Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 26, 2025
Some had bucklers of wood or raw hide, and some wore those corselets of tough twigs interwoven with cordage which their fathers had used when firearms were unknown. The scouts added more, for they declared that they had seen a Jesuit among the Iroquois; nay, that La Salle himself was there, whence it must follow that Tonty and his men were enemies and traitors.
"My sword and helmet the friar passed through the grating and when I placed the one upon my head and grasped the familiar handle of the other, new hope kindled in my heart. The corselets were concealed under the couch of my jailer, as mine could not be passed through the grating.
The Justice himself cast aside his scarlet gown and covered himself with mail from head to foot; the worthy councilmen abandoned the benches of the Golden Chamber, shielding their paunches with scales that shone like those of the fishes in the gulf; the hundred archers of la Pluma, who guarded la Señera filled their quivers with arrows, and the Jews from the quarter of la Xedrea did a rushing business, selling all their old iron, including lances, notched swords and rusty corselets, in exchange for good, ringing pieces of silver.
Some are turned naked and weaponless into the arena to be mangled by lions or bears or other huge beasts: others are left clad in their tunics; some of these are allowed the semblance of a weapon; a club, knife, dagger or light javelin; so that their appearance of having some chance may make their destruction more diverting to the spectators: others, in order to prolong their agonies, are furnished with real weapons, as a sword, a pike, a trident, even a hunting spear with a full-sized triangular head, its edges honed sharp as razors; others are left completely clad, with or without sham weapons or actual arms, yet others are protected by armor, corselets, kilts, greaves, or even hip-boots and helmets, and wear swords and carry shields as well as pikes or spears: these last differ in appearance in no respect from professional beast-fighters.
In another, Scyths, with their loose spangled trousers and their tall pointed caps, dealt death around from their unerring blows; while near them Assyrians, helmeted, and wearing corselets of quilted linen, wielded the tough spear, or the still more formidable iron mace.
Their defensive arms are cotton corselets reaching to the feet and with sleeves; corselets made of wood and buffalo horn; and cuirasses made of bamboo and hard wood, which entirely cover them. Armor for the head is made of dogfish-skin, which is very tough. In some islands they have small pieces of artillery and a few arquebuses.
Before Elizabeth had left her bed, London had emptied itself into Greenwich Park. Thither the London Companies had come in their varied dazzling accoutrements hundreds armed in fine corselets bearing the long Moorish pike; tall halberdiers in the unique armour called Almainrivets, and gunners or muleteers equipped in shirts of mail with morions or steel caps.
None of them are under six feet high, and many of them are considerably above that mark. They wear polished steel corselets and helmets, white buck-skin trowsers, high jack-boots, and at the time of which I write their arms consisted of a brace of heavy, single-barreled pistols in holsters, a carbine and a sabre.
Seated on stone benches were sailors from all countries, demanding food in their several languages Roman soldiers wearing corselets of bronze scales, short swords hanging from their shoulders; at their feet helmets topped by a crest of red horsehair in the form of a brush; rowers from Massilia, almost naked, their knives half hidden among the folds of the rag knotted around their waists; Phœnician and Carthaginian mariners with wide trousers, wearing tall caps in the form of mitres with heavy silver pendants; negroes from Alexandria, athletic and slow of movement, displaying their sharp teeth as they smiled, making one think of frightful cannibalistic scenes; Celtiberians and Iberians with gloomy dress and tangled hair, looking suspiciously in all directions, and instinctively raising their hands to their broad knives; some redmen from Gaul, with long mustaches and coarse red hair tied behind and falling down their necks; people, in fine, who had come, or had been flung by the hazards of war and the sea, from one point of the known world to another, one day victorious warriors, and slaves the next, now sailors and anon pirates, acknowledging no law nor nationality; with no other respect than the fear of the master of the vessel who was quick to order them to the whip or the cross; with no other religion than that of the sword and the strong arm; testifying by the wounds which covered their bodies, in the long cicatrices which furrowed their muscles, by cuts on their ears covered by matted hair, to a past mysterious with horrors.
The Romans, however, and especially all the generals, supposing that the enemy were continuing the pursuit without pause, kept fleeing still faster, wasting not a moment; and they were urging on their horses as they ran with whip and voice, and throwing their corselets and other accoutrements in haste and confusion to the ground.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking