breastwork's Usage Examples:

A low timber breastwork prevents landward migration of spit onto marshes.

In this fight each side was using corpses as breastworks.

Next morning (October 14) William marched out from Hastings and attacked the English host, which stood at bay in a solid mass of spear and axemen behind a slight breastwork on the hillside.

breastworks of earth and stone to protect their musketeers and artillery pieces.

The walls are embanking walls, with a low breastwork in places.

On the 18th the assault was renewed, and on the 10th the Confederates, advancing behind movable breastworks of water-soaked bales of hemp, forced the besieged, now long without water, to surrender.

On Gell's left flank, hedges and walls formed a natural breastworks for his musketeers.

Disciplined troops as they were, they resisted the temptation to escape Ferrara's fire by breaking out to the front; but the whole Spanish line was enfiladed, and on the left of it the papal troops, who were by no means of the same quality, filled up the ditch in front of their breastworks and charged forward, followed by all the gendarmerie.

It thus fell to the infantry to attack and defend with its own weapons, and the defence was, locally, almost inexpugnable behind its tall breastworks.

A royal palace existed at Westminster at least as early as the reign of Canute, but the building spoken of by Fitzstephen as an "incomparable structure furnished with a breastwork and a bastion" is supposed to have been founded by Edward the Confessor and enlarged by William the Conqueror.

by setting on fire the wooden breastwork by which it was defended, and new fortifications were erected.

On the east and west the ravines already mentioned afforded, in the main, a sufficient protection, so that a massive wall was unnecessary, while near the south-eastern angle a breastwork was formed by the excavation of the natural rock, 2 which in later times was honeycombed with tombs.

The ancient walls of Avila, constructed of brown granite, and surmounted by a breastwork, with eighty-six towers and nine gateways, are still in excellent repair; but a large part of the city lies beyond their circuit.