WHEN the town, with its works, was finished, my uncle _Toby_ and the
corporal began to run their first parallel——not at random, or any
how——but from the same points and distances the allies had begun to run
theirs; and regulating their approaches and attacks, by the accounts my
uncle _Toby_ received from the daily papers,—they went on, during the
whole siege, step by step with the allies.
When the duke of _Marlborough_ made a lodgment,——my uncle _Toby_ made a
lodgment too.——And when the face of a bastion was battered down, or a
defence ruined,—the corporal took his mattock and did as much,—and so
on;——gaining ground, and making themselves masters of the works one
after another, till the town fell into their hands.
To one who took pleasure in the happy state of others,—there could not
have been a greater sight in world, than on a post morning, in which a
practicable breach had been made by the duke of _Marlborough_, in the
main body of the place,—to have stood behind the horn-beam hedge, and
observed the spirit with which my uncle _Toby_, with _Trim_ behind him,
sallied forth;——the one with the _Gazette_ in his hand,—the other with
a spade on his shoulder to execute the contents.——What an honest
triumph in my uncle _Toby_’s looks as he marched up to the ramparts!
What intense pleasure swimming in his eye as he stood over the
corporal, reading the paragraph ten times over to him, as he was at
work, lest, peradventure, he should make the breach an inch too
wide,—or leave it an inch too narrow.——But when the _chamade_ was beat,
and the corporal helped my uncle up it, and followed with the colours
in his hand, to fix them upon the ramparts—Heaven! Earth! Sea!——but
what avails apostrophes?——with all your elements, wet or dry, ye never
compounded so intoxicating a draught.
In this track of happiness for many years, without one interruption to
it, except now and then when the wind continued to blow due west for a
week or ten days together, which detained the _Flanders_ mail, and kept
them so long in torture,—but still ’twas the torture of the happy——In
this track, I say, did my uncle _Toby_ and _Trim_ move for many years,
every year of which, and sometimes every month, from the invention of
either the one or the other of them, adding some new conceit or quirk
of improvement to their operations, which always opened fresh springs
of delight in carrying them on.
The first year’s campaign was carried on from beginning to end, in the
plain and simple method I’ve related.
In the second year, in which my uncle _Toby_ took _Liege_ and
_Ruremond_, he thought he might afford the expence of four handsome
draw-bridges; of two of which I have given an exact description in the
former part of my work.
At the latter end of the same year he added a couple of gates with
port-cullises:——These last were converted afterwards into orgues, as
the better thing; and during the winter of the same year, my uncle
_Toby_, instead of a new suit of clothes, which he always had at
_Christmas_, treated himself with a handsome sentry-box, to stand at
the corner of the bowling-green, betwixt which point and the foot of
the glacis, there was left a little kind of an esplanade for him and
the corporal to confer and hold councils of war upon.
——The sentry-box was in case of rain.
All these were painted white three times over the ensuing spring, which
enabled my uncle _Toby_ to take the field with great splendour.
My father would often say to _Yorick_, that if any mortal in the whole
universe had done such a thing except his brother _Toby_, it would have
been looked upon by the world as one of the most refined satires upon
the parade and prancing manner in which _Lewis_ XIV. from the beginning
of the war, but particularly that very year, had taken the field——But
’tis not my brother _Toby_’s nature, kind soul! my father would add, to
insult any one.
——But let us go on.