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Battering-ram   Listen
noun
Battering-ram  n.  
1.
(Mil.) An engine used in ancient times to beat down the walls of besieged places. Note: It was a large beam, with a head of iron, which was sometimes made to resemble the head of a ram. It was suspended by ropes to a beam supported by posts, and so balanced as to swing backward and forward, and was impelled by men against the wall.
2.
A blacksmith's hammer, suspended, and worked horizontally.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Battering-ram" Quotes from Famous Books



... cars with varied cargoes; red ore from the faraway hills beyond Superior, limestone fragments from some near-by hill, and scrap of earlier burning. These, one by one, are seized by a great arm of iron, thrust out from a huge moving structure that looks like a battering-ram and is operated by a young man about whom the lightnings play as he moves; and, one by one, they are cast into the furnaces that are heated to a temperature of a thousand degrees or more. There the red earth is freed of its "devils," ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley

... a blast of trumpeting that shook the sky; with trunks flung up and forward-driving tusks, ears spread like great sails, and a sound like the thunder of artillery, they charged the scent, the body of the herd following the leaders, as the body of a battering-ram ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole

... and gazed after it. But he did not sigh. He puffed away at his pipe as if entirely satisfied with his lot. He was still watching the brougham when a surface-car came gliding swiftly around a curve. There was a smash of splintering wood and breaking glass. The car had struck the brougham a battering-ram blow, crushing a rear wheel and snapping the steel axle at ...
— Horses Nine - Stories of Harness and Saddle • Sewell Ford

... "A ramming! a ramming!" The little fellow was seized and thrown down; and five men—one holding his head, and one stationed at each arm and leg—proceeded to execute on his body the stern behests of barrack-law. He was poised like an ancient battering-ram, and driven endlong against the wall of the kiln,—that important part of his person coming in violent contact with the masonry, "where," according to Butler, "a kick hurts honour" very much. After the third blow, however, he was released, and the interrupted ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller

... servants and gillies had gathered, hastily clad; they were met by Logan, who briefly bade some bring hammers, and the caber, or pine-tree trunk that is tossed in Highland sports. It would make a good battering-ram. Donald Macdonald he sent at once to Mr. Macrae. He met Bude and Lady Bude, and rapidly explained that there was no danger of fire. The Countess went back to her rooms, Bude returned with Logan into the observatory. Here they found Donald telegraphing ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang

... Macbrayne's office, that the S.S. Fingal left for that outer isle at five in the morning. He accordingly gave serious instructions to the "boots" of his hotel to rap him up at 4.30 A.M., and to show him no mercy. At six o'clock, the tourist was awakened by a noise like that of a battering-ram at his door, and a stentorian voice sternly enquiring: "Are you the gentleman that's going with the early boat?" "Yes, yes, I am," said the tourist, leaping to his feet. "Well, she's away," said the boots. (This is a ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes

... made many a breach in the poor cure's defences; and it was in these discussions, as he often told me in his last years, that he acquired his knowledge of philosophy. In order to make a stand against the battering-ram of natural logic, the worthy Jansenist was obliged to invoke the testimony of all the Fathers of the Church, and to oppose these, often even to corroborate them, with the teaching of all the sages and scholars of antiquity. Then Patience, his round eyes starting ...
— Mauprat • George Sand

... cakes and masses of ice came floating down the current, which, though not very violent, hurried along at a much swifter pace than the ordinary one of our sluggish river-god. These ice-masses, when they struck the barrier of ice above mentioned, acted upon it like a battering-ram, and were themselves forced high out of the water, or sometimes carried beneath the main sheet of ice. At last, down the stream came an immense mass of ice, and, striking the barrier about at its centre, it gave way, and the whole was swept onward together, leaving ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... tried to turn his thoughts by watching the two quartermasters at the wheel, who were straining every muscle to keep the ship's head to the mountain waves that burst over the bow every moment with the shock of a battering-ram. ...
— Harper's Young People, March 16, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... boil within him, and mount to his head. His nature was such, that, accustomed to command, he trembled at the idea of disobedience. By degrees, his anger increased more and more. The prisoner broke the chair, which was too heavy for him to lift, and made use of it as a battering-ram to strike against the door. He struck so loudly, and so repeatedly, that the perspiration soon began to pour down his face. The sound became tremendous and continuous; some stifled, smothered cries replied in different directions. This sound produced a strange effect upon the king. He paused ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas

... men upon the path of destruction like wolves stimulated and brutalized by the scent of blood, to pause only when irrepairable evil hath been wrought.—"When new widows howl and new orphans cry." What a power for evil is the newspaper! The newspaper arrayed on the side of the right hurls its mighty battering-ram against gigantic walls of oppresion until they fall; takes up the cause of the bondman, echoes his wails and the clanking of his chains until the nation is aroused, and men are marching shoulder to shoulder on to the conflict for the right. What a power for good ...
— Hanover; Or The Persecution of the Lowly - A Story of the Wilmington Massacre. • David Bryant Fulton

... The wind drove us straight upon this bar. A moment of deadly peril and it had us fast, holding us for the waves to beat our life out. The boat listed, then rested, quivering through all its length. The waves pounded against its side, each watery battering-ram dissolving in foam and spray but to give place to another, and yet it held together, and yet we lived. How long it would hold we could not tell; we only knew it could not be for long. The inclination ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston

... organic world. By day or night no ant or other edible thing seemed ever to approach or be entrapped; and month after month there was no sign of change to imago. Yet each pit held a fat, enthusiastic inmate, ready at a touch to turn steam-shovel, battering-ram, bayonet, and gourmand. Among the first thousand-and-one mysteries of Kartabo I give a place to the source of nourishment of the ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe

... secure in one or other of his strong places, which had recently undergone extensive repairs and seemed to be impregnable. In this anticipation he was deceived, for he had not reckoned with the new and more potent weapons of attack which were replacing the battering-ram and other mediaeval besieging appliances. Franz retired to his strong castle of the Landstuhl to await the onslaught of the princes which followed in the spring. After heavy bombardment Sickingen was mortally ...
— German Culture Past and Present • Ernest Belfort Bax

... smoke which at once enveloped the scene the Indians spread out and surrounded the Fort. A tremendous rush by a large party of Indians was made for the gate of the Fort. They attacked it fiercely with their tomahawks, and a log which they used as a battering-ram. But the stout gate withstood their united efforts, and the galling fire from the portholes soon forced them to fall back and seek cover behind the trees and the rocks. From these points of vantage they kept ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey

... attacks the city in three different quarters. There was an angle of the wall sloping down into a more level and open valley than the other space around; against this he resolved to move the vineae, by means of which the battering-ram might be brought up to the wall. But though the ground at a distance from the wall was sufficiently level for working the vineae, yet their undertakings by no means favourably succeeded, when they came to effect their object. Both a huge tower overlooked ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius

... to drop this car," he told the men when he was safe inside. "Break the other end open." They took one of the rails they had removed from the track north of Big Shanty, and with it as a battering-ram knocked a hole in the forward end; then in the end of the second car. They passed the remaining ties and the ...
— Tom of the Raiders • Austin Bishop

... moment. The official whom his Worship called Nandy Daddo had made a rush into the crowd, charging it with his mace as with a battering-ram, and was in the act of clutching the man who had thrown the filth, when the phalanx of packet-men broke through and bore him down. A moment later I saw his gold-laced hat fly skimming over the heads of the throng, and his mace wrenched from him and held ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine

... consisting of a succession of stages or shelves, filled with soldiers, and with a bridge with iron hooks, capable of being launched from the highest story to the top of the battlements. The besieged could generally disconcert the battering-ram by hanging beds or mattresses over the walls to receive the brunt of the blow, the sows could be crushed with heavy stones, the towers burnt by well directed flaming missiles, the ladders overthrown, and in general the besiegers suffered a great deal more damage than they could inflict. Cannon ...
— The Junior Classics • Various

... I should strike and run within the same moment. I wanted a battering-ram, with which to smash the window and the blind. With the bed-key, which was in the closet, I took down the bedstead as quietly as I could. Reserving one side piece for use, I placed the rest against the door, so that ...
— Seek and Find - or The Adventures of a Smart Boy • Oliver Optic

... fell before they got up to the house, but they pressed on, and, at the first blow given by the battering-ram driven by the men, the door ...
— In Times of Peril • G. A. Henty

... for your lives, men, and punch her like a battering-ram. When we've cut through the netting, let every fellow dash upon her decks, and fight for every ...
— Famous Privateersmen and Adventurers of the Sea • Charles H. L. Johnston

... some enormous iceberg sailing down from the north with incredible swiftness, a frightful mass, which could have crushed the "Alaska" like a walnut. But a greater danger still was the submarine ice, which could injure her and act like a battering-ram. ...
— The Waif of the "Cynthia" • Andre Laurie and Jules Verne

... Lettest the heathen enter in our city, And, without pity, Murder out burghers, seize upon their spouses, Burn down their houses! Is such a breach of faith to be endured? See what a lurid Light from the insolent invader's torches Shines on your porches! E'en now, with thundering battering-ram and hammer And hideous clamor; With axemen, swordsmen, pikemen, billmen, bowmen, The conquering foemen, O Sophy! beat your gate about your ears, Alas! and here's A humble company of pious men, Like muttons in a pen, Whose ...
— Ballads • William Makepeace Thackeray

... impossible thing is gone; Gaul, charioted and charging, great Gaul upon a gun, Tiptoe on all her thousand years, and trumpeting to the sun, As day returns, as death returns, swung backward for a span, Back on the barbarous reign returns the battering-ram of Man. ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various

... remarked—rather wittily, as I thought—that he had been a lamb all day, but now had all of a sudden developed into a ram —battering-ram; but with dulcet frankness and simplicity he said no, a battering-ram was quite a different thing, and not in use now. This was maddening, and I came near bursting out and saying he had no more appreciation of wit than a jackass—in fact, I had it right on my tongue, but did not say it, knowing ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... contrivance was not one familiar to classical times. The "lupi" of Livy XXVIII. iii. were hooks; Vegetius, De Re Militari, ii. 25 and iv. 23, mentions "lupi" (also hooks), used to put a battering-ram out ...
— Procopius - History of the Wars, Books V. and VI. • Procopius

... the battering-ram at work now against the walls. Swinging back, the solid thickness of the wind came forward—crush! as the iron-shod ram's head hanging from its chains rushed to the tower. Crush! It sucked back again as if there had been a vacuum—a moment's ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies

... the one that landed. Biff! whack! Two sturdy, hard fists registered on Millard's head from behind. Then a boy shot himself forward, battering-ram fashion, hurling Millard over to the ground. The boy went with the fellow, landing ...
— The Submarine Boys for the Flag - Deeding Their Lives to Uncle Sam • Victor G. Durham

... landing, and shouting shrilly to him to be off, for it was long past Lock-out Time. This, with much brandishing of their holly-leaves, and also a company of them carried an arrow which some boy had left in the Gardens, and this they were prepared to use as a battering-ram. ...
— The Little White Bird - or Adventures In Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie

... up the steps with axes, while two followed dragging the hose after them. The men with the axes had given one knock to the door when Billy saw what they were up to, and as he had often used his head as a battering-ram, he ran up the steps, and before the men knew he was there, he gave the door a mighty butt with his head which made it crash in and the men and goat fell through ...
— Billy Whiskers - The Autobiography of a Goat • Frances Trego Montgomery

... swords, standards and trumpets flung to the breeze, formed in columns by divisions, descended, by a simultaneous movement and like one man, with the precision of a brazen battering-ram which is effecting a breach, the hill of La Belle Alliance, plunged into the terrible depths in which so many men had already fallen, disappeared there in the smoke, then emerging from that shadow, reappeared on the other side of the valley, still compact and in close ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... was an end of his triumph. He felt himself clutched by the collar, and whizzed backwards with the force of a battering-ram against the fireplace. Springrove, wild, red, and breathless, had sprung in at the open window, and stood once ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy

... at the grated windows of the jail. Behind the iron bars, and tugging frantically at them, and screaming for help, stood the tramp; he seemed like a black object set against a sun, so white and intense was the light at his back. That marshal could not be found, and he had the only key. A battering-ram was quickly improvised, and the thunder of its blows upon the door had so encouraging a sound that the spectators broke into wild cheering, and believed the merciful battle won. But it was not so. The timbers were too ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... the finale came. Crack he went against the wall, rebounded off, and went at it again, and then again. They were no mock blows, but serious, heavy raps, as from a small battering-ram. But yet both Bertram and Wilkinson were able to observe that he did not strike the wall, as he would naturally have done had there been no precaution. Had he struck it with his head in motion, as was intended to be believed, the blow would have come upon his forehead ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope

... piece of furniture were being brought in, by an amount of human strength inadequate to the task. At length after much struggling and humping, and bruising of the wall on both sides, the door was forced open as by a battering-ram; and the locksmith, steadily regarding what appeared beyond, smote his thigh, elevated his eyebrows, opened his mouth, and cried in a loud voice expressive of ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens

... long inward struggle, few bore so calmly as he did the distracting news from the front in the closing days of June and the opening days of July, when Lee was driving his whole strength like a superhuman battering-ram, straight at the heart of the wavering McClellan. A visitor at the White House, in the midst of the terrible strain of the Seven Days, found Lincoln "thin and haggard, but cheerful . . . quite ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson

... that of our bells, which broaden toward the lips; this has the same diameter through all its height, and it is covered with Buddhist texts cut into the smooth metal of it. It is rung by means of a heavy swinging beam, suspended from the roof by chains, and moved like a battering-ram. There are loops of palm-fibre rope attached to this beam to pull it by; and when you pull hard enough, so as to give it a good swing, it strikes a moulding like a lotus-flower on the side of the bell. ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn

... or silver chiselled with representations of the labours of Hercules. The poor brought skins of Cordova leather, tanned and untanned, excellent pieces of cloth and linen (poor Ermentrude must have worked hard for the month before the justices came!), boxes, and wax. 'With this battering-ram,' cries the shocked Bishop Theodulf, 'they hope to break down the wall of my soul. But they would not have thought that they could shake me, if they had not so shaken other judges before,' And indeed, if his picture be true, the ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power

... then directed the militia to fire, and one of the peasants fell dead. Infuriated, they seized the trunk of a tree, and using it as a battering-ram, at once broke in the door. They next proceeded to force the entrance to the dungeon, in which they succeeded, and called upon the prisoners to come forth. But some of them were so crippled by the tortures to which they had been subjected, that they could not stand. At sight ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles

... much previous fatigue and fighting, got possession, forty days after their arrival, of the town, and the town only; for all the spoil had been destroyed by the deserters; who, when they saw the walls shaken by the battering-ram, and their own situation desperate, had conveyed the gold and silver, and whatever else is esteemed valuable, to the royal palace, where, after being sated with wine and luxuries, they destroyed the treasures, the building, and themselves, by fire, and thus voluntarily submitted ...
— Conspiracy of Catiline and The Jurgurthine War • Sallust

... stop better, if more halting, talk. "Mr. Black was telling me to-day about Mr. White's being appointed to —— what do you call that office?" implored the dignified matron. "Just call it anything, Mrs. Gray, a bandersnatch, or a buttonhook, or a battering-ram," impertinently suggested the glib undergraduate who had been applying these words to everybody and everything, and who continued to do so until she had found a new catchword as the main substance of her conversation. The infirmities of ...
— Conversation - What to Say and How to Say it • Mary Greer Conklin

... tumbling over each other and racing past the ship in sport, sending their flying scud high over the foreyard, or else trying vainly to poop her; and, when foiled in this, they would dash against her bows with the blow of a battering-ram, or fling themselves bodily on board in an angry cataract that poured down from the forecastle on to the main-deck, flooding the waist up to the height of the bulwarks to leeward, for we heeled over too much to allow of the sea running off through ...
— Afloat at Last - A Sailor Boy's Log of his Life at Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson

... had no time to dodge or fend this onslaught, but only to brace himself. The cow's horns, unfortunately, were short and wide-spreading. She caught him full in the chest, with the force of a battering-ram, and would have hurled him backwards but that his mighty claws and forearms, at the same instant, secured a deadly clutch upon her shoulders. She bore him backward against the trunk indeed, but there he recovered himself; and when she strove to withdraw for another battering charge, ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts

... The service she proposed to render the children she had sometimes performed for himself, with results for which he could not be grateful enough, and yet it was not with unalloyed anticipation that he softly followed her up the stair. Mrs. Burton went into the chamber and found the boys playing battering-ram, each with a pillow in ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton

... come to see the colonel about. I intend to get all the regiment together and use it as a battering-ram." ...
— At the Point of the Sword • Herbert Hayens

... vehicle seemed absolutely teeming with a living burden. Perched in every available nook and corner were women and children of all ages, and weapons and live stock of all varieties. Now, a child—lively, mischievous, inquisitive—peered forth over the head of a battering-ram. Now, a lean, hungry sheep advanced his inquiring nostrils sadly to the open air, and displayed by the movement the head of a withered old woman pillowed on his woolly flanks. Here, appeared a young girl struggling, half entombed in shields. There, gasped an emaciated ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins

... was winter. A closed carriage was ordered from a roadside inn, a vehicle which had been kept there ever since the old days of post-chaise travelling. It had stout wheel-spokes, and heavy felloes a great curved bed, immense straps and springs, and a pole like a battering-ram. The postilion was a venerable "boy" of sixty—a martyr to rheumatic gout, the result of excessive exposure in youth, counter-acted by strong liquors—who had stood at inn-doors doing nothing for the whole five-and-twenty years that had ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy

... through the coast range at right angles, like a battering-ram. Immense glaciers were on either side. One tremendous river of ice came down on our right, presenting a face wall apparently hundreds of feet in height and some miles in width. I should have enjoyed exploring this ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland

... pushed her before me. The husband stood at the head of the stairs and my object was to carry her down to the lower story. The stairs were narrow, and by keeping up a good watch, I contrived to force him to give ground, using his spouse as a sort of battering-RAM—not to perpetrate a pun at the expense of the genders—which, I happened to know, had always been successful in making him give ground on all previous occasions. His habitual deference for the dame, assisted me in my purpose. Step by step, however, he disputed ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms

... others, and every weapon was grasped, those who had guns slightly raising the muzzles, while Smith took out his jack-knife to open it with his teeth, and Wriggs, to use his own words—afterwards spoken—"stood by" with the ladder, meaning to use it as a battering-ram to drive it ...
— Fire Island - Being the Adventures of Uncertain Naturalists in an Unknown Track • G. Manville Fenn

... the huge city, whose distant rumbling rose up to him, similar to the roar of the sea.... Oh, he would succeed, he knew he would! And he felt within himself an increasing will of so tenacious a character that he could have swung it, so it seemed to him, like a battering-ram against the obstacle ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne

... himself against them, using his shoulder as a battering-ram. Not the thousandth part of an inch could he feel them give, yet he worked until his shoulder was sore. Then he paused and studied the bars more carefully. Only one thing would avail him, and that was some object which he ...
— The Flaming Forest • James Oliver Curwood

... from the nearer end, the opposite gable fell out with a great splash, letting in the wide level vision of turbidly raging waters, fading into the obscurity of the wind-driven rain. While he stared aghast, a great tree struck the wall like a battering-ram, so that the stable shook. The horses, which had been for some time moving uneasily, were now quite scared. There was not a moment to be lost. Duff shouted for his men; one or two came running; and in less than a minute more those in the house heard the ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald

... confines boldly and formidably, even with dynamite, and none would be the wiser if only none happened to be within actual visual range of the operations. He himself quite coolly used the iron side piece to his bed as a battering-ram to break the locks of the door. Then he walked down the long corridor and out through the police station, bowing politely to the bewildered officers. The latter did not ...
— The Sign at Six • Stewart Edward White

... bits of shrub, and upon their faces. In that same breath the crash of rifles in the open drowned the sound of those beyond the wall of the Nest. From thirty rifles a hail of bullets swept through the windows. This was Philip's cue. He rose with a sharp cry, and behind him came the eight with the battering-ram. It was two hundred yards from their cover to the building. They passed the last shelter, and struck the open on a trot. Now rose from the firing men behind rock and bush a wild and savage cheer. Philip heard John Adare roaring his encouragement. With ...
— God's Country—And the Woman • James Oliver Curwood

... confidence in God and assurance of His help in all the past, so that, like some strong tower after the most crashing blows of the battering-ram, he still 'stands.' 'His steps had wellnigh slipped,' when foe after foe stormed against him, but 'Thy mercy, O Lord, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren

... locked up," explained Levi Bedford, when Artie gave a cry as he caught sight of the door. The heavy slabs of wood had been smashed in with a stout log used as a battering-ram, and a hasty search revealed the fact that the arms and ammunition, the overseer had ...
— An Undivided Union • Oliver Optic

... the front gate and promised an easier entrance; but it was likewise locked and barred. Then some one spied the wagon and its load of timbers, now hopelessly wedged into the press, and a rush was made toward it. A beam was raised upon willing shoulders, and with this as a battering-ram a breach was begun. ...
— The Net • Rex Beach

... Ring, where they fell upon a respectable solicitor named Bond, who happened to be passing, and him they nearly killed. He was removed in an insensible and very dangerous condition to the George Hotel. Meanwhile, an attack was made with iron bars, used battering-ram fashion, upon the doors of many of the shops, the rioters "prodding" them with all their might. Messrs. Bourne's shop, at the corner of Moor Street, was the first to give way, and the men quickly gained admittance. A large number of loaves of ...
— Personal Recollections of Birmingham and Birmingham Men • E. Edwards

... threatening them. Ha, ha! If the caterpillar thinks we will make him a gift of our flowers he can stroke his belly—with his back! [To another.] You, hie to the rescue of cabbages in old neglected corners, where the grasshopper lays siege to them with his vigorous battering-ram! [To the remaining HENS.] You—[Catching sight of the OLD HEN, whose shaking, senile head has lifted the basket-lid.] Ah, there you are, Nursie! Good day! [She gazes at him admiringly.] ...
— Chantecler - Play in Four Acts • Edmond Rostand

... see something else which does not exactly belong to the small things of Japan you should visit a temple in Osaka, the chief manufacturing town of Japan. There hangs a bell which is 25 feet high and weighs 220 tons. In a frame beside the bell is suspended a beam, a regular battering-ram, which is set in motion up and down when the bell is sounded. And when the bell emits its heavy, deafening ring ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin

... battering-rams, and ladders; and yet Crescenzio laughed, for the stone walls were harder than the stone missiles, and higher than the tallest ladders, and so thick that fire could not heat them from without, nor battering-ram loosen a single block in a single course; and many assaults were repelled, and many a brave soldier fell writhing and broken into the deep ditch ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford

... desire you at once to root up the shrubs growing in the Signine Channel[408], which will before long become big trees scarcely to be hewn down with the axe, and which interfere with the purity of the water in the aqueduct of Ravenna. Vegetation is the peaceable overturner of buildings, the battering-ram which brings them to the ground, though the ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)

... the Potomac army no longer, and this was more than ever impossible after Grant took command. Then Greek met Greek, and the death grapple began. At the Wilderness, at Spottsylvania, and most mercilessly of all at Cold Harbor, Grant drove his colossal battering-ram against Lee's gray wall, only to find ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XII • John Lord



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