Evening Republican, Volume 17, Number 59, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 March 1913 — LAST FIGHT IN ARMOR [ARTICLE]

LAST FIGHT IN ARMOR

WAS NOT IN THB MIDDLE AGES* AS MIGHT BE IMAGINED. Quick-Witted French Commander, In 1799, Clothed Hie Soldiers In Steel and Sent Them to Spike Gdns Which Annoyed Him. The last fight In armor occurred during Napoleon’s time. In 1799, the main army of the French having withdrawn from the town of Aqoiia, a body of some four hundred soldiers remained in the place, whose inhabitants Here well disposed toward them! Bui the peasants of the surrounding region were bitterly hostile and, rising in revolt, penetrated the town and drove the Frenchmen into the fortress, which was small and v-eak, yet powerful enough to hold the insurgents at bay with its cannon. These Insurgents numbered ten or twelve thousand. They barricaded the street and loopholed the houses so that they were safe from attack, but this did not satisfy them. They wished to take the fort, which, without artillery, was manifestly impossible. Finally some cunning brain devised a scheme that came near to being successful, . Between the fort and the nearest bouses there lay on the glacis, without carriages and resting upon pieces of wood, twelve guns which the French had not had time to take Into; the fort with-them. The position of the guns exposed them to fire from both sides, so it was not thought they would be interfered with, though by way of precaution two of the guns of the fortification were kept trained upon them. One night the sentinel heard a noise. He fired, but the sound continued and did not Immediately cease after other shots/ though it seemed to draw farther off. When daylight came it was seen that, under cover of darkness, the Insurgents had reached the nearest gun, attached a rope to the breech, and then, fastening the rope to a capstan in the nearest house, had attempted to haul the piece away. Had it been a military man who tried the trick, he would have succeeded, but the peasants did not know enough to thrust rollers under the gun before hauling, and consequently the breech dug a furrow into the soil which soon became deep enough to stop further progress. Nevertheless, the besieged were much irritated by the occurrence and determined to prevent a relation of it. They cannonaded the house from which the rope issued, bat when the walls fell they found that the capstan was in the cellar and, consequently, uninjured, although blocked for the time by debris. This did not content them. Then it was that the commandant of the fort remembered having seen stowed away in it somewhere a dozen suits of ancient armor. He selected twelve of his coolest men, gunners and grenadiers, clothed them in this armor, and sent them out to spike the guns. Covered with Med from head to foot and carrying spikes and hammers, the men marched heavily, awkwardly, out of the fort and moved In dead silence toward the coveted guns, the white smoke curling about their mailed figures, and bullets pattering harmlessly against antique helm and corselet Many of the peasants were horrorstruck and believed the strange figures to be diabolical and Invulnerable while, after the first anxious moment was passed, their own comrades, looking from the walls, broke Into exultant roars of laughter. / The twelve latter-day knights returned safely from their raid, having spiked the guns and cat the rope. Though many times hit they had hut one wound among them, a slight one received by a soldier who had wrongly adjusted a “brassart," so that it fell off and left his arm exposed. The Insurgents were discouraged; and, though the blockade continued, there was little more fighting and tile besieged were soon relieved by their frienda —Harper's Weekly.