77th Pennsylvania Regiment

“Captain Muller’s Battery Company of the Seventy-seventh Pennsylvania Regiment making fascines and gabions for breastworks. Fascines have long been employed in temporary defenses, the word being derived from facis, the Latin for bundle. In fortification, fascines stand for a fagot, a bundle of rods or small sticks of wood, bound at both eds and in the middle, used in raising batteries, in filling ditches and making parapets. Sometimes they are dipped in melted pitch or tar, and made use of to set fire to the enemy’s works or lodgments. A gabion in fortification is a hollow cylinder of wickerwork, resembling a basket but having no bottom. This is filled with earth, and so serves to shelter the men from the enemy’s fire. During the preparatory work of concentrating and organizing the army in Kentucky opportunities were afforded for perfecting the men in knowledge of this practical part of war and erecting fortifications. Captain Muller, who was in command of the battery attached to Colonel Stambaugh’s Seventy-seventh Pennsylvania Regiment, was an accomplished officer, having served with much distinction in the Prussian Army. Our illustration represents the men cutting down the oak saplings, using the trunks, branches and twigs in fastening the gabions, the pointed stakes of which are ranged in a continuous line, forming a complete breastwork.” — Frank Leslie, 1896

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