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Updated: May 31, 2025
But, after the siege had lasted fourteen days, a Persian sentinel saw one of the garrison descend the precipice to recover his helmet that had rolled down; and no sooner had he thus unwittingly showed the way, than the sentinel followed with a number of his fellow-soldiers and, reaching the top of the cliff in safety, attacked the guards, all unsuspicious, and gained an entrance to the city.
For a moment, he records, he feared that the fire was not to be returned; but he need not have doubted. The British volley killed the Acton captain, Davis, and Hosmer, his adjutant. Then Major Buttrick, leaping into the air as he turned to his men, cried, "Fire, fellow-soldiers; for God's sake, fire!"
For three years he served this semi-barbarian potentate as Jacob served Laban; he falsified frontiers, he connived at murders, he unjustly condemned and executed a brother-officer who had the misfortune to displease the Rajah by some honest freedoms; lastly, at a time of great danger to his native land, he betrayed a body of his fellow-soldiers, and suffered them to be defeated and massacred by thousands.
"Hadendowas I've no fear uv, an' Subadars are Injy nagurs anyhow, though fellow-soldiers uv the Queen that's good to shtand befront uv biscuit-boxes or behoind thim; an' wan has no fear of the thing that's widout fear, an' death's iron enters in aisy whip mortial strength's behind it. But drames I've had enough uv drames in me toime, I have that, Coolin!" He shuddered a little.
One perhaps after shipwreck got safe to shore; another recovered when he had been run through by an enemy; one, when all his fellow-soldiers were killed upon the spot, as cunningly perhaps as cowardly, made his escape from the field; another, while he was a hanging, the rope broke, and so he saved his neck, and renewed his licence for practising his old trade of thieving; another broke gaol, and got loose; a patient, against his physician's will, recovered of a dangerous fever; another drank poison, which putting him into a violent looseness, did his body more good than hurt, to the great grief of his wife, who hoped upon this occasion to have become a joyful widow; another had his waggon overturned, and yet none of his horses lamed; another had caught a grievous fall, and yet recovered from the bruise; another had been tampering with his neighbour's wife, and escaped very narrowly from being caught by the enraged cuckold in the very act.
He knew that he was going fast, and that whatever rescue might come to these, his surviving fellow-soldiers, there would be none for him; and yet in his supreme moment he seemed to read the question on Blakely's lips, and his words, feeble and broken, were framed to answer. "Couldn't you hear 'em, lieutenant?" he gasped. "I can't be mistaken. I know the old Springfield sure!
He lived with his soldiers as an equal, that historian tells us, eating as they did, without the precaution of a taster, which Major thinks highly imprudent, but which would naturally bind to the frank and generous monarch the confidence and regard of his fellow-soldiers, and the captains with whom he shared the sometimes scanty provisions of the campaign.
They had risen from the ranks they had been engaged all their lives in active and iniquitous services they had been accustomed to look to success as the best criterion of merit, and to regard attachment to their leaders and their colours, as the only duties of soldiers; they had never thought seriously on morality or religion they had been applauded by their countrymen and fellow-soldiers, for actions in direct violation of both and they had been taught to consider that applause as their highest honour and legitimate reward.
It is not to be imagined that men, whose reigning passion was the love of liberty, would willingly resign it; and their new sovereigns, who had been their fellow-soldiers, had certainly no power to compel them to such a resignation." 3 Henry's History of Great Britain, 358.
And Belisarius, seeing a place well adapted for a camp, thirty-five stades distant from Decimum, surrounded it with a stockade which was very well made, and placing all the infantry there and calling together the whole army, he spoke as follows: "Fellow-soldiers, the decisive moment of the struggle is already at hand; for I perceive that the enemy are advancing upon us; and the ships have been taken far away from us by the nature of the place; and it has come round to this that our hope of safety lies in the strength of our hands.
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