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Square-topped helmets that had been hacked by the scimitars of Saracen kings, spiked chamfronts that had been worn by the fiery barbs of haughty English crusaders, fluted armour from Milan, hung against the blackened wainscoting in the shadowy hall; Scottish hackbuts, primitive arquebuses that had done service on Bosworth field, Homeric bucklers and brazen greaves, javelins, crossbows, steel-pointed lances, and two-handed swords, were in symmetrical design upon the dark and polished panels; while here and there hung the antlers of a giant red-deer, or the skin of a fox, in testimony to the triumphs of long-departed sportsmen of the house of Jocelyn.
"Yes, assuredly, sire," replied Gossip Jacques. "How many?" "Six thousand at the least." The king could not refrain from saying: "Good!" he went on, "Are they armed?" "With scythes, pikes, hackbuts, pickaxes. All sorts of very violent weapons." The king did not appear in the least disturbed by this list. Jacques considered it his duty to add,
On the Regent's entry her men "discharged their volley of hackbuts," probably to clear their pieces, a method of unloading which prevailed as late as Waterloo. But some aimed, says Knox, at the house of Patrick Murray and hit a son of his, a boy of ten or twelve, "who, being slain, was had to the Queen's presence."
To the sack, then! to the sack!" "To the sack!" repeated the rabble, with a furious hurrah. A discharge of crossbows and hackbuts against the front of the church followed. At this detonation, the peaceable inhabitants of the surrounding houses woke up; many windows were seen to open, and nightcaps and hands holding candles appeared at the casements. "Fire at the windows," shouted Clopin.
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