breastworks's Usage Examples:

In this fight each side was using corpses as breastworks.

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

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.