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The streets were as silent as if war or pestilence had swept the place. The Duchess sent orders, but she sent no troops. The trained-bands of the city, the cross-bow-men of St. Maurice, the archers of St. Sebastian, the sword-players of St. Christopher, could not be ordered from Tournay to suppress the preaching, for they had all gone to the preaching themselves.
The streets were as silent as if war or pestilence had swept the place. The Duchess sent orders, but she sent no troops. The trained-bands of the city, the cross-bow-men of St. Maurice, the archers of St. Sebastian, the sword-players of St. Christopher, could not be ordered from Tournay to suppress the preaching, for they had all gone to the preaching themselves.
The word here used in the Latin, balistais, is probably corrupted in transcription for balistariis; and may either mean cross-bow-men, or men for working balistae, the ancient artillery, if the expression be allowable. Arcubalistarii is the appropriate middle age Latin for men armed with cross-bows.
During this difficult march, an hundred horsemen armed with targets led the van, and were followed by an hundred musqueteers and cross-bow-men, all of whom carried axes to hew down trees and make a clear space for the army to encamp, which it did in the middle of the forest, and was all night long disturbed by the incessant war-hoops of surrounding Indians.
The streets were as silent as if war or pestilence had swept the place. The Duchess sent orders, but she sent no troops. The trained-bands of the city, the cross-bow-men of St. Maurice, the archers of St. Sebastian, the sword-players of St. Christopher, could not be ordered from Tournay to suppress the preaching, for they had all gone to the preaching themselves.
So terrible was the alarm in Europe, that the inhabitants of Sweden and the north of Germany neglected, in 1238, to send their ships, as usual, to the herring-fishery on the coast of England; and, as observed by Gibbon, it is whimsical enough to learn, that the price of herrings in the English market was lowered in consequence of the orders of a barbarous Mogul khan, who resided on the borders of China . The tide of ruin was stemmed at Newstadt in Austria, by the bravery of fifty knights and twenty cross-bow-men; and the Tartars, awed by the fame of the valour and arms of the Franks, or inhabitants of western Europe, raised the siege on the approach of a German army, commanded by the emperor Frederic the Second.
The streets were as silent as if war or pestilence had swept the place. The Duchess sent orders, but she sent no troops. The trained-bands of the city, the cross-bow-men of St. Maurice, the archers of St. Sebastian, the sword-players of St. Christopher, could not be ordered from Tournay to suppress the preaching, for they had all gone to the preaching themselves.
This present summer, that nation which is called Tartars, leaving Hungary, which they had surprised by treason, laid siege, with many thousand soldiers, to the town of Newstadt, in which I then dwelt, in which there were not above fifty men at arms, and twenty cross-bow-men, left in garrison.
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