What is "breaches"

Usage examples of "breaches".

The attackers battered holes in the defence and both sides knew when the breaches were practical, but the advantage was all with the defenders.

The South Essex, like the rest of the army, thought that if they could storm the breaches at Ciudad Rodrigo for only sixty dead, men they would slice through the defences of Badajoz for a similarly light loss.

The sweating, powder-stained gun crews had cheered, while the infantry, guarding the batteries against another French sortie, stared at the incipient breaches and wondered what welcome the French were preparing for the assault.

The gunners could not see the breaches, but the wooden recoil platforms were marked with deep cuts and the officers and Sergeants lined the gun trails on the cuts, checked the elevation screw.

Like the castle attack, it was intended to pin down enemy troops, to stop reinforcements going to the south-east corner, for it was there, at the three breaches, that Wellington knew he must win his victory.

The troops fidgeted, grew angry against unseen staff officers, cursed the bloody army and the bloody Generals because in the darkness the French would be swarming on the breaches, preparing traps for the British!

It was the first of a storm, the tight packed balls flaming and falling as the carcasses were rolled on to the breach, and suddenly the breaches, the ditch, the ravelin, the obstacles, and the tiny figures of the Forlorn Hope were swamped in light, light poured from above, by flames that caught on the obstacles in the ditch, and the Hope began to climb as the fire was bright on their bayonets.

They were cheering, urging themselves on, even as the first tongues of quicksilver flame raced down the breaches of the Santa Maria and Trinidad.

Only the breaches in the bastions, the Santa Maria and the Trinidad, could be approached, and those were dominated by the enemy guns.

The guns could reach every inch of the ditch, firing in scientific patterns, killing, killing, killing, but for the moment they fired only where the British moved, towards the breaches, and the spaces before the great, stone ramps were thickening with dead.

The two soaring bastions, scarred by the unconquered breaches, framed the flames, fed them, and the smoke boiled scarlet into the night.

For a second the General was tempted to damn Sharpe, who had assured him the breaches were practical.

A few men had climbed the breaches, one was even impaled on the sabre blades, but it was a hopeless effort.

Only when men came into the firelight, towards the breaches, did the muzzles spout flame and the grapeshot crease the ditch floor.

He remembered the wool-padding that had protected the two breaches and wondered at a mind that could notice such irrelevant things at the point of a death.