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Updated: May 7, 2025
Heeding the warning, Drake hastened away to the Isle of Pinos, off the isthmus, left the ships at a concealed cove here, armed fifty-three of his boldest fellows with muskets, crossbows, pikes, and spontoons. Then he called for drummers and trumpeters, and rowed in a small boat for Nombre de Dios, the treasure house of New Spain.
I remember when in my younger days I had heard of the wonders of Italian painting, I fancied the great pictures would be great strangers; some surprising combination of color and form; a foreign wonder, barbaric pearl and gold, like the spontoons and standards of the militia, which play such pranks in the eyes and imaginations of school-boys. I was to see and acquire I knew not what.
Mounted officers, laced and ruffled, gaily rode in front. Subalterns with spontoons and sergeants with halberds dressed the long line of glistening bayonets. The drums and fifes made the streets ring again, while the men in full chorus, a gorge deployee, chanted the gay refrain of La Belle Canadienne in honor of the lasses of Quebec.
At the time commanding officers still carried spontoons, and other old-time weapons, and Wayne, who himself led the right column, directed its movements spear in hand. It was nearly midnight when the Americans began to press along the causeways toward the fort.
The private soldiers of King Louis XVI., who stood in long white lines on parade at Newport, while their many colored flags floated above and the officers brandished their spontoons in front, or who rushed in night attack on the advanced redoubt at Yorktown, were not, like modern European soldiers, brought together by conscription. They were, nominally at least, volunteers.
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