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Updated: June 25, 2025
Here, quietly and swiftly, they were marshalled into order, the cavalry, pikemen, and musketeers, lining all sides of the place, and a chosen band among whom stood Sir William Stanley, on foot, and an officer of high rank on horseback occupying the central space immediately in front of the town-house.
Halting below the first terrace, they forthwith began assault, for whiles divers of the pikemen began to ascend the stairway, followed by their Indian allies, the musketeers let fly up at us with their pieces to cover their comrades' advance and all contemptuous of the arrows discharged against them.
There was trampling, shouting, cursing, torn horses, wounded men, dust, and confusion. Then the horsemen turned back, musket bullets followed them, men reeled from the saddles, horses stumbled, the pikemen at the lower end of the street shook themselves and cheered. They had tasted victory. A louder cheer followed.
I fear that Chloe or Phyllis would have met with rough wooing at the hands of these Western savages. Behind them were musqueteers from Dorchester, pikemen from Newton Poppleford, and a body of stout infantry from among the serge workers of Ottery St. Mary. This fourth regiment numbered rather better than eight hundred, but was inferior in arms and in discipline to that which preceded it.
When, again, the ambassadors of Antiochus were recounting to those of Achaea, the various multitudes composing their royal master's forces, and ran over a long catalog of hard names, "I supped once," said Titus, "with a friend, and could not forbear expostulating with him at the number of dishes he had provided, and said I wondered where he had furnished himself with such a variety; 'Sir, replied he, 'to confess the truth, it is all hog's flesh differently cooked. And so, men of Achaea, when you are told of Antiochus's lancers, and pikemen, and foot guards, I advise you not to be surprised; since in fact they are all Syrians differently armed."
And in truth the opening picture was effective. Sixteen black-robed, long-bearded Netherland envoys stalking away, discomfited and indignant upon one side; Catharine de' Medici on the other, regarding them with a sneer, painfully contorted into a pathetic smile; Henry the King, robed in a sack of penitence, trembling and hesitating, leaning on the arm of Epergnon, but quailing even under the protection of that mighty swordsman; Mucio, careering, truncheon in hand, in full panoply, upon his war-horse, waving forward a mingled mass of German lanzknechts, Swiss musketeers, and Lorraine pikemen; the redoubtable Don Bernardino de Mendoza, in front, frowning and ferocious, with his drawn sword in his hand; Elizabeth of England, in the back ground, with the white-bearded Burghley and the monastic Walsingham, all surveying the scene with eyes of deepest meaning; and, somewhat aside, but in full view, silent, calm, and imperturbably good-humoured, the bold Bearnese, standing with a mischievous but prophetic smile glittering through his blue eyes and curly beard thus grouped were the personages of the drama in the introductory scenes.
Over the side of the French ship leaped Kirke's pikemen and musketeers. There was a short fight on the crowded deck; but after Roquemont had been struck down with a wound in his foot and some of his sailors had been killed, he surrendered to avert further bloodshed.
The Sicilian and Neapolitan pikemen, the Milanese light-horse, belonged exclusively to Philip, and were used, year after year, for more than a generation of mankind, to fight battles in which they had no more interest than had their follow-subjects in the Moluccas or in Mexico, but which constituted for them personally as lucrative a trade on the whole as was afforded them at that day by any branch of industry.
Then the pipers played the "March of O'Neill," a wild old air as shrill and fierce as the spirit of the men who came with their Irish battle-cries against Elizabeth's pikemen and Cromwell's Ironsides.
The Sicilian and Neapolitan pikemen, the Milanese light-horse, belonged exclusively to Philip, and were used, year after year, for more than a generation of mankind, to fight battles in which they had no more interest than had their follow-subjects in the Moluccas or in Mexico, but which constituted for them personally as lucrative a trade on the whole as was afforded them at that day by any branch of industry.
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