Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The scum of the Halles, the rabble of the quarter poured this way and that, here at random, there swayed and directed by a few knots of men-at-arms, whose corselets reflected the glare of a hundred torches. At one time and within sight, three or four houses were being stormed. On every side rose heart-rending cries, mingled with brutal laughter, with savage jests, with cries of "To the river!"
Wrapped in a large cloak which covered up her convent uniform, she looked, as compared with the gay girls around her, like a poor sombre night-moth, dazzled by the light, in company with other glittering creatures of the insect race, fluttering with graceful movements, transparent wings and shining corselets.
A fourth of them were armed with long, square-bladed halberts, new to Italy; the remainder trailed their ten-foot pikes, and carried a short sword at their belts, whilst to every thousand of them there were a hundred arquebusiers. After them came the French infantry, without armour save the officers, who wore steel corselets and head-pieces.
Their helmets, bucklers, arquebusses, corselets, spears, standards and drums, were delivered to their officers, by whom they were conveyed noiselessly to the place of rendezvous. Before daybreak, upon the following morning, De Beauvoir met his soldiers at the abbey of Saint Bernard, within a league of Antwerp.
And apart from this they were so indifferent in their practice of archery that they drew the bowstring only to the breast , so that the missile sent forth was naturally impotent and harmless to those whom it hit . Such, it is evident, was the archery of the past. But the bowmen of the present time go into battle wearing corselets and fitted out with greaves which extend up to the knee.
"Each night the friar and I, closing fast the outer door, donned our corselets and helmets, and descending into the noise-deadening dungeon, practiced at cutting, thrusting and slashing at each other with our heavy short swords. "I was surprised at the natural aptitude of the man and his marvelous quickness and strength of wrist.
He had a "comfortless voyage and a ticklish message;" found all along the road signs of an approaching enterprise, difficult to be mistaken; reported 10,000 veteran Spaniards, to which force Stanley's regiment was united; 6000 Italians, 3000 Germans, all with pikes, corselets, and slash swords complete; besides 10,000 Walloons.
He marched straight to Rome and on the tenth day before the Kalends of July, the day of the summer solstice, was outside the city, accompanied by the delegation of senators who had met him at Interamnia and surrounded by the six hundred picked men who acted as his personal guards, who, it was rumored, had not taken off their corselets day nor night since they left Sabaria.
Thus on Whitsundaie, in the first year of her reign, the citizens of London set forth a muster before the queene's majestie at Greenwich in the parke there, of the number of 1,400 men, whereof 800 were pikes, armed in fine corselets, 400 shot in shirts of mail, and 200 halberdiers armed in Almaine rivets; these were furnished forth by the crafts and companies of the citie.
In addition to the condottiero, a couple of gentlemen on horseback attended the Duke, and half a score of his Swiss lanzknechte in gleaming corselets and steel morions, shouldering their formidable pikes, went afoot to hedge his excellency.
Word Of The Day