Our generals then sat down at fourteen hundred yards’ distance, and planned the trenches artistically, and directed them to be cut at artful angles, and so creep nearer and nearer the devoted town.  Then the Prussians, whose hearts had been in their shoes at first sight of the French shakos, plucked up, and turned not the garrison only but the population of the town into engineers and masons.  Their fortifications grew almost as fast as the French trenches.

The first day of the siege, a young but distinguished brigadier in the French army rode to the quarters of General Raimbaut, who commanded his division, and was his personal friend, and respectfully but firmly entreated the general to represent to the commander-in-chief the propriety of assaulting that new bastion before it should become dangerous.  “My brigade shall carry it in fifteen minutes, general,” said he.

“What! cross all that open under fire?  One-half your brigade would never reach the bastion.”

“But the other half would take it.”

“That is not so certain.”

General Raimbaut refused to forward the young colonel’s proposal to headquarters.  “I will not subject you to two refusals in one matter,” said he, kindly.

The young colonel lingered.  He said, respectfully, “One question, general, when that bastion cuts its teeth will it be any easier to take than now?”

“Certainly; it will always be easier to take it from the sap than to cross the open under fire to it, and take it.  Come, colonel, to your trenches; and if your friend should cut its teeth, you shall have a battery in your attack that will set its teeth on edge.  Ha! ha!”

The young colonel did not echo his chief’s humor; he saluted gravely, and returned to the trenches.

The next morning three fresh tiers of embrasures grinned one above another at the besiegers.  The besieged had been up all night, and not idle.  In half these apertures black muzzles showed themselves.

The bastion had cut its front teeth.

Thirteenth day of the siege.

The trenches were within four hundred yards of the enemy’s guns, and it was hot work in them.  The enemy had three tiers of guns in the round bastion, and on the top they had got a long 48-pounder, which they worked with a swivel joint, or the like, and threw a great roaring shot into any part of the French lines.

As to the commander-in-chief and his generals, they were dotted about a long way in the rear, and no shot came as far as them; but in the trenches the men began now to fall fast, especially on the left attack, which faced the round bastion.  Our young colonel had got his heavy battery, and every now and then he would divert the general efforts of the bastion, and compel it to concentrate its attention on him, by pounding away at it till it was all in sore places.  But he meant it worse mischief than that.  Still, as heretofore, regarding it as the key to Philipsburg, he had got a large force of engineers at work driving a mine towards it, and to this he trusted more than to breaching it; for the bigger holes he made in it by day were all stopped at night by the townspeople.