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Updated: June 5, 2025
An arquebus shot from the town grazed his forehead, and, without inflicting a severe wound, stunned him so much that he lost his balance and fell head foremost towards the ground; his leg, which had been wounded at the midnight assault upon Paris, where he stood at the side of King Henry, caught in the ladder and held him suspended.
At this very moment, in the early summer of 1566, many thousands of burghers, merchants, peasants, and gentlemen, were seen mustering and marching through the fields of every province, armed with arquebus, javelin, pike and broadsword. For what purpose were these gatherings? Only to hear sermons and to sing hymns in the open air, as it was unlawful to profane the churches with such rites.
"Eh! what was it to you that they burned your cure, great simpleton?" said a sergeant, leaning upon the fork of his arquebus; "after him another would come. You might have taken one of our generals in his stead, who are all cures at present; for me, I am a Royalist, and I say it frankly." "Hold your tongue!" cried La Pipe; "let the girl speak.
The Englishman, not aware of the catastrophe at Leffingen, which Maurice had locked up in his own breast, was now informed by the stadholder that there were to be no entrenchments that day but those of pike and arquebus. It was not the fault of Maurice that the fate of the commonwealth had been suspended on a silken thread that morning, but he knew that but one of two issues was possible.
I looked around. The courtyard was empty. Were these four, then, the only soldiers that had been left to guard the chateau? No, for these four had been surprised to find the gate open. Some one else must have opened the gate for mademoiselle. Moreover, the swordsman had spoken of a Lavigue. "Take the arquebus and the match, Frojac," said I, "and come. There is nothing to be done here at present."
May the plague take thee! may a cancer eat thee! worthless old currycomb! old slipper, too big for the foot! old arquebus! ten year old codfish! old spider that spins no more! old death with open eyes! old devil's cradle! vile lantern of an old town-crier too!
Their principal weapon, however, is the sling .... With it, they will hurl a huge stone with such force that it will kill a horse; in truth, the effect is little less great than that of an arquebus; and I have seen a stone, thus hurled from a sling, break a sword in two pieces which was held in a man's hand at a distance of thirty paces."
They began the attack, and as we had neither arquebus nor cross-bow, we were entirely at their mercy. Being more agile, and fleet of foot than our men, they leaped around us like so many devils, with horrid laughter, shooting us down like wild beasts without our being able to close with them.
In every port resounded the axe and hammer of the ship-builder; in every arsenal blazed the flames of busy forges. All Spanish Europe echoed with the din of arms. Provisions were amassed in a thousand granaries; soldiers were daily mustered on the parade-grounds, drilled, and accustomed to the use of arquebus and cannon.
Thus was his life lived, and when death came it came as a rule from the slash of a sabre or the ball from an arquebus or a bombard; and then what matter, for had not Hassan Ali or Selim fallen in strife against the enemies of his faith, and did not the portals of heaven open wide to receive the man who had lost his life testifying to the fact that there was but one God, and that Mahomet was the Prophet of God?
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