"Verdun" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... richly deserved to meet with this ingratitude for employing such unprincipled fellows. I believe he was never aware of the villany they carried on, or they would have met with his severest displeasure in being removed from office, as was the case with Wirion at Verdun.[49] ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... isolated, misleading views as this do not, however, succeed in affecting in any way the general impression that by far the greater part of the leading newspapers regard the war as indecisive, especially after the fruitless conclusion of our operations before Verdun, the collapse of the great offensives on the Somme and in southern Galicia, as well as in view of the fact, confirmed on many sides, that the British blockade has not attained its end, the ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff
... back to Verdun to-day; she was supposed to have three weeks' holidays, but has only been away ten days. She is not fit to go back but there is no ...
— 'My Beloved Poilus' • Anonymous
... built in the open fields but heavily ambushed by fine old trees. Near by is a river picturesquely winding and darkly shaded. Here I saw a number of eclopes fishing as calmly as if the roar of the guns that came down the wind from Verdun were but the precursor of an ...
— The Living Present • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... naval construction and drawing. The reasons for these you will see from my missions. My tutors were all experts in the Imperial Service. A Secret Service agent sent out to investigate and report on the condition, situation, and armament of a fort like Verdun in France must be able to make correct estimates of distances, height, angles, conditions of the ground, etc. This can only be done by a man of the correct scientific training. He must have the science of topography at his finger tips; he must be ...
— The Secrets of the German War Office • Dr. Armgaard Karl Graves
... overthrown the Ollivier Ministry, and the Empress-Regent installed in office Count Palikao. There was a general outcry against Leboeuf, and on the 12th the Emperor resigned the command to Marshal Bazaine (Lebrun now acting as Chief of Staff), with the injunction to retreat westwards to Verdun. For the Emperor to order such a retreat in his own name was thought to be inopportune. Bazaine was a convenient scapegoat, and he himself knew it. Had he thrown an army corps into Metz and obeyed the Emperor's orders ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... were in Berlin, I made frequent journeys to the front in Belgium, France, Poland, Russia and Roumania. Ten times I was on the battlefields during important military engagements. Verdun, the Somme battlefield, General Brusiloff's offensive against Austria and the invasion of Roumania, I saw almost as well ...
— Germany, The Next Republic? • Carl W. Ackerman
... following the line of fortresses for which Napoleon had staked and lost his crown, and reached the Rhine by Verdun, Metz, and Mayence; thence to Aix-la-Chapelle, Lille, and Brussels, which had by the Treaty of Paris, in May, been ceded with the whole of ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley
... reader with many pages to disclose the motives which induced me to alter, with the exception of a few common-place sentences only, the characters of Count Cassel, Amelia, and Verdun the Butler—I could explain why the part of the Count, as in the original, would inevitably have condemned the whole Play,—I could inform my reader why I have pourtrayed the Baron in many particulars different from the German author, and carefully prepared the ...
— Lover's Vows • Mrs. Inchbald
... neutral countries, but which persisted in calling themselves victorious when they were either perpetually on the defensive or in the act of being beaten, despite their irresistible rush. The Somme Drive had not begun but there was not a nurse in Lille that did not know the truth about Verdun. ...
— The White Morning • Gertrude Atherton
... cannot make you understand. He tries to draw maps on the back of envelopes, but his drawing is pitiable, and then naturally he reaches out at any object that happens to be lying on the table, planks it down for Paris or Verdun, and gets seriously to work. He and Sinclair were sitting before the unlit fire in the drawing-room when Sinclair put forth his brilliant hypothesis about a flanking movement on VON KLUECK'S right. Henry was quite certain it was wrong. He ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, September 16, 1914 • Various
... mixed up in some weird way with "le petit Piou-Piou," had not yet seen a Frenchman in action. In a vague way he fancied that "the Frenchies" had "let him down." He knew nothing of the battles of Charleroi and Namur, nor of the defence of Verdun, and the French were getting dreadfully unpopular with him. Things were thrown at any one who ventured ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"
... halted after a little, ate its lunch, and then went on, got a bit too far forward, returned and dug themselves in, and trenches again. It is a hole and corner affair. We were all very cheered yesterday morning by the official news of the French successes at Verdun, and we all got obstreperous and terrorised poor Fritz. The men say they infinitely prefer the front line trenches to training at home. They have more comfortable sleeping accommodation, better food and less work. I like it better myself. Then what seems funny is to come out of the trenches ...
— Letters from France • Isaac Alexander Mack
... 1916, it was determined that an attack should be made by our armies upon these lines of the enemy, so as to bring about a removal of the enemy guns and men, then attacking the French at Verdun and the ...
— The Old Front Line • John Masefield
... when the prince was not yet fifteen, King Charles XI, his stern-faced father, suddenly died, and the boy king succeeded to the throne as absolute lord of "Sweden and Finland, of Livonia, Carelia, Ingria, Wismar, Wibourg, the islands of Rugen and Oesel, of Pomerania, and the duchies of Bremen and Verdun"—one of the finest possessions to which a young king ever succeeded, and representing what is now Sweden, Western Russia, and a large ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... All representations from the British Government were set aside, save in the case of the higher officers. Hence the miseries of the hulks and the dreadful prison barracks in England. Hence also the unhappy idlers of Verdun. What splendid loyalty there must have been in those humble Frenchmen which never allowed them for one instant to turn bitterly upon the author of all their great misfortunes. It is all brought vividly home by the description of their prisons given by ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... be recovered from the enemy, and all the places upon the Upper Rhine, which were the keys of Germany, under the protection of France. What was implied by French protection had been seen in the conduct of France towards the bishoprics of Metz, Toul, and Verdun, which it had held for centuries against the rightful owners. Treves was already in the possession of French garrisons; Lorraine was in a manner conquered, as it might at any time be overrun by an army, and could not, alone, and with its own strength, withstand ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... and the French on our right," he wrote in one place. "Our sector will bear the brunt of it. The thing has been kept wonderfully quiet, and so far the enemy knows nothing. All their attention is turned on the 'Clown' Prince's insane operations against Verdun, and the German General Staff seem to have forgotten the Somme region altogether, and to underrate the British as usual. But there will be a big ...
— With Haig on the Somme • D. H. Parry
... a desire for new business knowledge. Not long ago an American business man who has lived in Paris for many years, received a letter from a young French friend in the trenches at Verdun. The ...
— The War After the War • Isaac Frederick Marcosson
... stand with German literature up to the eleventh century? A German Kingdom had existed from the treaties of Verdun and Mersen (842), but during this period traces of German poetry are ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... the rumour of the fall of Verdun was persistent. Later on it was denied, as was denied the companion rumour of the relief of Kut. Saw R. who had spent three days and the whole of his money in getting home from County Clare. He had heard ...
— The Insurrection in Dublin • James Stephens
... to the wall. The French repeated their Verdun watchword, "No thoroughfare," and the Americans began to come up. The Allies were driven finally to what they had always realized to be necessary, but had never consented to—a unified command. They put all their destinies into the hands ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... bit of statemanship, work that does not have its only concern as to the farmer of this country or the helping of freight movement during this winter alone, but may have consequences that will extend throughout the centuries. Take the instance of Verdun. Verdun would have fallen unquestionably if it had not been for the roads that Napoleon constructed and that France has maintained; for all the credit is not to go to the man who conceived and the man who constructed. This is one thing where we have been ...
— Address by Honorable Franklin K. Lane, Secretary of the Interior at Conference of Regional Chairmen of the Highway Transport Committee Council of National Defence • US Government
... twenty thousand near Metz, the command of which had just been transferred from Luckner to Kellerman. There were only three fortresses which it was necessary for the allies to capture or mask—Sedan, Longwy, and Verdun. The defences and stores of these three were known to be wretchedly dismantled and insufficient; and when once these feeble barriers were overcome, and Chalons reached, a fertile and unprotected country seemed to invite the invaders to that "military ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... had lately made alliance with England, and in 1552 formed a league at Chambord with the German Princes; the old connection with the Turk was also talked of. The Germans agreed to allow' him to hold (as imperial vicar, not as King of France) the "three bishoprics," Metz, Verdun, and Toul; he also assumed a protectorate over the spiritual princes, those great bishops and electors of the Rhine, whose stake in the Empire was so important. The general lines of French foreign politics are ...
— Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois, Complete • Marguerite de Valois, Queen of Navarre
... the great Alcides of the field, Valiant Lord Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury, Created for his rare success in arms, Great Earl of Washford, Waterford, and Valence; Lord Talbot of Goodrig and Urchinfield, Lord Strange of Blackmere, Lord Verdun of Alton, Lord Cromwell of Wingfield, Lord Furnival of Sheffield, The thrice-victorious Lord of Falconbridge; Knight of the noble order of Saint George, Worthy Saint Michael, and the Golden Fleece; Great marshal to Henry the Sixth Of all his ...
— King Henry VI, First Part • William Shakespeare [Aldus edition]
... Lorraine on the west.[221] They were terrible neighbours, always warring against each other, those dukes of Lorraine and Bar, that Count of Vaudemont, that Damoiseau of Commercy, those Lord Bishops of Metz, Toul, and Verdun. But theirs were the quarrels of princes. The villagers observed them just as the frog in the old fable looked on at the bulls fighting in the meadow. Pale and trembling, poor Jacques saw himself trodden underfoot by these fierce warriors. At a time when the whole of Christendom ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... to believe that our condition in France would not to-day be open to discussion if certain demands of the Jews of Alsace, Lorraine, and the Trois Eveches [i.e. Metz, Toul, and Verdun] had not caused a confusion of ideas which appears to reflect on us. We do not yet know exactly what these demands are, but to judge by the public papers they appear to be rather extraordinary since these Jews aspire to live in France under a special ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... small town but an important railroad center from which troop trains were re-routed to various points on the front line. Our division was ordered to proceed to Riccicourt, a deserted and partly destroyed village about twelve miles west of Verdun and about five miles south of Avoncourt, where our boys went "over the top." The women canteen workers, much to their disappointment, were ordered by the colonel to remain at Ravigny, where they could get accommodations and be saved the ...
— The Fight for the Argonne - Personal Experiences of a 'Y' Man • William Benjamin West
... since 1780 scarcity had become almost permanent), had been invaded by numbers of starving vagabonds—the dregs that always rise to the surface in periods of political convulsion, ready for any villainy. When news came of the capture of Verdun, of the indecent joy of the courtiers, and that the road to Paris was open to the avenging army of Prussians, the horrors of the Armagnac massacres were renewed during four September days at the prisons of Paris, while the revolutionary ministry ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... on to speak of how "the heroic fighting at Suvla Bay, and even the valorous defence of Verdun, fades into insignificance side by side in Dublin by the Citizen Army, and describes how Liberty Hall is being guarded by day and by night," and then goes on to point out the danger which such open disregard of authority may lead ...
— Six days of the Irish Republic - A Narrative and Critical Account of the Latest Phase of Irish Politics • Louis Redmond-Howard
... work here has ended and I'm ordered to join my ship. The bridge and the quarter-deck are places of boredom to a fellow who has seen what I've seen here. Why, I've even made two trips up to the front—one of them to Verdun." ...
— Dave Darrin on Mediterranean Service - or, With Dan Dalzell on European Duty • H. Irving Hancock
... slaughter of loyalists confined in the Abbaye. This massacre took place in Paris between September 2 and 5, 1792, on receipt of the news of the capture of Verdun. The number of victims was not less than 1200, and some place it as ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... left them and returned no more; But whispers passed from Vimy to Verdun, Where'er the fields ran thickliest with gore, Of some stray bomber that belonged to none, But none more fierce or flung a fairer bomb, Who ran unscathed the gamut of the Somme And followed Freyberg up the Beaucourt mile With uncouth cries and streaming muddy hair; But after, when they ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Aug. 22, 1917 • Various
... and I don't know how many grandees with tufts on their heads, for every grandee man must now you know have a tuft or ridge of hair upon the middle of his pate. Have you read Kotzebue's Paris? Some parts entertaining, mostly stuff. We have heard from Lovell, still a prisoner at Verdun, but in ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... She had other reasons also for seeking to conciliate the Jesuit—her principal one was this:—Up to this time the Jesuitical party that had risen against her at Versailles, the queen, the dauphin, Pere Griffet, Cardinal de Luynes, the Bishop of Verdun, and M. de Nicolai, had hoped to drive her from court as a miscreant. Now, once declared worthy of heaven by a Jesuit of such high standing as Pere de Sacy, would she not become in some sort inviolable and sacred? With these designs, then, she put in force all her arts of seduction against ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... Verdun," went on the colonel, "and I thought at the time that nothing could be more ferocious than the fighting there. But this ...
— Army Boys on the Firing Line - or, Holding Back the German Drive • Homer Randall
... amongst other anecdotes relating to Napoleon's sojourn at the camp at Boulogne, a remarkable instance of intrepidity on the part of two English sailors. These men had been prisoners at Verdun, which was the most considerable depot of English prisoners in France at the rupture of the peace of Amiens. They effected their escape from Verdun, and arrived at Boulogne without having been discovered on the road, notwithstanding the vigilance with which all the English were ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... war-book naturally divides itself into two parts, since he was lucky enough to get near the Front both about Verdun during the great attack, and with the Alpini fighting on "the roof of Armageddon." To these brave and picturesque friends of ours he dedicates his study, The Latin at War (CONSTABLE). You must not expect much of that inside information which the author, as an American journalist, ...
— Punch, Volume 153, July 11, 1917 - Or the London Charivari. • Various
... school. This establishment was commenced by an Englishman, in the short interval of the peace of Amiens, and he was upon the point of making a rapid fortune, when in common with the other Englishmen at that time in France, he was ordered to Verdun. His school now passed to his French usher, who continuing to conduct it upon the same plan, that is, with the order and intelligence common in every English school, has increased its reputation, and reaps his merited reward by general encouragement. ...
— Travels through the South of France and the Interior of Provinces of Provence and Languedoc in the Years 1807 and 1808 • Lt-Col. Pinkney
... comfort. There is a full-cradle agitation going on in Germany to check this decline; German mothers are being urged not to leave the Crown Prince of 1930 or 1940 without the necessary material for glory at some fresh Battle of Verdun. I doubt the zeal of their response. But everywhere the war signifies economic stress which must necessarily continue long after the war is over, and in the present state of knowledge that stress means fewer children. The family, already light, will grow lighter. This means that ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells
... stern-faced father, suddenly died, and the boy king succeeded to the throne as absolute lord of "Sweden and Finland, of Livonia, Carelia, Ingria, Wismar, Wibourg, the islands of Rugen and Oesel, of Pomerania, and the duchies of Bremen and Verdun,"—one of the finest possessions to which a young king ever succeeded, and representing what is now Sweden, Western Russia, and a large part of ...
— Historic Boys - Their Endeavours, Their Achievements, and Their Times • Elbridge Streeter Brooks
... experiences of others. He had thought his own experiences rather remarkable, but now they seemed so tame that he did not venture to tell them. Fights with German raiders, rescues after days spent on the ocean, chats about the drive for Paris, the "try" at Verdun, the adventures of captured aviators—these things and many more, were familiarly discussed in the little sprawling groups among which he came to be a silent listener. In a way, it reminded him of camping and campfire yarns, except for ...
— Tom Slade on a Transport • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... dancing, William, Dance up and doon, Set to your partners, William, We'll play the tune! See, make a bow to Paris, Here's Antwerp-toon; Off to the Gulf of Riga, Back to Verdun— Ay, but I'm thinking, laddie, Ye'll use ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... one for Germany. I venture to prophesy that it will be regarded by history as the greatest military as well as political error that has ever been made. Had the great guns that destroyed Liege made their first breach at Verdun, what chance was there for Paris? Those few weeks of warning and preparation saved France, and left Germany as she now is, like a weary and furious bull, tethered fast in the place of trespass and ...
— A Visit to Three Fronts • Arthur Conan Doyle
... before April, 1917, American college boys had won a name by their devotion in forcing their ambulances over shell torn roads on every part of the French Front, but, perhaps, with peculiar heroism at Verdun. Already the American Flying Squadron has earned a veteran's reputation for its daring. The report of the sacrificial courage of these pioneers had travelled to every State in the Union; their example had stirred, shamed and educated the nation. It is to these knight-errants—very ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson
... we proceeded on toward the Verdun front. We marched all day long, with only occasional stops. We were not in the open, however, going from one woods to another; when we marched in the open, only small bodies of men would move at ...
— In the Flash Ranging Service - Observations of an American Soldier During His Service - With the A.E.F. in France • Edward Alva Trueblood
... in Argonne and north of Verdun, those who were in the huts in the old training area, which were then used as rest buildings, decided to do something for the boys, and on one occasion they fried fourteen thousand doughnuts and took them to the boys at the front. They traveled in the ...
— The War Romance of the Salvation Army • Evangeline Booth and Grace Livingston Hill
... taboos, so that its practise tends to be restricted to a few occasions. Two Frenchmen or Italians, when they meet, kiss each other on both cheeks. One used to see, indeed, many pictures of General Joffre thus bussing the heroes of Verdun; there even appeared in print a story to the effect that one of them objected to the scratching of his moustache. But imagine two Englishmen kissing! Or two Germans! As well imagined the former kissing the latter! Such a display of affection is simply impossible ...
— Damn! - A Book of Calumny • Henry Louis Mencken
... head over a map almost all through dinner. The Belgians were practically pushed out of all but Antwerp, and the Germans were rapidly approaching the natural defences of France running from Lille to Verdun, through Valenciennes, ...
— Told in a French Garden - August, 1914 • Mildred Aldrich |
