intrenchment

The intrenchment was a formidable one, being provided with parapets armed with chevaux de frise, and flanked by strong exterior works, while several batteries had been placed to sweep the ground across which an enemy must advance.

A Jacobite Exile Being the Adventures of a Young Englishman in the Service of Charles the Twelfth of Sweden 1867

In front of the stockade, but some considerable distance from it, and on the sloping land that was nigh to the beach, we had thrown up a kind of intrenchment, behind which we could kneel and fire, and under whose cover we hoped to be able to make a good account of assailants.

Marjorie 1898

The parapet of the intrenchment was too high for my horse to jump, so, riding a short distance to the left, I entered through a low place in the line.

She Makes Her Mouth Small & Round & Other Stories 2010

The church of the house, constructed in such a manner as to separate the Great Convent from the Boarding-school like a veritable intrenchment, was, of course, common to the Boarding-school, the Great Convent, and the

Les Miserables 2008

He had improvised an intrenchment out of the table; and the man, who but an instant previously, had borne merely the appearance of a kindly old man, had suddenly become a sort of athlete, and placed his robust fist on the back of his chair, with a formidable and surprising gesture.

Les Miserables 2008

The word “ridotto” is properly what we once signified by the word “reduit,” intrenchment; but “reduit” having sunk into a term of contempt among us, our editors translated

A Philosophical Dictionary 2007

It was the intrenchment of his contempt that Lord Newhaven missed.

Red Pottage 2004

In short, this was the safest, politest, and, at the same time, the most thorough house of accommodation in town: every thing being conducted so that decency made no intrenchment upon the most libertine pleasures, in the practice of which too, the choice familiars of the house had found the secret so rare and difficult, of reconciling even all the refinements of taste and delicacy with the most gross and determinate gratifications of senuality.

Fanny Hill: Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure 2004

Once, in action, he was leading a detachment of infantry through an intrenchment.

Off on a Comet 2003

The path which led up to the intrenchment, lay across fields of “phormium” and a grove of beautiful trees, the “kai-kateas” with persistent leaves and red berries; “dracaenas australis,” the “ti-trees” of the natives, whose crown is a graceful counterpart of the cabbage-palm, and

In Search of the Castaways 2003