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Updated: May 11, 2025
I warn you Amboise is well guarded. Oh! not with pikes, cross-bows, and such-like useless things in which our beloved King puts his faith, but by eyes that see and hearts that love, and so Amboise is a hard nut to crack. But your teeth are strong, and if the good God had made no peach stones there would be no peaches, and, my faith! peaches are worth the eating."
God had made horses and hawks, had provided materials for carriages and fine clothes and cross-bows, had formed the sexes and allowed for love and domestic matters, had created brains with their capacities of passion and intellect; and so Ralph had taken these things as he found them, hunted, dressed, lived, managed and mixed with men.
There were nets of such dimensions, and of such strength, as were quite new to me; bows, cross-bows, of prodigious power; guns of a length and weight that could not be wielded by the strength of modern arms; some with old matchlocks, and with rests to be stuck into the ground, and others with wheel-locks; besides modern fire-arms of all descriptions; horns of deer, and tusks of wild boars, were placed in compartments in such numbers, that every part of the walls was covered either with arms or trophies.
There were about fifteen thousand Genoese cross-bowmen, but they were quite fatigued, having marched on foot that day six leagues, completely armed and with their cross-bows. They told the constable they were not in a fit condition to do any great things that day in battle.
Arana was to proceed with the ships, when the wind would permit, and Carvajal volunteered to remain on shore, to endeavor to bring the rebels to their allegiance. On the following morning, Juan Antonio Colombo landed with forty men well armed with cross-bows, swords, and lances, but was astonished to find himself suddenly deserted by all his party excepting eight.
The Marquis dwelt upon this event with great satisfaction, and seemed really to entertain a grateful feeling towards Henry IV., for having thought his paternal mansion worth battering down. He had many stories to tell of the prowess of his ancestors, and several skull-caps, helmets, and cross-bows to show; and divers huge boots and buff jerkins, that had been worn by the Leaguers.
We had been too busy to go hunting; but we determined, as soon as our house was completed in every respect, to do so systematically. We hoped to have no difficulty in procuring a cuscus occasionally, and as there were evidently many birds on the island, to trap them or kill them in some other way. We talked of forming cross-bows, and we hoped to find some elastic wood for the purpose.
But, confident in their armour of proof, and in the cover which their situation afforded, the followers of Front-de-Boeuf, and his allies, showed an obstinacy in defence proportioned to the fury of the attack and replied with the discharge of their large cross-bows, as well as with their long-bows, slings, and other missile weapons, to the close and continued shower of arrows; and, as the assailants were necessarily but indifferently protected, did considerably more damage than they received at their hand.
On the walls, when finished, cross-bows hung, with store of arrows ready to shoot; when the city horn sounded twice, burgess and bachelor vied with each other in warlike haste. In time of peace the stranger was always welcome in the streets; he was free to buy and sell without toll or tax, and to admire the fair dames who walked the quiet ramparts, clad in mantles of green, or russet, or scarlet.
But Grey Dick made no answer, for already his pale eyes were fixed upon the foe with a stare that Hugh thought was terrible, and his long fingers were playing with the button of his bow-case. The Genoese advanced a little way, then again stood and shouted, but still the English sat silent. A third time they advanced and shouted more loudly than before, then began to wind up their cross-bows.
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