What is "redcoats"

Usage examples of "redcoats".

The northern face of the ravine, which looked towards the unconquered Inner Fort, was now crowded with some three thousand redcoats, most of whom did nothing but sit in whatever small shade they could find and grumble that the pucka lees had not fetched water.

But first he had to reach the fortress, and maybe it would not even be necessary, for Prince Manu Bappoo might yet beat the redcoats here.

Once the attack was close, of course, the bastards would switch to canister and then every shot could pluck a dozen men out of the line, but for now, as the redcoats silently trudged forward, the enemy was sending round shot down the gentle slope.

Two more gates to unbar and the way would be open, but the Cobras were thick on the walls and Dodd was screaming at them to shoot into the press of men, attackers and defenders alike, and so throw back the impudent handful of redcoats who had turned his rear.

His sergeant had brought a score of men into the passageway and those Scotsmen began to fire up at the walls, and the Cobras were crumbling now because there were redcoats below them on both sides, and more were hacking their way along the rampart, and the defenders were pinned in a small place with nowhere to go.

Sharpe explained, then he turned and walked down the wall where exhausted redcoats rested among the dead and dying Cobras, while beneath them, in the passage that Campbell had opened, a stream of soldiers poured unopposed into the fort.

Dodd turned to watch the gunners in the Outer Fort and he saw how puny their small cannon were and he reckoned that such fire would not hold up the redcoats for long.

Some enemy gunners, who had stayed with their weapons till the last minute, jumped down from the fire step dodged past the tired redcoats scattered inside the wall and fled southwards.

For a while he swore at the redcoats and tried to rally his men to defend the gatehouse, but the British were now swarming over the breaches, the gunners on the walls were abandoning their weapons, and Bappoo knew it was time to pull back into the stronghold of the Inner Fort.

The gunners on the southern wall, who had been trying to stop the redcoats approaching on the road from the plain, now abandoned their small cannon and joined the retreat.

He tried to order men into ranks, tugging them away from the slaughter and shouting for gunners to find an enemy cannon that could be fetched from the captured ramparts and dragged to face the massive gate of the Inner Fort, but the redcoats had an easier target in the huddled fugitives and they enthusiastically killed the helpless enemy, and all the while the guns of the Inner Fort fired down at the redcoats while rockets slammed into the ravine to add to the choking fog of powder smoke.

They would wait till they saw the redcoats, then load up the tin cans that burst like duck shot from the gun barrels.

He was barring the British advance with forty thousand men, while the redcoats were not even a third of that number.

He would avenge Assaye and prove that redcoats could die like any other enemy.

If the first graze was too close to the gun then the ball would lose its momentum and do nothing but raise jeers from the redcoats as it rolled to a harmless stop, while if the first graze was too close to the attacking line then the ball would bounce clean over the redcoats.