, 'the Italians would give anything to get hold of if they only knew where he was. I believe they'd tear the place down with their nails to get at him.' It was after dinner, and he was ridiculously ...
— In Direst Peril • David Christie Murray

... meaning myself and my two younger children, Nora of twelve and Reggie of nine—settled down for the greater part of the time in a small town on the borders of the Thuringian Forest. Small, but not in its own estimation unimportant, for it was a "Residenz," with a fortress of sufficiently ancient date to be well worth visiting, even had the view from its ramparts been far less beautiful than it was. And had the little town possessed no attractions of its own, natural or artificial, the extreme cordiality and kindness of its most hospitable ...
— Four Ghost Stories • Mrs. Molesworth

... Cavorting and gesticulating, he gazed joyfully for some moments upon this light. Then suddenly another idea seemed to attack his mind, and he stopped, with an air of being suddenly dampened. In the end he approached his home as if it were the fortress ...
— The Monster and Other Stories - The Monster; The Blue Hotel; His New Mittens • Stephen Crane

... at these walls about us and above us! They have been shaken by earthquakes, have been made A fortress, and been battered by long sieges; The iron clamps, that held the stones together, Have been wrenched from them; but they stand erect And firm, as if they had been hewn and hollowed Out of the solid rock, and were a part Of the foundations of the world itself. ... A thousand wild flowers bloom From ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux

... Orang-Utan Invented Portrait of a High-Caste Chimpanzee The Gorilla With the Wonderful Mind Tame Elephants Assisting in Tying a Wild Captive Wild Bears Quickly Recognize Protection Alaskan Brown Bear, "Ivan," Begging for Food The Mystery of Death The Steady-Nerved and Courageous Mountain Goat Fortress of an Arizona Pack-Rat Wild Chipmunks Respond to Man's Protection An Opossum Feigning Death Migration of the Golden Plover. (Map) Remarkable Village Nests of the Sociable Weaver Bird Spotted Bower-Bird, ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday

... A fortress on a rock. Gray stone, a red rock, scorched by the sun. Huge halls half Moorish in style. Walls as thick as those of a prison. Steel knights, standing with lance in hand as in Eviradnus! Old portraits of ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie

... was named Popham Bay, and the extremity of the land in sight received the appellation of Cape Don; the former after the late Rear-Admiral Sir Home Popham, K.C.B., and the latter in compliment to Lieutenant-General Sir George Don, K.C.B., the Lieutenant-Governor of the fortress of Gibraltar. The two flat-topped hills, seen from Port Essington, were also observed over the bottom of the bay, and being conspicuous objects, were named Mounts Bedwell and Roe, after the two midshipmen who ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia - Performed between the years 1818 and 1822 • Phillip Parker King

... north bank of the little river there was a fortress known as the White Castle. An irregular, many-angled pile of undressed stone heavily merloned on top, its remarkable feature was a tall donjon which a dingy white complexion made visible a great distance, despite its freckling of loopholes and apertures for machine artillery. ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace

... was to Brest, the chief naval arsenal of France. It combines a dockyard, arsenal, and fortress of the first class. Everything has been done to make the place impregnable. The harbour is situated on the north side of one of the finest havens in the world, and is almost land-locked. Around the harbour run quays of great extent, alongside of which the largest ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth

... CITY OF JERUSALEM.—The earliest name of Jerusalem appears to have been Jebus, or poetically, Salem, and its king in Abraham's time was Melchizedek. When the Hebrews took possession of Canaan, the city of Salem was burned, but the fortress remained in the hands of the Jebusites till King David took it by storm and made it the capital of his kingdom. From that time it was called Jerusalem. During the reigns of David and Solomon it attained its highest degree of power. When ten of the Jewish tribes seceded under Jeroboam they ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs

... I was sent to Norfolk on my way to Fortress Monroe. The Confederate steamer which carried us met the Federal steamer half way. When we saw again the Stars and Stripes we were overpowered with emotion, and fell with streaming eyes upon our knees on the deck, raising our arms to Heaven and offering thanks ...
— Ball's Bluff - An Episode and its Consequences to some of us • Charles Lawrence Peirson

... o'clock in the morning, the barking of dogs, and an odd random shot, gave the Bolands certain and unmistakable notice that their hour of terror was at hand. And soon they could hear a monotonous sound of moving feet and suppressed voices, under the outer walls of their fortress. A horn was then sounded, and the besieged were called upon to open their gates and surrender at discretion. But no answer was received from within, where all was total darkness and apparent inactivity. Several attempts were now made to burst the strong yard door, but without ...
— The Tithe-Proctor - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton

... France, which, under the Third Empire, was still most emphatically an aggressive power. In drawing the new frontier they included for purely strategic reasons a small portion of western Lorraine, round the fortress of Metz, which was admittedly as French as Champagne or Picardy. From 1871 till 1911, Alsace-Lorraine was governed as a direct appanage of the Imperial Crown; in the latter year it received a constitution, but nothing even remotely resembling self-government. Contrary to the expectation of ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,

... valley, only a few hundred yards distant, is the height, Kulat er Rubad. It is crowned with the ruins of an old castle-fortress called (together with the peak on which it stands) the "watch-tower of Gilead." The view from the dismantled ramparts is not excelled in this part of the world. It, indeed, rivals the view from the celebrated peak south of the Jabbok, Jebel Osha. Dr. Thomson says, ...
— My Three Days in Gilead • Elmer Ulysses Hoenshal

... were surrounded by water. The ground laid bare by the retreat of the lake was converted into admirable plantations; and buildings erected near the lake showed the sinking of the water from year to year. In 1796, new islands made their appearance. A fortress built in 1740 on the island of Cabrera, was now on a peninsula; and, finally, on two granitic islands, those of Cura and Cabo Blanco, Humboldt observed among the shrubs, somo metres above the water, ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh

... groups of nations, will have renewed their harmonious life, will art be able to draw its inspiration from ideals held in common. Then will the architect conceive the city's monument which will no longer be a temple, a prison, or a fortress; then will the painter, the sculptor, the carver, the ornament-worker know where to put their canvases, their statues, and their decoration; deriving their power of execution from the same vital source, and gloriously marching all ...
— The Conquest of Bread • Peter Kropotkin

... general favourite in Gelderland and Overyssel. For this the boys build a sort of castle with large stones, and after tossing up to see who is to be 'Boer,' the boy on whom the lot has fallen stands in the stone fortress, and the others throw stones at it from a distance, to see whether they can knock bits off it. As soon as one succeeds in doing so he runs to get back his stone, at the same time calling out 'Boer, lap den buis,' signifying that the 'Boer' must mend ...
— Dutch Life in Town and Country • P. M. Hough

... fruitful plain, bounded southwards by a range of towering mountains. Far away westwards was a huge ascent to a wide-spreading table-land. Brand sat with his eyes fixed steadily upon it, and a queer little smile upon his lips. He was sufficiently aware of his surroundings to know that there was the fortress capital ...
— The Traitors • E. Phillips (Edward Phillips) Oppenheim

... balancing the accounts, Laptev went out into the open air, he was still under the spell of those figures. It was a still, sultry, moonlight night. The white walls of the houses beyond the river, the heavy barred gates, the stillness and the black shadows, combined to give the impression of a fortress, and nothing was wanting to complete the picture but a sentinel with a gun. Laptev went into the garden and sat down on a seat near the fence, which divided them from the neighbour's yard, where there was a garden, too. The bird-cherry was in bloom. Laptev remembered that the tree had ...
— The Darling and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... marriage of all the other girls. She had gone out with them at dusk, and had watched the pretty fireworks in the small piazza, and had wandered on with them afterwards in the moonlight to the ruin of the Cyclopean fortress which overlooks the two valleys. Then back to the house of her friends, who kept the principal inn, and more tough chicken and tender salad and red wine for supper. And on the next day they had all gone down to the meagre vineyards, half way to San Vito and just below the thick ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford

... French found Moscow, deserted of its inhabitants. With the ready instinct of a soldier, Pizarro led his force to the public square, or Plaza, which was in the shape of a rude triangle surrounded on two sides by well-built, two-story houses of stone. On the other side, or base, rose a huge fortress with a tower overlooking the city on one hand and the Inca's ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady

... representing that Parliamentary movement—'I don't believe in your Parliamentary ideas, I don't accept Home Rule, I go beyond it; I believe in an independent Irish nation'—if any man says this, I say that we don't disbelieve in it. These are our tactics—if you are to take a fortress, first take the ...
— Is Ulster Right? • Anonymous

... of Manhattan, the tall buildings had all melted together into one tremendous mass, with only a pin point of light here and there, a place of shadowy turrets and walls, like some mediaeval fortress. Out of it, in contrast to its dimness, rose a garish tower of lights that seemed to be keeping a vigilant watch over all the dark waters, the ships and the docks. ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole

... who at this day passes Amritsar by train will, if he looks to the south, see hard by the formidable fortress of Gorindghar. Over its battlements now floats the Union Jack, and on its drawbridge may be seen the familiar red coat of the British sentry. Should he ever pass that fort again, he may perhaps regard ...
— The Story of the Guides • G. J. Younghusband

... lovely morning, papa, isn't it?" she said, standing with her hand fast clasped in his, but turning her eyes again upon sea and sky. "But where are we now? Almost at Fortress Monroe?" ...
— Elsie's Vacation and After Events • Martha Finley

... upon the plateau where the fortress stood, and five hundred mounted men marched past, with naked swords and bare krises in their belts, and then wheeled suddenly and stood still, and shot their swords up into the air the full length of the arm, and called the battle-call of their tribe. The chief looked on unmoved, save once ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... these tremendous aggressors, as they march through the kingdom of nature, triumphantly bricklaying beauty wherever they go! What dismantled castle, with the enemy's flag flying over its crumbling walls, ever looked so utterly forlorn as a poor field-fortress of nature, imprisoned on all sides by the walled camp of the enemy, and degraded by a hostile banner of pole and board, with the conqueror's device inscribed on it—"THIS GROUND TO BE LET ON BUILDING LEASES?" What is the historical spectacle of Marius sitting among the ruins of Carthage, but a trumpery ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins

... safely shut up in that impregnable fortress, the hull of the Flying Fish, passed the night in peaceful slumber, undisturbed, in the confidence begotten of a sense of perfect security, by the weird cries of the night birds, the incessant howling of the jackals, the maniacal laugh of the prowling hyena, the occasional roar of the lion, ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood

... church, the rich architecture and flying buttresses of which strike the eye leagues and leagues away, either on the sea or the mainland. Below the church, and supporting it by a solid masonry, is a vast pile formerly a fortress, castle, and prison; with caverns and dungeons hewn out of the living rock, and vaulted halls and solemn crypts; all desolate and solitary now, except when a party of pilgrims or tourists pass through them, ushered by a guide. ...
— Stories By English Authors: France • Various

... baronetcy for the asking—it were strange indeed if Mr. Westcote could not obtain so trivial a favour as the exchange of a prisoner. He could do this, but he could not appreciably hurry the correspondence by which Pall Mall bargained a Frenchman in the forest of Dartmoor against an Englishman in the fortress of Briancon in the Hautes Alpes. Foreseeing delays, he had written privately to the Commandant at Dartmoor—a Major Sotheby, with whom he had some slight acquaintance—advising him of his efforts and ...
— The Westcotes • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... usual intelligence, and accuracy of enquiry,) does it take much wine to make him drunk?' I answered, 'a great deal either of wine or strong punch.'—'Then (said he) that is the worse.' I presume to illustrate my friend's observation thus: 'A fortress which soon surrenders has its walls less shattered than when a long and ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell

... ripple had hardly vanished from the water, when a white flag caught the breeze, over a castle in the wilderness, with frowning ramparts and a hundred cannon.... A war party of French and Indians were issuing from the gate to lay waste some village of New England. Near the fortress there was a group of dancers. The merry soldiers footing it with the swart savage maids; deeper in the wood, some red men were growing frantic around a keg of the fire-water; and elsewhere a Jesuit preached the faith of high cathedrals beneath a ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks

... fortress of Otchakoff was taken by storm on the 18th December 1788 by a Russian army under Prince Potemkin. Thirty thousand Turks are said to have perished during ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin



Words linked to "Fortress" :   crenelation, presidio, defensive structure, sconce, martello tower, alcazar, bastille, battlement, Tower of London, crenellation, defence, Machu Picchu, Alhambra, defense



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