Tiryns is the first walled city upon record. Its walls were supposed to have been erected by the Cyclops, and the stones of which they were composed were of such prodigious size, that the least of them could not be moved by a pair of oxen. (Pausanias, lib. ii.) The ruins subsist to the present day, and the traces are still gigantic. Pindar mentions Tiryns in his Olympionics, Nemeonics, and Isthmionics. These shattered remains present the earliest specimen of the Cyclopean architecture.
“The deadly sappers’ stroke that like an earthquake stuns.”
This was the first time that sappers were employed by us in the Peninsular sieges, or that a corps of sappers formed any regular portion of the British army. It was likewise the first time that Shrapnell shells were used.
XIV. “But what can like the British bayonet mar
Thy prowess, France?”
The bayonet, originally a French invention (deriving, as is well known, its name from the town of Bayonne), became ultimately the very instrument of French defeat—for by the universal testimony of military men, when wielded by British hands, the French have invariably fled before it:—
—Neque enim lex æquior ulla,
Quàm necis artifices arte perire suâ.
Ovid. de Arte Amandi.
But it would be as grossly unjust as ungenerous to dispute the ardour and frequent brilliancy of French courage. Upon this subject the discriminating testimony of Napier is as follows: “Place an attainable object of war before the French soldier and he will make supernatural efforts to gain it, but failing he becomes proportionally discouraged. Let some new chance be opened, some fresh stimulus applied to his ardent, sensitive temper, and he will rush forward again with unbounded energy: the fear of death never checks him, he will attempt any thing. But the unrelenting vigour of the British infantry in resistance wears his fury out.”—Hist. War in the Penins. book xxiv. chap. 6.
XV. “With glancing steel upon the trenches’ edge.”