Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: September 12, 2025
"Knights and gentlemen," said the King, as he sat his fine charger and looked round upon the gallant muster around him, "shall we be daunted by the opposing foe? They are but a handful, and we know the coward temper of yon Italian crossbowmen. Who will be the first to lead the charge, and ride on to victory?" A hundred eager voices shouted a reply. The enthusiasm spread from rank to rank.
Leaving Vienne on August 23, 1494, 3,600 men at arms, the flower of the French chivalry, 6,000 Breton archers, 6,000 crossbowmen, 8,000 Gascon infantry, 8,000 Swiss and German lances, crossed the Mont Genevre, debouched on Susa, passed through Turin, and entered Asti on September 19. Neither Piedmont nor Montferrat stirred to resist them.
For month after month and year after year, the procession of priests and cavaliers, crossbowmen, arquebusiers, and Indian captives laden with the baggage, still wandered on through wild and boundless wastes, lured hither and thither by the ignis-fatuus of their hopes.
Confident in their numbers and prowess, they had already assured themselves of victory, and were quarrelling about the division of the captives they would make. Philip, too sympathetic with the feudal point of view to oppose his friends, ordered the advance. The battle began by the French sending forward a strong force of Genoese crossbowmen, to prepare the way for the cavalry charge.
But the French did not fully understand the English tactics, and took no care to combine men-at-arms with archers or crossbowmen, though these were less important against an army weak in archers and largely consisting of Gascons.
Riding slowly down the line he marked with attentive gaze the camp of the crossbowmen, the muster of the German mercenaries, the numbers of the foot-soldiers, the arms of every proud vassal or vavasor which might give some guide as to the power of each division.
When he reached the field of battle, he found it strewed with the bodies of upward of one hundred Moors, among which were those of the two alcaydes. Enraged at the sight, he summoned all his crossbowmen and cavalry, pushed on to the very gates of Castellar, and set fire to two houses close to the walls.
The first pink light of the rising sun glittered upon the steel caps and breastplates of dense masses of slingers and of crossbowmen, who drilled and marched in the spaces which had been left for their exercise. A thousand columns of smoke reeked up into the pure morning air where the faggots were piled and the camp-kettles already simmering.
The English crossbowmen did deadly work and the English cannon fired stone balls into the ranks of the French soldiers. The French brought scaling ladders to mount the walls, but above them the English stood ready with boiling pitch and melted lead to hurl into the faces of those who succeeded in mounting.
There was no great battle-field in Europe she had not trod upon. She knew them so well that she could people each field with the familiar bright regiments, bayonets and sabers, pikes and broadswords, axes and crossbowmen, matchlock and catapult, rifles and cannon. And what she did not know of naval warfare her father did. They were very companionable.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking