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Updated: June 17, 2025
How idle, therefore; to send peremptory orders without a matchlock to enforce the command. Throughout Flanders similar scenes were enacted. The meetings were encampments, for the Reformers now came to their religious services armed to the teeth, determined, if banished from the churches, to defend their right to the fields.
Their weapons generally consist of a long seventeen-feet spear, a matchlock, sabre, and pistols. Their horses, also, are well trained and manageable; but, from a formidable foe they will run like cowards, and hide themselves till the danger is over. Should they be surprised by any British force, they will run, and on the road plunder one another; which sometimes is attended with bloodshed.
And as in these days of percussion-caps and Miniè rifles we lay by an old matchlock or crossbow, using it only to ornament our walls, or as the powdered postilion with his horn and his boots is superseded by the locomotive and the electric telegraph, so the old rusty Church wheels are removed into buildings apart from the daily life of the people, where they seem to revolve harmlessly and without any necessary connection with the State wheels.
The pike was early abandoned and the matchlock soon gave way to the flintlock both heavy and unwieldy instruments of war and carbines and pistols were also used. Cavalry or mounted infantry, though expensive because of horse and outfit, were introduced whenever possible.
They were not, however, to go so far as the Kotub, for, questioning some peasants, they learned that the king had halted at a building called Durzah-Nizam-oo-deen. The gates were shut, and it was certain that the king would have a large body of retainers with him. Matchlock men showed at the windows and on the roof, and things looked awkward for the little troop of cavalry.
Toward the end of our journey we had to go round the curve of a sand-hill, the track between this and a large pond at its foot being very narrow. At this point I saw in front of me a soldier posted in ambush, with his matchlock ready to fire. The pony sank deep in the sand, and could not travel fast, which, I suppose, was the reason why that spot had been selected.
Never were brought together before or since so many different kinds of howl, so many threats of death, so many rags; so many odd weapons, from the matchlock of the time of the Michelade to the steel-tipped goad of the bullock drovers of La Camargue, so that when the Nimes mob; which in all conscience was howling and ragged enough, rushed out to offer a brotherly welcome to the strangers, its first feeling was one of astonishment and dismay as it caught sight of the motley crew which held out to it the right hand of fellowship.
The flying plunderers were entrapped. Close behind them came the excited burghers their antique Belgic ferocity now fully aroused firing away with carbine and matchlock, dealing about them with bludgeon and cutlass, and led merrily on by Haultepenne and Elmont armed in proof, at the head of their squadron of lancers.
Spurring hard after their brave leaders, the Eastern horsemen passed the matchlock men in the village of Kottree, and galloped unchecked across the small nullahs and ditches about it, which were, however, so numerous and difficult, that 50 of the troopers were cast from their saddles at once by the leaps.
Here they arrived at a low wall cut by an open gateway, at each side of which stood a Maratha sentry armed with a matchlock. A few words were exchanged between Desmond's guide and one of the sentries; the two entered, crossed a compound dotted with trees, and passing through the principal gateway came to a large, square building near the center of the fort.
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