Wiktionary
Usage examples of "skirmishes".
The victory was an expensive one, for fifty killed and two hundred wounded lay upon the hillside, and, like so many of our skirmishes with the Boers, it led to small material results.
Several skirmishes with the commandos of Muller and Trichardt gave no very decisive result, but a piece of luck befell the British on January 25th in the capture of General Viljoen by an ambuscade cleverly arranged by Major Orr in the neighbourhood of Lydenburg.
A few incidents stand out among the daily bulletins of snipings, skirmishes, and endless marchings which make the dull chronicle of these, the last months of the year 1900.
The treatment may occasionally seem too brief but some proportion must be observed between the battles of 1899-1900 and the skirmishes of 1901-1902.
It is the fact that they were skirmishes which succeeded in their object which has given them an importance which is exaggerated.
During the week which ended the year a succession of small skirmishes, of which the town of Dordrecht was the centre, exercised the troops in irregular warfare.
Surprises and skirmishes were many, but it was the last time, save only at Doornkop, that a chosen position was ever held for an effective rifle fire--to say nothing of the push of bayonet.
On that day and on the next he had brisk skirmishes which brought him successfully through the Magaliesberg range with a loss of forty wounded, mostly of the Berkshires.
A Boer force with heavy guns still hung about the line, and several small skirmishes were fought between Vlakfontein and Greylingstad in order to drive it away.
At Kekepoort and at Hekspoort Clements fought successful skirmishes, losing at the latter action Lieutenant Stanley of the Yeomanry, the Somersetshire cricketer, who showed, as so many have done, how close is the connection between the good sportsman and the good soldier.
These raids and skirmishes, which had their origin rather in the hope of vengeance than of victory, inflicted much loss and misery upon the country, but, although we may deplore the desperate resolution which bids brave men prefer death to subjugation, it is not for us, the countrymen of Hereward or Wallace, to condemn it.
Leaving De Wet in the Ficksburg mountains, where he lurked until after the opening of the New Year, the story of the scattered operations in the Transvaal may now be carried down to the same point--a story comprising many skirmishes and one considerable engagement, but so devoid of any central thread that it is difficult to know how to approach it.
Methuen moved about incessantly through the broken country, winning small skirmishes and suffering the indignity of continual sniping.
Numerous small posts or patrols cut off, many skirmishes, and one or two railway smashes were the fruits of this invasion, which lasted till the end of the war, and kept the Colony in an extreme state of unrest during that period.
Passing through Venterstad, they made for Steynsberg, fighting two indecisive skirmishes with small British forces.