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Updated: June 17, 2025
About the middle of the seventeenth century it occurred to the sapient mind of one Puséygur, a native of Bayonne, in France, that it would be a grand thing to have a sharp point on which to receive an advancing adversary after one had missed him, or the fizzling matchlock had failed to go off.
A strange and contradictory spectacle! An army of criminals doing deeds which could only be expiated at the stake; an entrenched rebellion, bearding the government with pike, matchlock, javelin and barricade, and all for no more deadly purpose than to listen to the precepts of the pacific Jesus. Thus the preaching spread through the Walloon provinces to the northern Netherlands.
My pony, startled at the sudden report of the matchlock at such close quarters, took fright, and began rearing and plunging. I managed to maintain my seat, though the spikes in the saddle were lacerating terribly the lower part of my spine. Several horsemen now rode up and captured my pony. Preparations were made for another exciting number in the programme of my tortures.
He went to the window and peered in, flashing his lantern before him from left to right. But as he did so, he felt upon his throat a grip as of steel. He struggled to free himself; his cry was stifled ere it was uttered; his matchlock fell with a clatter to the ground.
But it is probable that the rout had been too absolute to allow of any such sudden turning to account of the serious errors of the victors. The cavalry, except this handful, had long disappeared, at least half the infantry lay dead or wounded in the field, while the remainder, throwing away pipe and matchlock, were running helter-skelter for their lives.
I recollect, on one of these day's marches, a most impudent fellow, mounted on a beautiful horse, and finely bedizened, came within two hundred yards of our column, passing upon us some unpleasant epithets, and once or twice firing his matchlock. He at last wounded a man of the native cavalry. This so annoyed me that I asked his lordship if he would permit me to attack him.
I crept silently up the hill-road, but the fuse of my matchlock was wetted with the rain, and I could not slay Daoud Shah from afar. Moreover, it was in my mind to kill the woman also. Thus he sang, sitting outside my house, and, anon, the woman opened the door, and I came nearer, crawling on my belly among the rocks. I had only my knife to my hand.
And then, a great many matchlocks went into the West African slave and ivory trade, and were promptly ruined by the natives." "Yes, and I seem to recall having seen Spanish and French miguelet muskets that looked as though they had been altered directly from matchlock, retaining the original stock and even the original lock-plate," Trehearne added. "So have I, come to think of it."
So soon as the sun's light tipped the eastern clouds with rose, the Black Hussars came riding forth. The guards and matchlock men lined the way from the castle gates. They blew up their matches to be ready. Suddenly in the midst of the armed throng there appeared a radiant figure coming down the steps of the castle from the Hall of Judgment.
At the end, when hope was gone, you would hear little splashes in the waters as this man or that put his treasures into eternal hiding. A Spanish sword was like to have cleft my skull, but before I lost my senses I noted Captain Bovill tearing the chart in shreds and using them to hold down the last charges for his matchlock.
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