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I fancy you would love to move to Court with him, followed by a round score of old blue-bottles, with white heads and red noses, with bucklers and broadswords, which their hands, trembling betwixt age and strong waters, can make no use of as many huge silver badges on their arms, to show whose fools they are, as would furnish forth a court cupboard of plate rogues fit for nothing but to fill our ante-chambers with the flavour of onions and genievre pah!"
Outside the trench sat about a hundred persons of all ages and both sexes. The men were well armed with bows, arrows, spears, and broadswords. Beside the husband sat a rather aged woman, having a bad outward squint in the left eye.
Here, too, was a savage hand-to-hand combat with broadswords and pikes, and when the pikes were broken, with great clubs and stakes pulled from the fascines; but the besiegers were victorious, and the defenders sullenly withdrew with their wounded to the inner entrenchments. On the 27th June, Daniel de Hartaing, Lord of Marquette, was sent by the States-General to take command in Ostend.
Then I heard the order to charge, and from near four thousand throats there came for the first time our exultant British cheer, and high over all rang the slogan of Fraser's Highlanders. To my left I saw the flashing broadswords of the clansmen, ahead of all the rest.
Very quickly he noticed that she went about it clumsily despite her supple gracefulness she withdrew the heavy weapon from the window and laid it upon the counter. He was looking at her with a peculiar smile upon his lips. She flushed painfully. "I am not not what you would call an expert," she said frankly. "You mean in handling broadswords," he said in his most suave manner.
"Do you not know, cut-throat, that one word of mine can have your tough hide slashed with whips in the common gaol, till your very bones are bare?" "And do you know what difference it makes, whether my hide be slashed with dog-whips in the gaol, or with broadswords in the amphitheatre?
So far as our tale is concerned, we have only to relate the fate of Balmawhapple, who, mounted on a horse as headstrong and stiff-necked as his rider, pursued the flight of the dragoons above four miles from the field of battle, when some dozen of the fugitives took heart of grace, turned round, and, cleaving his skull with their broadswords, satisfied the world that the unfortunate gentleman had actually brains, the end of his life thus giving proof of a fact greatly doubted during its progress.
A fray, indeed, would sometimes arise, when the Lowlandmen, chiefly Borderers, who had to supply the English market, used to dip their bonnets in the next brook, and wrapping them round their hands, oppose their cudgels to the naked broadswords, which had not always the superiority.
We listened. "Richard! Richard Carvel!" For the second time in my life I thanked Heaven for that brave and loyal English heart. I called back, but my throat was dry and choked. "So they are at their d d assassins' tricks again! You need have no fear of one murderer." With that their steels rang out behind me, like broadswords, Lewis wasting his breath in curses and blasphemies.
Many were trampled under foot, others cut down by the Spanish broadswords, while the arquebusiers, supporting the cavalry, kept up a running fire that did terrible execution on the flanks and rear of the fugitives.