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Updated: May 12, 2025
Policemen, in cocked hats and epaulets, cross-belts, and swords, were scattered about the grounds, but interfered with nobody, though they seemed to keep an eye on all. A sentinel stood in the hot sunshine, looking down over the garden from the ramparts of the fortress.
The cross-belts should be done away with being at once ugly, expensive, and inconvenient a plain broad strap, white or black, as you please, should gird the waist up well; and the cartouche-box, which could be made to slide upon it, might be worn, while out of battle, behind; but, in actual engagement, in front.
Policemen, in cocked hats and epaulets, cross-belts, and swords, were scattered about the grounds, but interfered with nobody, though they seemed to keep an eye on all. A sentinel stood in the hot sunshine, looking down over the garden from the ramparts of the fortress.
The fitful light gleamed on scythes-blade or gun-barrel, and showed up the lines of rugged, hard set faces, some of mere children with never a hair upon their cheeks, others of old men whose grey beards swept down to their cross-belts, but all bearing the same stamp of a dogged courage and a fierce self-contained resolution. Here were still the fisher folk of the south.
Without fear that they could see me at that distance I watched eagerly as they trotted down the long slope. They were plainly a squadron of British Dragoons, their arms and cross-belts shining in the sun, in spite of the dust kicked up by their horses' hoofs. I waited until convinced they were coming to the house, before drawing back out of sight.
The rear of the regiment was formed by four hundred men in scarlet coats, with white cross-belts and well-burnished muskets. These were deserters from the Devonshire Militia, who had marched with Albemarle from Exeter, and who had come over to Monmouth on the field at Axminster.
But in costume and appearance these soldiers were what is familiarly known as "a queer lot!" The uniform of the rank and file consisted of a tunic and trousers of white material, with a narrow-brimmed straw hat painted white, cross-belts and cartouche-box by no means an unbecoming dress. But it was worn only at drills and reviews and state ceremonies.
To lash him, hands and feet together, like a trussed fowl, with his own cross-belts, and to gag him with a good-sized stone, secured in his mouth by a strip slashed from his own coat, was but the work of two or three minutes; and when at length, satisfied that the fellow was secure and harmless, I emerged from the box, I had the satisfaction of finding that Tom Hardy, now acting as the schooner's second mate, had promptly followed my example by securing the sentry at the far side of the drawbridge.
The colonel's staff is composed of colonel, four majors, inmate adjutant, and sergeant-major, and national and state colour-bearers. The uniforms are blue, black, and red, corresponding to the grades. White belts, with nickel buckles, are worn and white cross-belts. Proper insignia of rank is also worn.
One might have thought he had engaged to dance the minuet. Colonel Stuart met him in a spick-and-span uniform of His Majesty's Foot, cross-belts pipe-clayed white as snow, boots polished until they shone. Such gentlemen were punctilious in war two hundred years ago. "Your solid shot will not pound him much at this range, my good sir," said the lieutenant.
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