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CLAUDE DELAVAL COBHAM
Exerpta Cypria
page 141 View PDF version of this page CALEI'tO.
133
water. Another part of the army encamped near S. Dimitri, close to the spring : the other tents were five Italian miles away, in the two villages called Aglangia aud Athalassa, because water was handy. On S. Anne's day, the enemy, finding they occupied their ground without resistance, sent out a few horsemen to provoke us to a skirmish. Our own people as well as the Italians and Greeks, who were eager for the fray, earnestly begged that they might go out and charge them; bnt this was forbidden by the Lieuteuant, who allowed, however, a few horsemen, under Signor Cesare Piovane, Lieutenant to the Coadjutor. They were too few to achieve any remarkable success, but they tried to draw the enemy within range of our artillery. They did the same on the next two days; on one of these Andrea Cortese, a captain of Stradiots, was captured, and brought before the Pasha, who (it is said) had him beheaded.
On Sunday, the 30th, they hastily ran up a redoubt on the hill of S. Marina, about a hundred and forty paces from the fortress, mounted their guns, and began to fire upon us. They met with little or no interruption during the building of this work ; our men were trying from the curtain between the Podochatoro and Caraffa bastions, and from the face of the Caraffa, with guns of fifty pounds to dislodge them, but the Turks worked by night and with a will, and finished it quickly : for they looked forward to battering the platforms of some of the bastions, as well as the curtain, and the houses, which last the architect of the fortress, trusting to his traverses (and for other reasons which some persons thought dis-honest), would not pull down. They built another fort at St George, on an inconsiderable hill ; from this too they proposed to open fire on our houses : aud a third over against the bastions Costanzo and Podochatoro, on a hill called Margarita. The fourth fort they set half way np the hill Mandia, but the fire from this was of little importance. They dug deep trenches close together, going below the ditches round the walls of the old city, and some eight paces from the ruins of that city they built four other forts opposite the bastions Podochatoro, Costanzo, Davilla and Tripoli. These were strengthened with deop ditches, demilunes, and deep square réduits where they set outposts, which were safe from attack whether by our gnus, horse or foot soldiers. For four days together from morning to evening they kept up the briskest possible fire from sixty pounders, resting only for three or four hours during the great heat of the day; but they found this of no avail, for the balls buried themselves iu the earthworks, without damaging our walls. Then they abandoned this form of attack, aud took to spades and picks, and in a very short time ran their trenches under our counterscarp, yet we never tried to dislodge them. They worked on undisturbed, and made an immense ditch, throwing up the soil towards us: in this was posted a large body of musketeers, who were always on the watch, and with great address aimed at anyone of our men who appeared upon the walls to fire the morning or evening gun, a custom we still kept up. So they brought up their roads and ditches right into our ditch, which was twenty paces broad. Not to leave their horses idle they made them fetch faggots from a distance and with these and the earth dug out they made such excellent traverses that they soon overtopped our réduits, which became useless for offence.
We were most anxious to harass them with our cavalry to stop their horses from bringing up faggots, but were not allowed to do so: even when some of the most daring of them came close np to our ditch to cut away the bridges and fronts of the bastions, and to bore into the walls, the Lieutenant would not allow onr men to fire on them if they were one or two, but only when they were ten or more, saying that he could uot justify it to S. Mark. So that the enemy had all the convenience for damaging our walls and bastions which they themselves could desire, whilst 1 aud very many others have heard with our own ears the
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