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Bivouac   Listen
verb
Bivouac  v. i.  (past & past part. bivouacked; pres. part. bivouacking)  (Mil.)
(a)
To watch at night or be on guard, as a whole army.
(b)
To encamp for the night without tents or covering.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Bivouac" Quotes from Famous Books



... was rapidly fading, the brigade halted to make camp for the night. All were to sleep in the open, for dog brigades never carry tents but bivouac on the snow with nothing but a blanket between the sleeper and the Aurora Borealis—though the thermometer may fall to sixty below zero. Some of the men moved off with axes in their hands, and the sound of chopping began to echo through the forest. On every side big dry trees came crashing ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming

... saw that the horses were picketed so as to provide a barrier against a sudden rush, made the men lie down with their weapons beside them, posted sentries all round the bivouac, and agreed to keep watch for an hour each, to ensure the sentries not going calmly to sleep. Gerrard, who felt wide-awake again now after talking and walking about, insisted on taking the first watch, which passed uneventfully. Then he called Charteris, and dropping into the hollow which the latter ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier

... meadow behind him the first bivouac was pitched; on the left stood a park of field artillery, ammunition-wagons in the rear, and in front the long lines of picket-ropes to which the horses were fastened, their harness piled on ...
— Lorraine - A romance • Robert W. Chambers

... Miss Ainsley presented herself to his fancy, alluring, fascinating, beckoning. She seemed the embodiment of that brilliant career which he regarded as the best solace he could hope for. Often, however, he would wake in the night, and, from his forest bivouac, look up at the stars. Then a calm, deep voice in his soul would tell him unmistakably that, even if he attained every success that he craved, his heart would not be in it, that he would always hide the melancholy of a lifelong disappointment. ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe

... life has been passed in all the vicissitudes of war and peace. The camp and the bivouac—the reckless gaiety of the mess-table —the comfortless solitude of a French prison—the exciting turmoils of active service—the wearisome monotony of garrison duty, I have alike partaken of, and experienced. A career of ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 1 • Charles James Lever

... at a pinch, and so we sat down and made a cooking-place with stones, and built a fire, and let the flame die down into coals, and I dressed the meat as best I could, and flavoured it with gunpowder and pepper, and we were merry. The man was thenceforth mine, and I knew I could trust him; a bivouac in the Himalayas, when one is alone and far from any kind of assistance, is not the spot to indulge in any prejudice about colour. I did not think much about it as I hungrily gnawed the meat and divided ...
— Mr. Isaacs • F. Marion Crawford

... Wet, cheerless was our bivouac last eve, but still we spoke Of fighting and of winning, to-morrow, when day broke: That day the thundering echoes of cannon in our front Had louder grown until around had raged the battle's brunt At last the carnage ended, and our regiment's ...
— Memories of Canada and Scotland - Speeches and Verses • John Douglas Sutherland Campbell

... be severe, and he does not grumble at its penalties. In battle, he does not abandon his chief; he watches over him, will die for his safety, will not let him fall into the hands of the enemy if wounded. At the bivouac he makes the officer's fire, though his own should die for want of fuel; cares for his horse, arranges his furniture; if any delicacy in the way of food can be procured, he brings it to the chief. Convinced of the desire of their master that the soldiers shall ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various

... rare intervals, from somewhere far beyond the Terek in those parts whence Olenin had just come (the Chechen or the Kumytsk plain), came muffled sounds of firing. Olenin was feeling very well contented after three months of bivouac life. His newly washed face was fresh and his powerful body clean (an unaccustomed sensation after the campaign) and in all his rested limbs he was conscious of a feeling of tranquillity and strength. His mind, ...
— The Cossacks • Leo Tolstoy

... were breaking northward from Cape Colony towards the Orange River in front of Colonel Eustace. We had been riding all day, I was taking risks in what I was doing, and there is something very cheerless in a fireless bivouac. My mind ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells

... steep but not perpendicular. The mule rolled over and over until the bottom was reached, and we supposed of course the poor animal was dashed to pieces. What was our surprise, not long after we had gone into bivouac, to see the lost mule, cargo and owner coming up the ascent. The load had protected the animal from serious injury; and his owner had gone after him and found a way back to the path leading up to the hut where we were ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan

... "Anno 66," but I could only catch a few words here and there, so have very little idea of the plot. One of the characters was a correspondent of an English newspaper. This singular being came on in the midst of a soldiers' bivouac before Sadowa, dressed very nearly in white—a very long frock-coat, and a tall hat on the back of his head, both nearly white. He said "Morning" as a general remark, when he first came on, but afterwards talked what I suppose was broken German. He appeared to be ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood

... the frontier to bivouac here," he grumbled. "As soon as the young lady is on her feet again ...
— The Honor of the Name • Emile Gaboriau

... spirit of insubordination was beginning to manifest itself among the troops, and the very men who would have rushed to the cannon's mouth, grew cowardly at the approach of the invisible foe that stole away their lives, by the gradual and insidious poison of disease. The songs and jests of the bivouac were hushed, the white tents were mournful as sepulchres, and the men lost all confidence in their leaders. They now accused the emperor and Lacy of incapacity, and declared that they must either be disbanded or led ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach

... the bivouac fire, above These fields of savage play, I'll lift my love to meet thy love ...
— The Vigil of Venus and Other Poems by "Q" • Q

... bivouac among a cluster of dark firs in the mountain corridor, opened by an ancient glacier of King's River in the heart of the Sierras. It dawned a trifle sooner than we could have wished, but Professor Brewer and Hoffman had breakfasted before sunrise, and ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: Explorers • Various

... of El Zeres was encamped. Rube and I guessed them at four hundred strong. There was an attempt at military order, for, by the bundles of wearing apparel, etc., it was evident that the men slept round a series of bivouac fires, extending in a circle round the foot of the mound. Within the line of fires the horses were picketed in two rows. In the centre of the circle, upon the highest point of the rise, was a small house. As we approached we could see ...
— Out on the Pampas - The Young Settlers • G. A. Henty

... either of time or inclination to dwell upon aught save the horrid reality of the drama. To others who more immediately participated in those great events, the daily vexations and annoyances—the hot and dusty day —the sleepless, anxious night—the rain upon the unsheltered bivouac—the dead lassitude which succeeded the excitement of action —the cruel orders which recognized no fatigue and made no allowance for labors undergone—all these small trials of the soldier's life made it possible to but few to realize the grandeur of the drama to which they were ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various

... circumstances that they could not yet have reached so far south, and that they might probably have quitted the beach for the purpose of seeking fresh water inland, we lost no time in pushing on to the northward, and at sunset of the 11th took up our bivouac at Barrumbur on the Moore River, seventeen miles in advance, where excellent water was found in deep pools and our horses revelled in luxuriant pasturage. Between the two rivers there is a great extent of level country, so much under water ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 2 (of 2) • George Grey

... of Enguerrand's vain attempt to inspirit them. But his fate was not known. There, at midnight, Raoul is still searching among the ghastly heaps and pools of blood, lighted from afar by the blaze from the observatory of Montmartre, and more near at hand by the bivouac fires extended along the banks to the left of the Marne, while everywhere about the field flitted the lanterns of the Frere Chretiens. Suddenly, in the dimness of a spot cast into shadow by an incompleted earthwork, he observed a small sinister figure perched on the breast ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... our bivouac as sheltered a spot as possible in a spruce growth, hauled together a good supply of small dead trees and made a fire. For supper we had one-half of what remained of the pea meal, reserving the other half (one-sixth of a pound) for breakfast. ...
— The Lure of the Labrador Wild • Dillon Wallace

... the line. The troops were falling into their ranks, stamping their feet to set the blood in motion, swinging their arms, and growling at the sharp morning air. At the headquarters bivouac the young nobles were laughing and jesting as they ...
— Won by the Sword - A Story of the Thirty Years' War • G.A. Henty

... this memory recalls to me how it fell upon a certain day, the incidents of which are expanding upon my mind like those dissolving views that come up out of the dark, I set up a camp-fire just where that wood-barge nods drowsily at anchor, about a mile this side of the town. It was a sort of bivouac a man is not likely to forget in a hurry; not that it makes much of a story, after all,—but a trifling scratch will sometimes leave its mark on a man for life. I was quartered in Quebec then; didn't go much into society, though, because I devoted much of my young energies to shooting and fishing, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various

... A summer bivouac had collected together a little troop of soldiers from Joppa, under the shelter of a grove, where they had spread their sheep-skins, tethered their horses, and pitched a single tent. With the carelessness of soldiers, they were chatting away ...
— If, Yes and Perhaps - Four Possibilities and Six Exaggerations with Some Bits of Fact • Edward Everett Hale

... me how he had managed to secure the necklace; and he told me that while the Subahdar turned his back upon his clothes in prayer, he had taken it up and made it over to one of the men of his party; and that it must have been taken to their bivouac, which was in a grove about three miles from the cantonments. I sent off a few policemen, who secured the whole party, but could not find anything upon them. Seeing some signs of a hole having been freshly made under one of the trees they ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell

... our horses could not travel through it. In consequence we were compelled to give up further efforts to advance, and obliged to turn back to the abandoned village, where we encamped for the night. Near night-fall the storm greatly increased, and our bivouac became most uncomfortable; but spreading my blankets on the snow and covering them with Indian matting, I turned in and slept with that soundness and refreshment accorded by nature to one exhausted by fatigue. When I awoke in the morning I found ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. I., Part 1 • Philip H. Sheridan

... the men were nearly worn out by the exhausting labors of the march, they were ordered to halt in the road, and bivouac for the rest of the night. What a time and what a place for repose! They could only wrap themselves up in their wet blankets, and stretch themselves upon the ground, soaked with water, and with the rain still pouring down upon them. ...
— The Soldier Boy; or, Tom Somers in the Army - A Story of the Great Rebellion • Oliver Optic

... fading scars, Hath touched their frosty spires; Around them pale the wearied stars, Like waning bivouac fires. ...
— Poems • John L. Stoddard

... from a deficient sense of humor, listened with undisguised displeasure to this speech. It dispersed them, in fact; some turned away to bivouac for the rest of the night upon the arm-chairs and sofas, while others returned to their rooms. With the latter went Isabel. "Lock me in, Basil," she said, with a bold meekness, "and if anything more happens don't wake me till the last moment." It was hard to part from ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... was, Mohun was thoroughly shocked and grieved; but the urgency of the crisis brought back the prompt decision of thought and purpose that were habitual to the trained soldier. He sprang to his feet, alert and ready for action, as he would have done in the old times, from his bivouac, to meet a night-surprise of the ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence

... the excitement of this first bivouac, as soon as the meal was over Jack stretched himself out upon the ground and fell fast asleep, only returning to consciousness when wakened by the flies and midday heat; and so ended his first experience of a ...
— Soldiers of the Queen • Harold Avery

... "describing a field day and bivouac," refers to the Chatham lines as the place where the review was held, on the third day of the visit of the Pickwickians to this neighbourhood, and which (having been relieved of the company of their quondam friend, Mr. Jingle, who had caused at least one of the party so much anxiety) ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes

... "Arcadian." Hot day, smooth sea. Disembarking to bivouac on shore. What a contrast we must present to the Headquarters in France! There the stately Chateau; sheets, table-cloths and motor cars. Here the red tab patricians have to haul their ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton

... This bivouac was a pleasant scene to look upon; but its peace was like the stillness that precedes a storm. A few hours might change these light-hearted human beings into mangled corpses, and dye this velvet ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach

... At this time, Murdoch MacDonald went to the transport lines, and his place was taken by my friend Private Ross, of the 16th Battalion, the Canadian Scottish. He stayed with me to the end. We were very comfortable in the field. Ross made himself a bivouac of rubber sheets. Dandy was picketed not far off and, under the trees, my little brown pyramid tent was erected, with a rude bench outside for a toilet table, and a large tin pail for a bath-tub. When the battalions ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott

... already fallen into our hands. As the day wore on, however, and the expected orders to advance were not forthcoming, we suspected that all was not as it should be and our fears were confirmed soon afterwards by instructions being given to prepare to bivouac overnight on the ground close by. What actually happened was this:—The initial attack was successful in capturing and overrunning the enemy's front line trenches over the whole area, but, on advancing to the second trench system a great deal of wire was found to have ...
— Three years in France with the Guns: - Being Episodes in the life of a Field Battery • C. A. Rose

... just a picture, a parody of the well-known picture of the bivouac below and the soldier's dream of return to his beloved above. But Master Hugh in the dream was embracing an enormous retort, while a convenient galvanometer registered his emotion and little tripods ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells

... of the tombs, we came upon a party who had bivouac'd for the night; the camels, unladen, were, with their burthens, placed in a circle, and the people busily employed in preparing their evening meal. Other evidences there were, however, to show that the toils of the desert were but too frequently fatal to the wretched beasts of burthen employed ...
— Notes of an Overland Journey Through France and Egypt to Bombay • Miss Emma Roberts

... we were sitting outside of our bivouac watching some German balloons being downed by one of our airplanes; our flier had good luck that evening, accounting for three of the floating sausages; and as we were awaiting the finish of the last sausage, and speculating on ...
— S.O.S. Stand to! • Reginald Grant

... for the purpose. The canon appeared to widen out a little way ahead: there I should probably find good grazing for the horse (though not, I ruefully reflected, for myself). Arriving at the opening, I found, as I expected, grassy slopes rising from the creek, and resolved to make here my bivouac. ...
— The Penance of Magdalena & Other Tales of the California Missions • J. Smeaton Chase

... of Zephyrs, among the Douars of Spahis, on sandy soil under African stars, above the heaped plunder brought in from a razzia, in the yellow light of candles fastened to bayonets stuck in the earth at a bivouac, on the broad deal table of a barrack-room full of black-browed conscrits indigenes, amid the thundering echoes of the Marseillaise des Bataillons shouted from the brawny chests of Zouaves, Cigarette had danced, danced, danced; till her whole vivacious life seemed pressed ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]

... spend the night unguarded, although no armed men lay between us and the enemy. We could hear the Kurds shouting now and then, and once, when I climbed a high rock, I caught sight of the glow of their bivouac fires. Imagination conjured up the shrieks of tortured victims, for we had all seen enough of late to know what would happen to any luckless straggler they might have caught and brought to make sport by the fires. But there was no imagination about the calls ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy

... was almost impossible for me to reach the emperor. He had left Olmutz. All the night long I was conducted from bivouac to bivouac, in order to find Prince Bagration, who could alone take me to ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach

... we decided, or rather got orders, to remain where we were for the night. Given a choice we would have done nothing of the sort; it was chilly weather outside canvas; we had not come prepared for a bivouac, and we had no great coats nor blankets. But they were subsequently sent out to us. To satisfy the pangs of hunger, which were asserting themselves with increasing importunity, we tried (advisedly) the pockets of the coats, and there found ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan

... parts of the country, to join their comrades of St. Etienne; farmers and peasants, on horseback and afoot, hastening to offer their humane aid; sentinels posted—muskets piled—watch-fires blazing, and, in short, the tout ensemble rendered the approaches of Bois-Monzil like a bivouac on the eve of an expected battle; happily, however, the object of these brave men was to preserve life and not to ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman

... pointed, to them, stroked his knees, turned up and pointed to the soles of his boots, which certainly were suffering from the lava, and once more solemnly shook his head. This was conclusive: so I conveyed to him my pantomime that he had better go back to the bivouac where my friend was, rather than remain here alone, and that I hoped to meet him there in the evening; took an affectionate farewell, and turned towards the rocks. There was evidently nothing for it but to go on alone. It was half-past ten o'clock, and the height ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various

... VI. Origin of "Piker." Before the Era of Canned Good and Kodaks. Morning Routine. Typical Bivouac. Sociability Entrained. The Flooded ...
— Crossing the Plains, Days of '57 - A Narrative of Early Emigrant Tavel to California by the Ox-team Method • William Audley Maxwell

... leaves overhead, and we congratulated ourselves on the snugness of our situation. There was something cheerful about this free life. We contrasted our condition with that of tired invalids who were tossing on downy beds, and wooing sleep in vain. Nothing was so wholesome and invigorating as this bivouac in the forest. But, somehow, sleep did not come. The rain had ceased to patter, and began to fall with a steady determination, a sort of soak, soak, all about us. In fact, it roared on the rubber blanket, and beat in our faces. The wind began to ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... as he had from others in Dahomey, where, when hunting with Kerika, he had been awakened by the trumpeting of elephants and the roaring of wild beasts, and saw, under some gigantic tree, the dim shadow of some strange animal passing between himself and the bivouac fires; or caught a glimpse of some great snake slowly winding through the underbrush. But the monsters to be found in Paris are more terrible even than those in the African forests; or they would have been, had he understood the dangers he incurred. But ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet

... September the girls returned to school, friends as close as ever, even though a little cloud overshadowed the hitherto unbroken confidences, and Marshall joined the cavalry, as old Folsom had suggested, and took to the saddle, the prairie, the bivouac, and buffalo hunt as though native and to the manner born. They were building the Union Pacific then, and he and his troop, with dozens of others scattered along the line, were busy scouting the neighborhood, guarding the surveyors, ...
— Warrior Gap - A Story of the Sioux Outbreak of '68. • Charles King

... our bivouac-fire has smouldered away, Yet a bit of good 'baccy shall comfort us well; When you sleep in your cloak there's no lodging to pay, And where we shall breakfast the devil can tell! But the horses were fed, ere the ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville

... French Republic rushed to arms, and defended France successfully against all Europe, during the last decade of the eighteenth century, they did not think of the privations of the bivouac, of the horrors of the battlefield, of the sorrow of their families, they thought only of France and ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 2, February 1886 • Various

... question," returned Pax; "what are we to do? Our holidays are before us. The day is far spent; the evening is at hand. We can't bivouac here, that is plain. What say you, Phil, to walking over to Miss Stivergill's? I have a general invite from that lady to spend any holidays I have to dispose of at Rosebud Cottage. It is not more than two miles from where ...
— Post Haste • R.M. Ballantyne

... one was likely to fall down a slope or stumble on to the side of a hill. Notwithstanding these difficulties, the 28th never once lost its way or failed to reach its objective to time. On one occasion a move was made for some miles along the Suez Road and a bivouac, protected by outposts, established in the Wadi-esh-Shem. The remainder of the Brigade represented a hostile force based on Cairo. During the night an attempt was made to penetrate the 28th outpost line. ...
— The 28th: A Record of War Service in the Australian Imperial Force, 1915-19, Vol. I • Herbert Brayley Collett

... fray, gorged and satiated, take to flight, and disappear like a band of black demons into the recesses of the forest. It is then the sportsmen leave their hut, stretch their limbs, count the dead, dispatch their wounded enemies, and, clothed in thick fur cloaks, sit as if at the bivouac round a large fire, passing the remaining hours of the night in emptying more bottles, excavating more pies, drinking more punch, and telling better stories than those which I have had the pleasure of laying before ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle

... the rogue taken to camp! As it was growing dark, some of us resolved to bivouac where the capture had been made, and tied our captive to a tree. Next morning we let him go with only a hind leg hobbled, so that he might find breakfast for himself. Then, having disposed of our own breakfast, we proceeded to induce our prisoner ...
— The Eagle Cliff • R.M. Ballantyne

... war-path, amid dangers and conflicts, the tumults of the fight, the noise of the camp, the confusion of the bivouac, the young general did not for one moment forget the wife he so passionately loved. Nearly every day he wrote to her, and those letters, which were often written between the dictation of the battle's ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach

... somewhat excessive space in his pages. Still, if the operations of war are to be related, it is highly important that they should be treated with intelligence, and knowledge how masses of men are moved, and by a writer to whom the various incidents of the camp, the march, and the bivouac, are not matters of mere hearsay, but of personal experience. The campaign of Belisarius in Africa may be ...
— Gibbon • James Cotter Morison

... King's Chair, all records of King James V.'s celebrated raid to subdue the thieves of Annandale. Tradition says, what seems extremely likely, that he spent a night in the midst of this muir; and hence the appellations of royalty which adhere to the objects which witnessed his bivouac. But, although the localities referred to possess an interest, they are exceeded, in this respect, by a number of "cairns," by which the summits of several hills, or rising grounds, are topped. These cairns, which amount to five or six, are all within sight of each ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 17 • Alexander Leighton

... citizenship in one-half of her Departments—the state of siege. A wondrous discovery this was, periodically applied at each succeeding crisis in the course of the French revolution. But the barrack and the bivouac, thus periodically laid on the head of French society, to compress her brain and reduce her to quiet; the sabre and the musket, periodically made to perform the functions of judges and of administrators, of guardians and of censors, of police officers ...
— The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte • Karl Marx

... spread in Washington that the army would move and bivouac in Richmond's public square within ten days. The march was to be a triumphal procession. The Washington politicians filled wagons and carriages with champagne to celebrate the victory. Tickets were actually ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon

... bivouac was in a shady place nigh-hand the road, where a group of solemn trees made a shadow on the dusty grass. It was a day of robust heat; the sky arched cloudless over Sussex, and the road was soft with white dust that rose like smoke under the feet. Trotter no sooner saw the place than he called ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon

... thy tent-formed shell is like The soldier's nightly bivouac, alone Amidst a sea of blood....... ......but ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook

... Calder, hot-headed Fusilier and dear madcap Jules St. Ange lying near them out of pain forever. Yet here their fellows blazed on and on, black, shattered, decimated, short of horses, one caisson blown up, and finally dragged away to bivouac, proud holders of all their six Callender guns, their silken flag shot-torn but unsoiled and furled only when shells could no longer ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable

... southern nights under whose spell all the sterner energies of the mind cloak themselves and lie down in bivouac, and the fancy and the imagination, that cannot sleep, slip their fetters and escape, beckoned away from behind every flowering bush and sweet-smelling tree, and every stretch of lonely, half-lighted walk, by the genius of poetry. The air stirred softly now and then, and was still again, as if the ...
— Madame Delphine • George W. Cable

... the evening of the 15th of July, and on a number of gently sloping fields, interspersed with vineyards and dotted with trees, a Christino brigade, including a regiment of cavalry, had established its bivouac. In such weather as it then was, it became a luxury to pass a night in the open air, with turf for a mattrass, a cloak for a pillow, and the branches for bed-curtains, instead of being cramped and crowded into smoky, vermin-haunted ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various

... aggression. Mitrailleuses and cannon are stationed before the Hotel de Ville; the drums beat the rappel throughout the town, and a great number of battalions of National Guards assemble in the Rue de Rivoli, at the Louvre, and on the Place de la Concorde; others bivouac before the Palais de l'Industrie, while on the other side of the Champs Elysees regiments of cavalry, infantry, and mobiles, are drawn out. The agitators have disappeared, calm is restored, within the city be it understood, for all this did not interrupt the animated interchange ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton

... comrade still remember His old Hans von Wildenstein? Down the Rhine and Danube many Drops of water have been flowing, Since we in that war together Lay before the bivouac-fire; And I see it by my son's growth, Who is now a strapping fellow— Four-and-twenty years he reckons. First a page unto his highness The Grand Duke of Wuertemberg; Then to Tuebingen I sent him. If I by his debts can ...
— The Trumpeter of Saekkingen - A Song from the Upper Rhine. • Joseph Victor von Scheffel

... awake in the morning amid a grove of sheltering nodding oaks is lung-inspiring. It was the good thought of a wanderer to say, "The forest is the poor man's jacket." Napoleon had a high opinion of the bivouac style of life, and on the score of health gave it the preference over tent-sleeping. Free circulation is a great blessing, albeit we think its eulogy rather strongly expressed by the Walden-Pondist, when he says, "I would ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various

... free air and we'll bivouac under the starry sky; We'll march with men and we'll fight with men, and we'll see men laugh and die; We'll know such joy as we never dreamed; we'll fathom the deeps of pain: But the hardest bit of it all will be—when we come ...
— Rhymes of a Red Cross Man • Robert W. Service

... after we had marked the place where the dead puma lay, we agreed that we would return to the bottom of the valley and try and find our companions. That we might enjoy a whole day in the mountains, it had been arranged that we should bivouac in the valley, and not commence our return till the following morning. We looked about for the doctor and guides, but they were nowhere to be seen. We fired off our rifles, but no one answered in return. We began to be anxious. Could they have been stopped by robbers? ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston

... abundant, and there was no lack of wood now, so that his night bivouac was not so cold or dreary as might have ...
— The Dog Crusoe and his Master • R.M. Ballantyne

... Then, welcome be the bivouac, The hardy stand, and fierce attack, Where pikes will tame their carbineers, And rifles thin their bay'neteers, And every field the island through Will show "what Irishmen can do!" A soldier's life's the life for me— A ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis

... lass forlorn of kith and kin * (Who to Hijazian willow wand and myrtle[FN497] cloth incline, And who, when meeting caravan, shall with love-lowe set light * To bivouac fire, and bang for conk her tears of pain and pine) Exceeds not mine for him nor more devotion shows, but he * Seeing my heart is wholly his spurns love as ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton

... was received, Sedgwick had his troops placed, and his dispositions taken, to carry out the orders to pursue, on the Bowling-Green road, an enemy indicated to him as in rapid retreat from Hooker's front; and was actually in bivouac along that road, while a strong picket-line was still engaged skirmishing with the force in his front. By this time the vanguard of his columns had proceeded a distance variously given as from one to three miles below the bridges in this direction; ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge

... bursting shells. Slowly as the sun climbed up the curtain became more substantial. Then it seemed to droop and sweep along the hollows like a vanishing mist of dawn, and during a respite the thin blue smoke of the bivouac fires came tranquilly up into the still air. The respite was very brief, and the bombardment began again with greater fierceness than before. The 75's drummed unceasingly. The reverberation of the 125's and of the howitzers shook the observation post. Over the Kereves Dere, ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various

... he had ridden on to join the army. Dismounting, he went at once on foot among the troops, chatting gaily with them and inquiring how they fared. After visiting all the other detachments he came to the bivouac of the Carthaginian horse, and for an hour sat ...
— The Young Carthaginian - A Story of The Times of Hannibal • G.A. Henty

... the light, and threw himself down on his pallet, Dressed as he was, and ready to start at the break of the morning,— Covered himself with the cloak he had worn in his campaigns in Flanders,— Slept as a soldier sleeps in his bivouac, ready for action. But with the dawn he arose; in the twilight Alden beheld him Put on his corselet of steel, and all the rest of his armor, Buckle about his waist his trusty blade of Damascus, Take from the corner his musket, and so stride out of the chamber. Often ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... hospital departments, also the army works and land-transport corps. Besides, his computations only begin with the encounter of the Bulganak, previous to which the sufferings of the soldiers in landing at Old Fort were so great, that on the short march to the bivouac of the Bulganak many men dropped out from cholera, dysentery, thirst, or weakness, who never rejoined their corps; and some of whom, it is to be feared, from the want of transport and ambulances, perished unaided where ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... mark assembly point of company, etc. In addition to their use in visual signaling, these flags serve to mark the assembly point of the company when disorganized by combat, and to mark the location of the company in bivouac and elsewhere, when ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss

... thee, meandering, yet wafted back From distant hearth and lonely bivouac, From strange vicissitudes in other lands, From half-wrought labors and unfinished plans I come, in thy cool depths my brow to lave, And rest a moment by thy ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard

... returning to the sheltered woods at sundown, for the wild things fear the cold night wind even as man does. But now the deer-flies were rife in the woods, and the rocky hillside nooks warm enough for the nightly bivouac, ...
— Animal Heroes • Ernest Thompson Seton

... on the resident section,—involving change of domicile, substitution of uses, the alternate destruction and erection of buildings, each being larger and more costly in material than its predecessor,—make the metropolis of the New World appear, to the visitor from the Old, a shifting bivouac rather than a stable city, where hereditary homes are impossible, and nomadic instincts prevalent, and where local associations, such as endear or identify the streets abroad, seem as incongruous as in the Eastern desert or Western woods, whose dwellers "fold their tents like ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various

... broad field of battle, In the bivouac of life, Be not like dumb, driven cattle, Be ...
— Reading Made Easy for Foreigners - Third Reader • John L. Huelshof

... roll has beat The soldier's last tattoo; No more on Life's parade shall meet That brave and fallen few. On Fame's eternal camping-ground Their silent tents are spread, And Glory guards, with solemn round, The bivouac of the dead. ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long

... inadvertently took another path than that followed by the party under Barunda's uncle, so that they passed the latter without being aware of it, going nearly half a mile to the right of where the trailers camped a short distance from the bivouac of Ninaka. ...
— The Monster Men • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... sit in a room! That forsooth was my duty! To have written them in the bivouac, when the horses at the enemy's outposts are heard neighing at night, would have been well enough; however, that was not my life and not my business, but that of Theodore Koerner. His war-songs suit him perfectly. But to me, who am not of a warlike nature, and who have no warlike sense, war-songs ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... Janice joined Sukey and Peg in the hurried preparation of the meal, it was not till after three that it could be announced. As a consequence, before the men had tired of the Madeira, dark had come. One unfortunate of the staff was therefore despatched to order the regiments to bivouac for the night. ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford

... town was crowded before even our billeting party arrived, and it was only by some most brazen billet stealing, which lost us for ever the friendship of the Divisional Cyclists, that we were able to find cover for all, while many of the Lincolnshires had to bivouac in the fields. Here we remained during the battle, but though the Canadians moved up to the line, we were not used, and spent our time standing by and listening to the gun fire. A 15" Howitzer, commanded by Admiral Bacon and manned ...
— The Fifth Leicestershire - A Record Of The 1/5th Battalion The Leicestershire Regiment, - T.F., During The War, 1914-1919. • J.D. Hills

... Where we struck the channel there was a long hole of brine. There was plenty of good grass on the river flat; and we got some tolerably good water where we fixed our camp. When we had finished our evening meal, the shades of night descended upon us, in this our first bivouac in the unknown interior. By observations of the bright stars Vega and Altair, I found my latitude was 24 degrees 52' 15"; the night was excessively cold, and by daylight next morning the thermometer had fallen ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles

... the sixth day of April, 1862, was bright and warm. Reveille had been sounded rather late, for the troops, wearied with long marching, were to have a day of rest. The men were idling about the embers of their bivouac fires; some preparing breakfast, others looking carelessly to the condition of their arms and accoutrements, against the inevitable inspection; still others were chatting with indolent dogmatism on that never-failing theme, ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce

... hour after leaving the burned house, the Zouaves and their charge reached the bivouac of the Advance Guard, half way down the slope towards Carter's Field. The loss of the corps had been but trifling, in spite of their furious charge; and though tired and hungry, those who had not dropped down ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford

... different animals; others in plying the heavy pestle of a moveable homminy-mortar[*]; and one or two in wheeling the remainder of the wagons aside, and arranging them in such a manner as to form a sort of outwork for their otherwise defenceless bivouac. ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper

... Fame's eternal camping ground Their silent tents are spread, And Glory guards with solemn round The bivouac of the dead. ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... would allow me to lodge in the dwelling. Five nights' experience in camp had somewhat reduced my enthusiasm, and I already wearied of the damp beds, the hard fare, and the coarse conversation of the bivouac. The young lady assented willingly, as she stated that the presence of a young man would both amuse and protect the family. For several nights she had not slept, and had imagined footsteps on the porch and the drawing of window-bolts. There was a bed, formerly ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend

... which govern them is not readily given up. A great discovery in physical science seems to disturb the foundations of nature. It does not really do so; the disturbance is not in nature, but in the mind. No endeavor of man, no advance of his from some old bivouac to a new camping-ground, affects in the least the order of the world. The change, we repeat, is in the man, and in the race to ...
— Notable Events of the Nineteenth Century - Great Deeds of Men and Nations and the Progress of the World • Various

... stars that signalled all along her circuit. Men whistled, children laughed; the train thundered through tunnels, and flew across golden stubble fields, where grain shocks and hay stacks crowded like tents of the God of plenty, in the Autumnal bivouac; and throughout the long days and dreary lagging nights. Beryl was fully conscious of a ceaseless surveillance, of an ever-present shadow, which was tall and gaunt, wore a drab overcoat and slouched hat, and was redolent of tobacco. As silent as two mummies ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... camp, we gathered quantities of wood, stacking it upon the fire, which when we left it was a wild tower of flame lighting up the whole mountain-side in the direction we had come, and seeming, in some sort, to atone for a long succession of shivering days in tireless bivouac. We followed the same stage road through the scattering settlement of Casher's Valley in Jackson County, North Carolina. A little farther on, two houses, of hewn logs, with verandas and green blinds, just fitted the description we had received of the home of old Tom ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various

... had observed the movement, and with characteristic boldness and skill ordered his troops from their strong intrenchments on Mine Run toward the Union flank. On this memorable morning the van of his columns wakened from their brief repose but a short distance from the Federal bivouac. Both parties were unconscious of their nearness, for with the exception of a few clearings the dense growth restricted vision to a narrow range. The Union forces were directed in their movements by the compass, as if they were sailors on a fog-enshrouded sea; but they well knew ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe

... this little-known region, though there are numerous fishing-hamlets scattered about. The soldiers improvised their camps along the bank. A wild scene was presented when night fell on the 16th—the glare of the bivouac, extending far along the desolate water-side; the concourse of savage figures in the lurid gloom, with here and there in the distance the gigantic shape of an illuminated warship. We worked well into the night, and were at it again when the sun rose—a ...
— Under the Dragon Flag - My Experiences in the Chino-Japanese War • James Allan

... that touched his heart, told me with evident feeling how, in every crisis of fire, pillage, and raid, these two faithful souls had kept unceasing watch about the old house; refastening the wrenched doors, replacing the shattered shutters, or extinguishing the embers of abandoned bivouac fires. Indeed, for months at a time they were its only occupants, outside of strolling marauders and bands of foragers, and but for their untiring devotion its tall chimneys would long since have stood like tombstones over the ...
— Colonel Carter of Cartersville • F. Hopkinson Smith

... below, and the tramp of many feet. A regiment is passing! To a stern fate, that beckons darkly in the distance, these patriots are moving, with firm, determined tread—to long, exhausting marches, and fireless bivouac; to hunger and cold; to sufferings in varied forms; to wounds and imprisonment; to death! God knows when and how they are going;—and, amid the doomed throng slowly passing, the bright face of my darling smilingly upturned to mine. I wave my hand and kiss it; my ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... We built a hunting bivouac in a snug corner of the plains, which gloried in the name of 'Elk Lodge.' This famous hermitage was a substantial building, and afforded excellent accommodation: a verandah in the front, twenty-eight feet by eight; a dining-room ...
— The Rifle and The Hound in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker

... canvas (in tents), they are in camp. When they are resting on the ground without tents (for instance, on the firing line the night before or during a battle), they are in what is called bivouac. When they occupy buildings in towns or villages, or huts especially erected, they are in cantonment. When they are assigned to public (such as post-offices, town halls, court houses, hotels, etc.) or private buildings they are said ...
— The Plattsburg Manual - A Handbook for Military Training • O.O. Ellis and E.B. Garey

... ever imagined of ferocity and rabble triumph. Though it was still night, the multitude thronged the streets; the windows were all lighted up, huge fires were blazing in all directions, torches were carried about at the head of every troop of the banditti; it was the bivouac of a hundred thousand bedlamites. It was now that I owned the lucky chance which had made me a Federe. In any other dress I should have been a suspicious person, and have probably been put to death; but in the brown coat, sabre, and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various

... like a four-bladed jack-knife, and he does not open until the blades are started by the Spring. He seldom leaves his mud bivouac for active service before April, but a Forward March sometimes induces him to move earlier. As a rule, however, the smaller varieties of the species begin to ply their bog-pipes some weeks before he ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 8, May 21, 1870 • Various

... sky and across the land. It laid a glory on the roof of the house on the hill; it smote the edge of the woodland pasture, burnishing with copper the gray domes; it shone faintly on distant corn shocks, on the weather-dark tents of the hemp at bivouac soldierly and grim. At his feet it sparkled in rose gleams on the samite of the brook and threw burning shafts into the gloom of ...
— Bride of the Mistletoe • James Lane Allen

... not very encouraging start I continued my journey. We had gone for some hours, when we saw a bivouac fire of the detachment belonging to the advance guard which I had left at Taragona. The sub-lieutenant in command, having no tidings of Ney, was prepared to return to Taragona at daybreak, in pursuance of his orders. He knew that we were barely ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various

... gold and purple sentinels, And in the populous woods sound reveille, falling from field and fen her sweet deserters back— But he,—no long roll of the impatient drum, for battle trumpet eager for the fray, From the far shores of blue Lake Erie blown, shall rouse the soldier's last long bivouac. ...
— The Coming of the Princess and Other Poems • Kate Seymour Maclean

... did the ties of war-comradeship prove; so tender were the memories of camp and march, of bivouac and battle; so full of heart-stirring events was the record of intimate service in the face of great peril, that even before the final disbandment, among the earlier returning veterans, soldier associations ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, February, 1886. - The Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 2, February, 1886. • Various

... looked from me to her husband, her eyes wide open with astonishment. The meal was forgotten and we hurried out into the twilight to seek news. The Etat Major of a cavalry division was to bivouac at Rebais, would ...
— My Home In The Field of Honor • Frances Wilson Huard

... impotent wrath of their monarch was not needed to fill the bitter cup, which the French soldiers were now draining to the dregs. A large number of those, who embarked for Genoa, died of the maladies contracted during their long bivouac in the marshes of Minturnae. The rest recrossed the Alps into France, too desperate to heed their master's prohibition. Those who took their way by land suffered still more severely from the Italian ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott

... tent being luckily pitched about a mile farther on, the loss of dignity in the eyes of the bystanders was the only evil result of the misfortune. Towards night it came on again to snow, and the coolies and retainers had another hard bivouac of it, while F. and I were obliged to keep all hands at the pumps, or, in other words, to fasten all available rags and wraps under our canvas, to keep out the ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight

... although the officers engaged in it will receive more credit than our own; and if their duties are arduous in chasing the Hottentots over mountains, and through rugged defiles, yet they have the advantage of a healthy field of operations, and can bivouac on the mountain ridge, or amongst the green valleys, whilst our troops had to seek their damp beds amidst the miasmatic everglades, or more pestiferous marsh. Again, the Kaffirs do occasionally make a stand, and ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay

... broad field of battle, In the bivouac of Life, Be not like dumb, driven cattle! Be ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman

... American civilization, now be called a home? Beyond the prairie road could be seen a double furrow of jet-black glistening sod, framing the green grass and its spangling flowers, first browsing of the plow on virgin soil. It might have been the opening of a farm. But if so, why the crude bivouac? Why the gear of travelers? Why the massed arklike wagons, the scores of morning fires lifting lazy blue wreaths of ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough

... course they won't be kept standing in line; but when troops are ordered to be in readiness to march at a moment's notice, on such a business as this, it means that they will all be assembled. Then probably they will be allowed to lie down, and perhaps will light bivouac fires. But it means business, I can ...
— One of the 28th • G. A. Henty

... emphasis and feeling. This was enough. Those who would have been enemies were suddenly converted into warm friends, and the desperadoes, who would have torn their former masters, or any of their race, limb from limb, if they could have got hold of them, left our adventurers undisturbed in their bivouac, after ...
— Black Ivory • R.M. Ballantyne

... and the Scouts marched into Bremerton, to find it a sleepy, lazy, old-fashioned little town. Above a building in the center the national flag was floating, and next to it a Red standard. Durland turned the Troop over to Dick Crawford, with instructions to make a bivouac near the centre of the little place, and then walked over to the building where the flag ...
— The Boy Scout Automobilists - or, Jack Danby in the Woods • Robert Maitland

... in books published concerning expeditions to that country, but in nine years' experience of camp life in Africa, both equatorial and to 14 degrees north of the equator, I have never even heard of any actual depredation committed by lions upon a camp or upon a night's bivouac; the nearest approach was the threatening nocturnal visit already described, where ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker

... to see these modern American soldiers side by side with the veterans of the Civil War. The Grand Army of the Republic Post, the local Bivouac of the United Confederate Veterans, and the Spanish War Veterans gave a joint reception for the delegates at the Missouri Athletic Club which included a smoker and a vaudeville entertainment furnished by the War Camp ...
— The Story of The American Legion • George Seay Wheat

... great artist about his art. To war it was that he owed his power and glory. Without it, he said, he would have been nothing; by it, he was everything. Hence he felt for it not merely love, but gratitude; loving it both by instinct and calculation. He preferred the bivouac to the Tuileries. Just as the snipe-shooter prefers a marsh to a drawing-room, he was more at home under a tent than in a palace. To men who like the battle-field, war is the most intense of pleasures. They love it as the gamester loves play, ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand

... the purpose of procuring shell-fish; and as they are never very fastidious about shelter or dry beds, they had determined (according to their usual custom) to pass the night where they had been occupied during the day. This sort of bivouac I found excessively uncomfortable. The moment we were seated the water began to ooze out an inch or two all round us. We sought in vain for a dry place, for we were enveloped in darkness, and surrounded ...
— A Narrative of a Nine Months' Residence in New Zealand in 1827 • Augustus Earle

... South America, which were dangerous from the presence of Indians, how incessantly—yet as it appeared, unconsciously—the half-wild Gauchos closely scanned the whole horizon." "In Tierra del Fuego, a native touched with his finger some cold preserved meat which I was eating at our bivouac, and plainly showed utter disgust at its softness; whilst I felt utter disgust at my food being touched by a naked savage, though his hands did not appear dirty." And this illustrates the primary meaning of disgust—anything ...
— Life of Charles Darwin • G. T. (George Thomas) Bettany



Words linked to "Bivouac" :   live, cantonment, inhabit, lager, armed services, dwell, military quarters, campground, boot camp, military, camp, hutment, military machine, encampment, camping area, campsite, encamp, laager, armed forces, site, populate, war machine, camping ground, camp out, camping site, land site, tent



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