Fourreau d’epée the scabbard of a sword.
Fourmiller, Fr. to swarm with. La France fourmille en braves soldats—France swarms with brave soldiers; L’Angleterre fourmille en braves marins—England swarms with brave seamen.
FOUR de campagne. A field oven.
FOUR, a place of confinement in Paris to which vagabonds and persons who could not give any satisfactory account of themselves were committed; and when once shut up had their names enregistered, and were enlisted for the service of the old French government. A four in this acceptation of the term means a room arched over without having the least aperture to receive day light. There were several such places of confinement in Paris. They owed their invention to a Monsieur D’Argenson, and were supposed to add annually two thousand men at least to the king’s regular army; by which means the capital was relieved from a multitude of thieves, pick-pockets, &c.
FOURNITURES des vivres, Fr. See [Stores], &c.
FOYER, Fr. Focus, or centre of the chamber. See [Mine].
FRAISE, in fortification, a kind of stakes or palisades placed horizontally on the outward slope of a rampart made of earth, to prevent the work being taken by surprise. They are generally 7 or 8 feet long, and about 5 inches thick. When an army intrenches itself, the parapets of the retrenchments are often fraised in the parts exposed to an attack.
To Fraise a battalion, is to line, or cover it every way with pikes, that it may withstand the shock of a body of horse.
FRAISER, Fr. To plait, knead or drill....In a military sense to fraise or fence; as fraiser un battalion, is to fraise or fence all the musquetry-men belonging to a battalion with pikes, to oppose the irruption of cavalry should it charge them in a plain. At present it means to secure a battalion by opposing bayonets obliquely forward, or cross-ways in such a manner as to render it impossible for a horseman to act against it.
Fraises, Fr. See [Fraise] an adopted English term.