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But scarcely did Joshua see his men yield than, profiting by the disaster, he commanded them to retreat still farther and give the foe admittance to the valley; for he told himself that he could turn the superior number of his forces to better account as soon as it was possible to press the enemy in front and on both sides at the same time, and allow the slingers and bowmen to take part in the fray.
Whilst the knights had charged them in front the slingers had crept round upon either flank and had gained a footing upon the cliffs and behind the outlying rocks. A storm of stones broke suddenly upon the defenders, who, drawn up in lines upon the exposed summit, offered a fair mark to their hidden foes.
The fine young men! the slingers! my companions and yours!" They gave him wine to drink, and he wept; then he launched forth into speech. Spendius could scarcely repress his joy, as he explained the horrors related by Zarxas to the Greeks and Libyans; he could not believe them, so appropriately did they come in. The Balearians grew pale as they learned how their companions had perished.
He first despatched Cineas to Tarentum with three thousand men; next he collected from Tarentum many horse-transports, decked vessels, and boats of all sorts, and embarked upon them twenty elephants, twenty-three thousand cavalry, twenty-two thousand infantry, and five hundred slingers.
Then darkness veiled the eyes of the exhausted man. But a little later he again opened them and saw Ephraim, with the slingers and bowmen, attack the body of Amalekites at the southern entrance of the valley, while Joshua drove the main army of the sons of the desert toward their retreating comrades.
Then ensued the general advance which has been described, except that here, in front of St. Romain, there was no covering the assailants with slingers and archers. The fill in the ditch was nearly level with the outer bank, from which it may be described as an ascending causeway.
This circumstance led the enemy, during the persecution of 1560, under the Count de la Trinita, to place his men on the heights above Roccamanente; but his one thousand two hundred men were successfully driven back by less than one-twentieth of that number of the Vaudois; and when he renewed the attack with scornful assurance of victory, a few days later, the Vaudois, who were engaged in prayer at the time, having despatched six of their number, who were slingers, to a commanding point above the assailants, obtained a still more triumphant victory, without loss on their own side, but with terrible slaughter to the enemy, including eight of his chief officers.
Besides these, he had several bodies of Greek regular infantry; and he had archers, slingers, and javelin-men, who fought also with broadsword and target, and who were principally supplied him by the highlanders of Illyria and Thracia.
With the advent of the second morning, here and there at intervals, ill-defined mounds of earth were seen so much in advance of the intrenched line that, by a general order, a fire of stones and darts was opened upon them; and straightway bodies of bowmen and slingers rushed forward, and returned the fire, seeking to cover the mound builders. This was battle. Noon again and battle.
Spear-throwing and stone-slinging at targets were both fun and preparation for war, for in the battles the slingers took the van. The stones were here, as in the Marquesas, as big as hens' eggs, and rounded by the action of the streams in which they were found.
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