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Updated: June 17, 2025
Ottigny told his soldiers that, if the Indians meant to attack them, they were probably in ambush at the other end of the avenue. He was right. As Arlac's party reached the spot, the whole pack gave tongue at once. The war-whoop rose, and a tempest of stone-headed arrows clattered against the breast-plates of the French, or, scorching like fire, tore through their unprotected limbs.
"Here is one who will kill you, dog!" he said, springing upon the Lyakh. How they hacked away! their shoulder-plates and breast-plates bent under their blows. The hostile Lyakh cut through Schilo's shirt of mail, reaching the body itself with his blade. The Cossack's shirt was dyed purple: but Schilo heeded it not.
The little mountain ponies did not adequately represent the warhorses trained to charge under an enormous load, and the buff jerkins and steel breast-plates of the outlaws were equally far from showing how to move under 'mail and plates of Milan steel. Nor would Sir Lancelot Threlkeld lend or give what was needful.
The beautifully embossed ornaments on their breast-plates and shirts of mail, and on the belt of the short sword, showed that they grudged no expense; in fact, they thought only of enjoyment, and it was merely for the honor of it that they were serving for a few years in the imperial guard.
Then came crowds of singers and cymbal-players, and two thousand bulls with gilt horns, crowns, and breast-plates.
And it came to pass that when they were all gathered together, every one to the army which he would, with their wives and their children; both men, women, and children being armed with weapons of war, having shields, and breast-plates, and head-plates, and being clothed after the manner of war, they did march forth one against another, to battle; and they fought all that day, and conquered not.
Hasculph the Dane returned suddenly with sixty ships, and a large force under a noted Berserker of the day, known as John the Mad, "warriors," says Giraldus, "armed in Danish fashion, having long breast-plates and shirts of mail, their shields round and bound about with iron. They were iron-hearted," he says, "as well as iron-armed men."
At length soldiers came to clear the road, clad, after the Roman fashion, in breast-plates of chain-armour. Then followed a thousand Cilician skirmishers, a thousand Thracians, a thousand Macedonians, and a thousand Gauls, each armed after the fashion of their country.
There was no cavalry escort nor lining of the road from Treport with troops; but the splendid squadrons of the 1st Cuirassiers, in their copper breast-plates, were drawn up in echelon at regular distances apart in the open fields, and saluted with their trumpets as we went by; while at the chateau itself the Guard of Honour was furnished by a battalion of riflemen drawn up in close order, their dark uniform and military air causing Lord Charles Wellesley, the Duke of Wellington's son, and a thoroughbred soldier himself, to exclaim, "Oh, what splendid little fellows!"
He also made swords which could be bent as if they were of lead, and sharp enough to cut iron like wood. He performed a more wonderful feat in fashioning iron breast-plates which would resist the impact of red-hot missiles. In the De Sapientia, Cardan records that when Galeazzo perfected his water-screw, he lost his wits for joy.
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