An abattis has been made along the edge of this part of the ditch--a rough inclined fence of stakes and boughs of trees.
As the enemy effected a breach in the abattisand streamed in, Jacob with his horse galloped down upon them at full speed.
So great was the effect that the enemy were driven back, and the column retired, the breach in the abattis being hastily filled up, before the cavalry, who were waiting the opportunity, could charge down upon it.
They also pushed forward a sap against the Star fort and erected a battery, composed of gabions, thirty-six yards only from the abattis and raised forty feet high so as to overlook the works of the garrison.
The intrenchments were strengthened by abattisand flanked by strong redoubts.
To facilitate the attack an officer with 5 men on October 8 advanced to the abattis and set fire to it.
But fir wood, quagmire, and abattis had all been passed by the Prussians, and they dashed into the mass, sabring and trampling down, and taking whole battalions prisoners.
From the fuss it was apparent that the abattis and earthwork had succumbed.
It was a long abattis, and behind the abattis long, well-builded breastworks.
All the side of the ascent was occupied by admirable breastworks, triple lines, one above the other, while at the base between hill and creek, within the enshadowing forest, was planted a great abattis of logs and felled trees.
This was a strong line behind a thick impenetrable abattis and held by a powerful force.
A row of bayonets projected over the breastworks; an abattis of steel awaiting the momentarily expected onset of the enemy.
The abattis was past, the breastworks mounted, the works were our own.
But the works were too strong, the abattis too troublesome, and the rebel forces too numerous.
Here the creek and the almost impenetrable abattis checked their progress, and a murderous fire of shot, shells, cannister and musketry was opened upon them, which threw them into confusion, and repulsed them with fearful loss.
A regiment and a battery were encamped in a cleared field of seven hundred acres on the river-bank, and the camp was surrounded on its landward side by an abattis of felled timber.
Part of the command pierced through the abattisand reached the rifle-pits.
The trees were cut about breast-high, and the tops bent over outward, forming a rude abattisextremely difficult to pass through.
In front of this breastwork, and from forty to fifty feet in breadth, was anabattis constructed of pine trees, the needles stripped, the limbs cut and pointed five to ten feet from the trunks.
Now the thunder of their guns is upon us; the brigade on our right plunges through the thicket and throw themselves upon the abattis in front of the works and pick their way over them.
By noon we encountered the enemy's breastworks, built of great stones and logs, in front of which was an abattis of felled timber and brushwood.
When in a small swale or depression in the ground, near the center of the field, the abattis was discovered in front of the works.
The Confederates had a line of breastworks extending out from the Dismal Swamp at right angles on either side of the main road to Suffolk to another swamp on the left, with an abattis in front, but as usual the Yankees did not attack.
Longstreet at once led his brigade forward into the open field, at the farther side of which was a redoubt with abattis in front, where had been stationed the Yankee guns that shelled us all day.
The unfinished wall on the eastern face was raised by logs of wood, and abattis and wire entanglements were placed in front.
The village itself was loop-holed, the outlying buildings to the front made defensible, and the open space to the north-east secured by abattis and wire entanglements.
A column of Spanish troops moving up the flanks of the great Rhune found their way barred by a strong line of abattis and the fire of two French regiments.
At the abattis the dead lay in a horrid commingling mass, some hanging forward half through the entanglement, some still in the attitude of effort, still tearing at the spiked boughs, some standing upright as though to signal the advance.
It came on through the wood, writhing, tearing at the cruel abattis laid to entrap it.
Along their front, well hidden by the forest growth, ran a line of entangling abattis of stakes and sharpened interwoven boughs.
Hampton's attack on de Salaberry's first abattis then came to a full stop; after which the whole American army retired beaten from the field.
An abattis formed, menacing and formidable, against which even the mighty dynamics of the river pushed in vain.
To right and left stretched mazes of white popples and willows tangled with old berry vines and the abattis of the slashings.
Several of the men had retained their entrenching tools, and Frank set them to lop branches, and others to pull up shrubs by the roots, which the remainder began to weave into a sort of abattis extending across the gully.
Their places were taken in turn by others from the throng pressing behind, and the living stream dashed against the abattis like waves upon a breakwater.
A breastwork of logs was thrown up at a commanding position, in front of which was an abattis of young trees and brush piled up to obstruct approach.
And even while we were discussing these chances, leaning against our log abattis in the sunshine, far away across the sunlit flat-woods we saw a man come out among the ferns from the southward, and lie down.
Having moved forward about two miles and a half, the division formed line facing to the south, stacked arms and began rapidly to fell the timber and construct an abattis in front of our position.
They consisted, at the point where we passed through them, only of a tolerable line of rifle pits, but defended by a heavy abattis a fourth of a mile in width.
They crossed the abattis without difficulty; it was torn to pieces and destroyed by our shot, and the men stepped over and through it with ease.
The French had now pushed their works almost to the abattis of the Malakoff, and were so near that a man might throw a stone into the Russian position.
A soldier who was close to the abattis saw a few men come out of an embrasure, and fearing he should be unnoticed, raised his cap on a stick and waved it till he fell back exhausted.
Colonel Yea's body was found near the abattis on the right of the Redan.
The red-coats lay thick over the broken ground in front of the abattis of the Redan.
From the French sap in front of the Mamelon one could at this period lay his hand on the abattis of the Malakoff!
Taken wholly by surprise, when they believed that victory was won, the two or three hundred men who had passed the abattis were swept before the crowd of peasants like chaff.
Thirty paces within it was a row of abattis running into the river; and some distance in front of it, is a creek fordable only in two places.
After bringing up the heavy ordnance and stores from the fleet, the besieging army broke ground; and, by the first of October, had pushed their sap within three hundred yards of the abattis on the left of the British lines.
But the raking fire from behind the abattis swept their ranks, mowed them down, and strewed the ground with dying and dead.
The landward approach was guarded by a strong rampart of felled trees, which the soldiers had formed into a breastwork and abattis which might almost be called musket-proof.
Retaining only one thousand carriers to bring up supplies from the large redoubt, he employed the rest in assisting the troops to fell trees and build abattisat various defensible points along the route.
Only with the greatest difficulty had he refrained from leaping into the fray by the abattiswhen he saw Captain Lister so hard pressed and defending his position so gallantly.
Slemmer threw up thisabattis to delay his assailants, if it were only for a few minutes, and to give his men breathing time to use their small arms.
Supplies of ammunition were brought up and distributed, the existing defences were repaired, abattis cut and laid, and fresh earthworks thrown up.
Beyond, over the bare fields, the way was obstructed by felled timber, the lopped branches of which were closely interlaced, and above the abattis rose the line of breastworks.
Below, and but a few hundred yards distant, ran the Federal breastworks, withabattis in front and long lines of stacked arms in rear; but untenanted by a single company.
Floundering in the swamps, and struggling through the abattis which had been placed on the banks of the stream, they drove in the advanced line of hostile riflemen, and strove gallantly to ascend the slope which lay beyond.
Many acres of the city were enclosed within high walls of clayey earth, packed into huge square blocks and dried in the sun; on the top and outside of which bristled a miniature abattis of prickly vines.
They fringed the breastworks of native rock withabattis made of huge trunks of trees.
The above list will hopefully give you a few useful examples demonstrating the appropriate usage of "abattis" in a variety of sentences. We hope that you will now be able to make sentences using this word.
