"Common soldier" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of Inchaffray Abbey with the national and religious fortunes of Scotland receives further guarantee in 1513. Whether as chaplain or as common soldier, and under what designation, no available narrative declares. But certain it is that the stubborn fight which evoked Scotland's most waefu' dirge, no less than that which occasioned her immortal ...
— Chronicles of Strathearn • Various
... soldiers gambling for these women when they were weary of their play for money, a description of each of them being written on a piece of paper. One of these ladies answered well to Otomie, my wife, and she was put up to auction by the brute who won her in the gamble, and sold to a common soldier for a hundred pesos. For these men never doubted but that the women and the gold would be handed over ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard
... Officers and chief Ministers taking the Oath, Friedrich, to his Officers, "on whom he counts for the same zeal now which he had witnessed as their comrade," recommends mildness of demeanor from the higher to the lower, and that the common soldier be not treated with harshness when not deserved: and to his Ministers he is still more emphatic, in the like or a higher strain. Officially announcing to them, by Letter, that a new Reign has commenced, he uses ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... absences, tenants for their landlords', masters for their servants', servants for their masters', even though they themselves were perfectly regular in their attendance. And as the curates were allowed to fine with the sanction of any common soldier, it may be imagined that often the pretexts were neither very sufficient nor ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... see Ludar so noble a man as during those gloomy months. Never once did he waver in his loyalty to his father; never once did he suffer a word to be said to rebuke the old man's harshness; never once did he complain if more than a common soldier's hardships, with a common soldier's fare, fell to his lot; never once would he allow the men, who were ready to die for him, raise a shout when he came among them, or even salute him in his father's presence. He took his punishment ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... observation, with the most genuine and most democratic human sympathies, and with splendid dramatic force. Consequently he has made a unique contribution to literature in his portrayals, in both prose and verse, of the English common soldier and of English army life on the frontiers of the Empire. On the other hand his verse is generally altogether devoid of the finer qualities of poetry. 'Danny Deever,' 'Pharaoh and the Sergeant,' 'Fuzzy Wuzzy,' 'The Ballad of East and West,' 'The ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... by hewing timber in the neighboring woods, and constructing a sort of floating bridge, on which before nightfall the whole company passed in safety, the horses swimming, being led by the bridle. It was a day of severe labor, and Pizarro took his own share in it freely, like a common soldier, having ever a word of encouragement to say to ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... an interest to the most trifling or painful pursuits is one of the greatest happinesses of our nature. The common soldier mounts the breach with joy, the miser deliberately starves himself to death, the mathematician sets about extracting the cube- root with a feeling of enthusiasm, and the lawyer sheds tears of delight over Coke upon Lyttleton. He who is not in some measure a pedant, ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell
... that, as I said, to a miracle they fought, and it was a miracle they won the field: though that fatal night Cesario did in his own person wonders; and when his horse was killed under him, he took a partisan, and as a common soldier, at the head of his foot, acted the hero with as much courage and bravery, as ever Caesar himself could boast; yet all this availed him nothing: he saw himself abandoned on all sides, and then under the covert of the night, he retired from the battle, with his sword in his ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... opposite side. They soon opened a considerable breach in the wall, and captured the place. Colonel Dalby, who was the governor, was killed during the siege. He had disguised himself in the dress of a common soldier, but being seen and known by a deserter, he was shot by him in the face as he walked in one of the stables. The hole through which the assailant introduced his murderous musket might lately be seen, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 576 - Vol. 20 No. 576., Saturday, November 17, 1832 • Various
... hard that night, slaving away with her own hands like a common soldier. She ordered fascines and fagots to be prepared and thrown into the fosse, thereby to bridge it; and in this rough labor she took ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc Volume 2 • Mark Twain
... a large scale map of the ground over which he has to go, and has had his own individual job clearly marked and explained to him. All the Allied infantrymen tend to become specialised, as bombers, as machine-gun men, and so on. The unspecialised common soldier, the infantryman who has stood and marched and moved in ranks and ranks, the "serried lines of men," who are the main substance of every battle story for the last three thousand years, are as obsolete as the dodo. The rifle ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells
... stood in the mud with the air of a patient but rather sulky martyr. What is the use of belonging to the aristocracy of labour, of being a member of the Motor Drivers' Union, of being able to hold up civilisation to ransom, if you are yourself liable to be held up and made to stand in the rain by a common soldier, a man no better than an unskilled labourer. Nothing but the look of the rifle in the unskilled labourer's hand would have induced Simpkins to leave his ...
— Lady Bountiful - 1922 • George A. Birmingham
... has its unnamed heroes. The common soldier enters the stormed fortress and, falling in the breach which his valor has made, sleeps in a nameless grave. The subaltern whose surname is scarcely heard beyond the roll-call on parade, bears the colors of his company where the fight is hottest. And the corporal who heads his file in the final ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... began to think that something more was required, to satisfy the soul than polished periods and abstract didactic morality,—and was not much surprised when he observed that Prior, after dining with Addison and Co., liked to finish the evening with a common soldier and his wife, and refresh his mind over a pipe and a pot of beer. But Pope was dead, and so was Thomson, and Goldsmith not yet heard from. There was a famine of literary invention in England. Out of work and wages for himself and his troupe, "disgusted ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... out for me. I had on a long fur pelisse of native make, which I fancy prevented his recognising me at first. This gave time for the only chuprassie who had a sword to get between us, to whom he called out contemptuously to stand aside, saying he had come to kill me and did not want to hurt a common soldier. The relief sentry for the one in front of my house happening to pass opportunely behind me at this time, I snatched his musket, and, presenting it at the would-be assassin, told him I would fire if he did not put down his sword and surrender. He replied that either he or I must die; so I ...
— John Nicholson - The Lion of the Punjaub • R. E. Cholmeley
... bondage as that of the Prussian serf, who might not leave the spot where he was born; only in scattered districts in the border-provinces had serfage survived in France. It is significant of the difference in self-respect existing in the peasantry of the two countries that the custom of striking the common soldier, universal in Germany, was in France no more than an abuse, practised by the admirers of Frederick, and condemned ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... My mother's second cousin was one of the Parkinsons of Stepney. (Almost in tears.) What do you know of the feelings of a respectable family in the middle station of life? I cant bear to be looked down on as a common soldier. Why cant my father be let buy my discharge? Youve done away with the soldier's right to have his discharge bought for him by his relations. The country didnt know you were going to do that or it would never have stood it. ...
— Press Cuttings • George Bernard Shaw
... avarice in a man in one station of life would not be considered such in a man in another. So long as one did not attempt to acquire an amount of wealth disproportionate to the needs of one's station of life, one could not be considered avaricious. Thus a common soldier would be avaricious if he strove to obtain a uniform of the quality worn by an officer, and a simple cleric if he attempted to clothe himself in a ...
— An Essay on Mediaeval Economic Teaching • George O'Brien
... said. "But a common soldier it's no honour to have to be told to fight and to be looked down upon while you do it, and how could I ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... honourableness and worth of life connected with it by the German popular name 'Honour-prize'; while to the heart of the British race, the same thought is brought home by Shakespeare's adoption of the flower's Welsh name, for the faithfullest common soldier of his ideal king. As a lover's pledge, therefore, it does not merely mean memory;—for, indeed, why should love be thought of as such at all, if it need to promise not to forget?—but the blossom is significant also of the lover's best virtues, ...
— Proserpina, Volume 2 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... more, but it does not matter now. My father was that common soldier, and the disgrace did not lie in her marrying him. Before the marriage—I have a copy here of the entry in the register—a child was born. Yes, stare at me well, Cousin Hester, stare at me, your cousin, ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... not talk to me now, but from time to time he turned his head and looked back at me. It was not exactly as it was in the old campaign, he was sergeant, and I only a common soldier; we loved each other always, but that made a difference of course. Jean Buche marched along beside me, with his round shoulders and his feet turned in like a wolf. The only thing he said from time to time was, that his shoes hurt him on the march, and that they should only be worn on parade. ...
— Waterloo - A sequel to The Conscript of 1813 • Emile Erckmann
... in the French armies an establishment for more gentlemen than in other countries, where the disparity between the military virtues of the higher and lower classes of men is less conspicuous. In the troops of that nation nothing is expected but from the officers, but in ours the common soldier meets danger with equal intrepidity, and scorns to see himself excelled by his officer in courage or ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 10. - Parlimentary Debates I. • Samuel Johnson
... not the good, or the evil deeds, or the talents by which they were obtained. In the latter, we have but a life interest, for the entail is cut off by death. Aristocracy in all its varieties is as necessary, for the well binding of society, as the divers grades between the general and the common soldier are essential in the field. Never then inquire, why this or that man has been raised above his fellows; but, each night as you retire to bed, thank Heaven that you ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... Boston, where, at the age of eighteen, he published a thin volume entitled Tamerlane and Other Poems. Disappointed at not being able to live by his pen, he served two years in the army as a common soldier, giving both an assumed name and age. He finally secured an appointment to West Point after he was slightly beyond the legal age of entrance. The cadets said in a joking way that Poe had secured the appointment ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... adventure in the life of the working man who descends as a common soldier into the battle of life, than in that of the millionaire who sits apart in an office, like Von Moltke, and only directs the manoeuvres by telegraph. Give me to hear about the career of him who is in the thick of the business; to whom one change of market means an empty belly, and another a copious ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Rector of a University, as it would be to see him a cloth-merchant or maker of crockery.... The poorest younger son of an ancient family, who would not disdain to engage himself as a page to a nobleman, or as a common soldier, would have thought himself debased by accepting the post ...
— English Travellers of the Renaissance • Clare Howard
... associates, and directly returning, said that I was to be quartered in his office-tent, adjoining. A horror being thus lifted from my mind, I heard with sincere interest many revelations of his military career. He had been a common soldier in the Mexican war, and had fought his way, step by step, to repeated commissions. He had garrisoned Fort Yuma, and other posts on the far plains, and at the beginning of the war was tendered a volunteer brigade, which he modestly declined. His ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... of the revolutionary war, he enlisted as a common soldier in the militia of Barenas; but soon proving his superiority over his companions, he was able to raise and organise an independent body of cavalry, with which ere long he rendered important service to the cause. His troops ever had the utmost confidence in him; when charging, he was ...
— The Young Llanero - A Story of War and Wild Life in Venezuela • W.H.G. Kingston
... Even as a young lad, his father's notable place in the colony, and the freedom and gaiety of life in Quebec and Montreal, had drawn upon him a notice which was as much a promise of the future as an accent of the present. And yet, through all of it, he was ever better inspired by the grasp of a common soldier, who had served with Carignan-Salieres, or by the greeting and gossip of such woodsmen as Du Lhut, Mantet, La Durantaye, and, most of all, his staunch friend Perrot, chief of the coureurs du bois. Truth is, in his veins ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Marquise d'Espard's feet, of entreating the Comte du Chatelet, Mme. de Bargeton, Mlle. des Touches, nay, that terrible dandy of a de Marsay. All his pride had gone with his strength. He would have enlisted as a common soldier at that moment for money. He walked on with a slouching, feverish gait known to all the unhappy, reached Camille Maupin's house, entered, careless of his disordered dress, and sent in a message. He entreated Mlle. des Touches to see ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... home, which was accomplished in three weeks, much might be said, but probably little of particular interest. A transport is not a very luxurious affair for the common soldier, though the accommodation for the officers amply atones for what may be lacking for the ninety-and-nine, as it were. But what on earth, or sea, did it matter, we were ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross
... he was in this situation of uncertainty and terror, a common soldier of the guards, named Epirius, who happened to pass that way, accidentally saw his feet beneath the hangings, and immediately, pulling the hangings aside, dragged him out to view. Claudius supposed now, ...
— Nero - Makers of History Series • Jacob Abbott
... any station can do his duty, and in doing it can earn his own respect, even if his case should be so very unfortunate and so very rare, that he can earn no other man's. A common soldier, poor brute though you called him just now, has this advantage in the stormy times we live in, that he always does his duty before a host of sympathising witnesses. Do you doubt that he may so do it as to be extolled through a whole regiment, through a whole army, through ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... which had enabled the Romans to conquer so many great nations? What was it which enabled them to keep them in order, and, on the whole, make them happier, more peaceable, more prosperous, than they had ever been? What was it which had made him, the poor common soldier, an officer, and a wealthy man, governing, by his little garrison of a hundred soldiers, this town of Capernaum, and the ...
— Town and Country Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... Russian lyric poet, born at Kasan; rose from the ranks as a common soldier to the highest offices in the State under the Empress Catharine II. and her successors; retired into private life, and gave himself up to poetry; the ode by which he is best known is his "Address to ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... rations, and of the same articles and quality, as are allowed by them, either in kind or by commutation, to officers of equal rank in their own army; and all others shall be daily furnished by them, with such rations as they allow to a common soldier in their own service; the value whereof shall be paid by the other party, on a mutual adjustment of accounts for the subsistence of prisoners, at the close of the war: and the said accounts shall not be mingled with, ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... seen at all," they said; "she lives in a large copper castle, surrounded by walls and towers. No one but the king himself can pass in or out, for there has been a prophecy that she will marry a common soldier, and the king cannot bear to think of ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... way in anything. However, I suppose my turn will come; but at present, I would rather be hunting the wild goats in Navarre than pretending to be general-in-chief of an army, when everyone knows that I am not even as free to go my own way as a common soldier. ...
— Saint Bartholomew's Eve - A Tale of the Huguenot WarS • G. A. Henty
... Zealand for war expenses amounted to one hundred and fifty thousand florins monthly. The pay of a captain was eighty florins monthly; that of a lieutenant, forty; that of a corporal, fifteen; that of a drummer, fifer, or Minister, twelve; that of a common soldier, seven and a half. A captain had also one hundred and fifty florins each month to distribute among the most meritorious of his company. Each soldier was likewise furnished with food; bedding, fire, light, and washing.—Renom de France MS, vol. ii. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... undoubtedly destroy that secret power of which the English entertained such great dread, who perhaps might recover their courage when they knew that, after all, she was but a woman. According to her confessor, to whom she divulged the fact, an Englishman, not a common soldier, but a gentleman, a lord, patriotically devoted himself to this execution—bravely undertook to violate a girl laden with fetters, and, being unable to effect his ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... cord, and her hands went out for help that should yet be voiceless, assuming everything, expressing nothing. He met her call, as three years later he met, at Zutphen, the agony of envy, the appeal against intolerable thirst, in the eyes of a common soldier. ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston
... said he, after the door was closed and they were alone, "I'm only a sergeant promoted from the ranks, but I'm not just an ordinary common soldier. I know a thing or two, and I've got a plan and I thought perhaps you would be glad to 'ear of it. I 'ave the 'abit of observing things, and most soldiers don't. Why, bless me, you can march them into a country and out again, and with their eyes ...
— Captain Jinks, Hero • Ernest Crosby
... dear friend was drowning. The sea was going back, but very heavy, and de Mezieres rode straight into the raging waters to seek his friend. The waves went over his head and carried away his hat, but he persevered until he had seized a man. He dragged him ashore, to find it was a common soldier. He hastened back, and saved several soldiers and two or three officers. His friend, after all, ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang
... of Francis I a "knight without fear and without reproach"? Did not Sir Philip Sidney do one of the perfect deeds of gentleness when, dying on the battle field and tortured with thirst, he passed his cup of water to a common soldier with the simple words, "Thy need is greater than mine"? One of the most justly famous and most popular books of the sixteenth century was Baldessare Castiglione's Book of the Courtier, called by Dr. Johnson the best treatise on good breeding ever written. Published in Italian in 1528, ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... on which an army should be regulated. Upon your way of it, if any young officer, more raw in character than in years, and not yet able to rule his own spirit, or to keep himself from quarrelling like a common soldier, should happen to be of use in a strait—I acknowledge the strait—to a king, his foolishness should be placed in command of veteran officers and men. It were right to recompense him at the cost of the Prince, mayhap, but not at the cost of gallant soldiers whom he was ...
— Graham of Claverhouse • Ian Maclaren
... family are most ordinary people, the kind that are prominent in some unfashionable church and influential in its Sunday-school. O, la-la-la-la! She prides herself on having an ancestor of some sort who fought in the War of Independence—a common soldier, I suppose, in Washington's army; that's why she has had an office in the "Daughters of the Revolution." We had several ancestors in the war—commissioned officers; and they all fought for King George, thank ...
— The Smart Set - Correspondence & Conversations • Clyde Fitch
... left by his parent without any deposit, he is brought up for the army as a common soldier, but if 250 roubles or L40 sterling be left with him, he will become an officer. All who show ability become engineers or are sent to ...
— A Journey in Russia in 1858 • Robert Heywood
... of the great Colbert, who was afraid of seeing the Mother Country depopulated in favour of her new daughter Canada. His perseverance finally won the day, and more than four hundred soldiers settled in the colony. Each common soldier received a hundred francs, each sergeant a hundred and fifty francs. Besides, forty thousand francs were used in raising in France the additional number of fifty girls and a hundred and fifty men, which, increased by two hundred and thirty-five colonists, sent by the company in 1667, fulfilled ...
— The Makers of Canada: Bishop Laval • A. Leblond de Brumath
... to suppose. Once sworn in as a private, you become a tool, a mere thing, to do another's bidding. I do not say this to discourage enlistments,—far from it. I am only speaking the truth. 'Forewarned, forearmed.' If there is a hard life upon earth, it is that of a common soldier; he may be the bravest man in the army, he may perform an endless amount of daring deeds, but it is seldom that he gains a tangible reward. He does all the fighting, he performs all the drudgery, he is plundered by the sutler, he lives on pork and hard-bread, ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... youngster had undoubtedly caused his mother grave anxiety, yet he had not stolen copper-wire, nor taken part in any socialistic demonstration. Wegstetten at the moment did not know of what worse he could be accused. Naturally he would see to it that this sympathy with the fate of a common soldier should not be wasted on an unworthy object. Directly Frielinghausen did amiss, he would be down on him; just as with that other sprig of nobility, Count Egon Plettau, who had actually managed to serve nearly eight years and of that time to spend, first six ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... intemperately. His praise of the War Lord raced on as the officer ate. He spoke of him as of those that benefit man, as of monarchs who bring happiness to their people. And now, he said, he is here in the Schartzhaus beside us, listening to the guns just like a common soldier. ...
— Tales of War • Lord Dunsany
... to represent, with a glamor that never lost its fascination for the man. To Heine, Napoleon was the incarnation of the French Revolution, the glorious new-comer who took by storm the intrenched strongholds of hereditary privilege, the dauntless leader in whose army every common soldier carried a field marshal's baton in his knapsack. If later we find Heine mercilessly assailing the repressive and reactionary aristocracy of Germany, we shall not lightly accuse him of lack of patriotism. He could not be expected to hold dear institutions of which he felt only the burden, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... Sometimes travellers had to depart disappointed altogether, sometimes they had to make a second, a third, or a fourth visit before hearing the desired voice. But still it was a frequent phenomenon; and a common soldier has recorded the fact on the base of the statue, that he heard it no fewer than thirteen times. The origin of the sound, the time when it began to be heard, and the circumstances under which it ceased, are all more or less doubtful. ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson
... sisters and brothers, girl lovers—each impatient to know of his or her own object of solicitude. Enter to these a certain marquis, full of sympathy for all, who says: "My friends, I am one of you. My brother has no commission yet. He is a common soldier. I wait for him as well as all brothers and sisters here wait for their brothers. Tell me whom you are expecting." Then they all tell him. Then he goes into the telegraph-office, and sends a message down the line to know how ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... the only one, certainly not; the whole French army is like me, that I will swear to you. From the common soldier to the general, we all go forward, and to the very end, when there is a woman in the case, a pretty woman. Remember what Joan of Arc made us do formerly! Come, I will make a bet that if a pretty woman had taken command of the army on the eve of Sedan, when Marshal Mac-Mahon ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... become, in his limbo of vanities, a heap of positive bladders. Youth is headstrong, and kissing goes by favour; so Angelica, queen of Cathay, and beauty of the world, jilts warriors and kings, and marries a common soldier. ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... consequence, as it shows the public opinion. The sum of this story was, that on one occasion he attempted to draw it, but it was so rusty he could not extricate it from the scabbard. He had a reason for this apparent singularity; a long sword might have tempted him, a small man, to act the common soldier, and he appeared to place no reliance on his personal prowess. Gen. Greene depended entirely upon him for intelligence.—Now, intelligence is the life of an army. Sumter and Greene were then at variance, ...
— A Sketch of the Life of Brig. Gen. Francis Marion • William Dobein James
... think? I mean, we must make changes slowly, not in this ... this drastic fashion. But what are you to expect? When the very Cabinet Ministers are proved to have shares in munition works, is it any wonder that the common soldier runs riot?..." ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... the son of a poor blacksmith at Putney or no, he could hardly have been more than a boy when he was engaged in the service of the Marchioness of Dorset, and he must still have been young when he took part as a common soldier in the wars of Italy, a "ruffian," as he owned afterwards to Cranmer, in the most unscrupulous school the world contained. But it was a school in which he learned lessons even more dangerous than those of the camp. He not only mastered the Italian language but drank in the manners and tone of ...
— History of the English People, Volume III (of 8) - The Parliament, 1399-1461; The Monarchy 1461-1540 • John Richard Green
... her embrace by force. "What?" said he, "are you mad? Follow me? Where? How? Shall I, being a common soldier, drag you after me, ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... by his companions, and particularly by Cromwell. That adventurer had equally obtained the confidence of the commander-in-chief and of the common soldier. Dark, artful, and designing, he governed Fairfax by his suggestions, while he pretended only to second the projects of that general. Among the privates he appeared as the advocate of liberty and toleration, ...
— The History of England from the First Invasion by the Romans - to the Accession of King George the Fifth - Volume 8 • John Lingard and Hilaire Belloc
... of his helplessness, then terrifying. Was he going to die here in an anteroom at the hands of this common soldier? Was he going to be strangled like a clerk at the hands of a footpad? Was the end coming here, within perhaps a hundred yards of Jo? He threw every ounce in him into a final effort to throw off this demon. The fellow, with legs wide apart, remained immovable save spasmodically ...
— The Web of the Golden Spider • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... Faith, and the great Source of all our Supplies the national Bounty, and the Zeal, the Generosity, the good Sense of our Irish Representatives. It is as shameful to see a Kingdom depending on private Contributions, as a Ballysarius begging of a common Soldier. The King thought so when he extended his royal Munificence to us, and tho' he cannot help all, or do all; he has shewn us he desires it, and would gladly spur us on to Exert ourselves, and be more generally Active and Busy. This illustrious Example makes me confident, that if in ...
— A Dialogue Between Dean Swift and Tho. Prior, Esq. • Anonymous
... is a complimentary title—he was a common soldier. M'Barak means "the blessed one," and is one of the names ...
— Morocco • S.L. Bensusan
... doctor. He was a tall man, dressed in a black gown and square cap, and was originally a common soldier in the Prussian service. In 1782 he exhibited in London his solar microscope, and created immense excitement by showing the infusoria of muddy water, etc. Dr. Katerfelto used to say that he was the greatest philosopher since the time ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... siege continued many weeks, varied with fierce sallies and bloody skirmishes. Henry labored in the trenches like a common soldier, and shared every peril. He was not wise in so doing, for his life was of far too much value to France to be thus ...
— Henry IV, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... gentlemen. I don't brag but I'm not afraid of Mr. Wolfe, nor of Sir John Armytage, nor of anybody else that ever I saw. How can I buy a commission when I've spent my last shilling, or ask my brother for more who has already halved with me? A gentleman of my rank can't go a common soldier—else, by Jupiter, I would! And if a ball finished me, I suppose Miss Hetty Lambert wouldn't be very sorry. It isn't kind, Hetty—I didn't think it ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... like a rooster as loud as he could, just as if to say, "You ought to have been out before." Then, too, Count and General though he was, dining with the Empress herself almost every week, and going about the palace as he pleased, he dressed as plainly as any peasant, and slept on straw like a common soldier. Once or twice the palace servants, seeing this untidy little fellow coming up to the grand entrance, took him for a tramp, and wanted to drive him away; but they soon found out that that would ...
— Harper's Young People, February 17, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... station commandant's office was a big, jovial, bearded common soldier, wearing the red arm-band of a regimental committee. Our credentials from Smolny commanded immediate respect. He was plainly for the ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed
... origin, he determined while still a youth to seek his fortune in the New World. In 1514 he went with Pedrarias to Darien and Cuba. He was a common soldier with Cordoba in the first expedition to Yucatan in 1517. He accompanied Grijalva to Mexico in the following year, and finally enlisted under the banner of Cortes. In every event that marked the career of that brilliant commander in Mexico, Diaz ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... intelligence and native dignity made him, despite his peasant origin, one with whom a gentleman might converse. "Some day they will learn in France of what stuff the little Bearnaise King is made. I have stood watching him when he little supposed that a common soldier might take note of such things, and I have seen on his face the sign of great intentions. More goes on under that black hair than people guess at,—he can do more than drink and hunt and make ...
— An Enemy To The King • Robert Neilson Stephens
... good man, but also remarkably just and wise, at once saw the importance of such a plan, and offered to give up his day's command, and to carry out his friend's orders just as if he were nothing but a common soldier. ...
— The Story of the Greeks • H. A. Guerber
... of battle; his glance was omnipresent, and he intrepidly forgot the danger while he exposed himself to the greatest peril. His natural courage, indeed, too often made him forget the duty of a general; and the life of a king ended in the death of a common soldier. But such a leader was followed to victory alike by the coward and the brave, and his eagle glance marked every heroic deed which his example had inspired. The fame of their sovereign excited in the nation an enthusiastic sense of their own importance; proud of their ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... Bible study, of controversial writing, of individual suffering, were needed. These brought forth the necessary moral earnestness, the mental acumen, the enduring strength. These qualities, though most noticeable in the leaders, were well-nigh universal traits. Every common soldier felt himself the equal of his officer as a soldier of God, a defender of the faith, and a necessary builder of Christ's new kingdom upon earth. To this growing sense of democracy, to this sense of personal responsibility and self-sacrifice, the teaching, the writings, and the sufferings ...
— The Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut • M. Louise Greene, Ph. D.
... I said or did nothing to injure him in the estimation of others. Disappointed in procuring employment in a business to which he had served a regular apprenticeship, being pennyless, and seeing no bright prospect for the future, he enlisted as a common soldier in the United ...
— The Young Man's Guide • William A. Alcott
... told in the romantic narratives of those times. In these narratives we have accounts of the engines which Richard set up opposite the walls, and of the efforts made by the besieged to set them on fire; of Richard's working, himself, like any common soldier in putting these engines together, and in extinguishing the flames when they were set on fire; of a vast fire-proof shed which was at last contrived to cover and protect the engines—the covering of the roof being made fire-proof with green hides; and of a plan which was finally ...
— Richard I - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... will dare To serve them ill, when they are left to laws; But, when a counsellor, to save himself, Would lay miscarriages upon his prince, Exposing him to public rage and hate; O, 'tis an act as infamously base, As, should a common soldier sculk behind, And thrust his general in the front of war: It shews, he only served himself before, And had no sense of honour, country, king, But centered on himself, and used his master, As guardians do their wards, with shews of care, But with intent to sell the public safety, ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... that her brave little ally, who has come into the war for a just cause, does not ultimately suffer for daring to espouse this cause for which we are all fighting. I can speak with authority when I state that, from the Emperor down to the common soldier, there is a united sentiment in Russia that Rumania shall be protected, helped, and supported in every way possible. Rumanians must feel faith in Russia and the Russian people, and must also know that in the efforts we are making to save them sentiment is the dominant factor, and we are not doing ...
— World's War Events, Vol. II • Various
... Robert, for you to carry your refinement and culture into the ranks as a common soldier, to fight and to die, without thanks. You are made of too good stuff to serve simply as food ...
— What Answer? • Anna E. Dickinson
... so funny, and got such a good laugh, that the Paladin gave it another trial, and said: "Why you can just see her!—see her plunge into battle like any old veteran. Yes, indeed; and not a poor shabby common soldier like us, but an officer—an officer, mind you, with armor on, and the bars of a steel helmet to blush behind and hide her embarrassment when she finds an army in front of her that she hasn't been introduced to. An officer? Why, she'll be a captain! A captain, I tell ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... necessity to speak to me again. When your father comes I will relieve you of my hated presence. If he wishes it, I will still serve you both for his sake, for he always kept a little faith and fairness for me. Now, regard me as a sentinel, a common soldier, to whom you need not speak until your father comes;" and he turned to the ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... Badajos, 1767. A common soldier, he became the queen's lover, and the virtual ruler of Spain; died ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... bestowed upon him the title of {2} Stratelates. In town mansions and village huts men's mouths were filled with his praise: one dwelt on his dauntless courage, another on his strategic genius, a third on his sympathetic recognition of the claims of the common soldier, whose hardships he shared, and for whose life he evinced a far greater solicitude ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott
... they were named, half by the Senate and half by the consuls. No one was eligible to this great office who had not served ten years in the infantry or five in the cavalry. The tribunes were distinguished by their dress from the common soldier. Next in rank to the tribunes, who corresponded to the rank of brigadiers and colonels in our times, were the Centurions, of whom there were sixty in each legion,—men who were more remarkable for calmness and sagacity ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord
... before them sentries were marching slowly up and down, with their rifles resting on their shoulders, while a double row guarded a single wide gate. Every now and then a common soldier passed on his way to the performance of some special duty. Gray and colorless, the afternoon had a peculiar dampness as if the wind had blown across ...
— The Red Cross Girls with the Russian Army • Margaret Vandercook
... never received less than 6d. a day, and frequently more.—Chronicle of Calais, p. 197, etc. Sixpence a day is the usual sum entered as the wages of a day's labour in the innumerable lists of accounts in the Record Office. And 6d. a day again was the lowest pay of the common soldier, not only on exceptional service in the field, but when regularly employed in garrison duty. Those who doubt whether this was really the practice, may easily satisfy themselves by referring to the accounts of the expenses of Berwick, or of Dover, ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... believe, but which the people gladly credited, and which caused much bloodshed before it was wiped out of their memory, was this—that Czar Peter died neither by his own hand, nor by the hands of others, but that he still lived. It was said that a common soldier, with pock-marked face resembling the Czar, was shown in his stead to the public on the death- couch at St. Petersburg, and that the Czar himself had escaped from prison in soldier's clothes, and would return to retake his throne, to vanquish his ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Polish • Various
... pocket was found. The foppish Miss Loiter is contrasted with the well trained children of Amadea. Narcissa, endeavoring to avoid marriage with the detested Oakly, is entrapped by the brother of her waiting-maid, who though only a common soldier, poses as Captain Pike. ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... quailed as the filibusters had scarcely done before; though, after all, it will seem unreasonable to blame these two hundred or less, disease-worn and spiritless men, for not whipping ten hundred out of a barricaded town. It may be worth saying here, that, seeing things in Nicaragua from a common soldier's befogged view-point, and having only general rumor, or the tales of privates like myself, for parts of an engagement where I was not present, I may easily make mistakes in the numbers, and otherwise do Walker ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... Agriculture at Washington. Again two species, or polymorphism. According to Prof. Riley, it was not polymorphism, "but two distinct species"—which, because of our data, we doubt. One kind was larger than the other: color-differences not distinctly stated. One is called the larvae of the common soldier beetle and the other "seems to be a variety of the bronze cut worm." No attempt to explain the occurrence ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... Sir Philip Sidney, was mortally wounded in one of the battles. The story is told that while Sidney was riding back, tortured by his wound, he became very thirsty, as wounded men always do, and begged for a drink of water. Looking up when it was brought to him he saw on the ground a common soldier more sorely wounded than he. He immediately sent the water to the soldier saying, "Thy necessity is greater ...
— Introductory American History • Henry Eldridge Bourne and Elbert Jay Benton
... Lord Sandwich, among other things, that of all the old army now you cannot see a man begging about the streets; but what? You shall have this captain turned a shoemaker; the lieutenant, a baker; this a brewer; that a haberdasher; this common soldier, a porter; and every man in his apron and frock, &c., as if they had never done anything else: whereas the other go with their belts and swords, swearing and cursing, and stealing; running into people's houses, ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... writes to me, to say he is treated as an honoured guest rather than as a prisoner, and here you disgrace us by shutting your prisoner in a cheerless cell, although he is wounded, and giving him food such as you might give to a common soldier. The Swedes will think that we are barbarians. You are released from your command, and will at once proceed to Moscow and report yourself there, when a post will be assigned to you where you will have no opportunity of showing ...
— A Jacobite Exile - Being the Adventures of a Young Englishman in the Service of Charles the Twelfth of Sweden • G. A. Henty
... about his behaviour in the House of Conde, which if they are true seem to carry eccentricity beyond the bounds of what is permitted even to a philosopher. Nevertheless, contemporaries report that, in spite of his plain features and his "look of a common soldier" (a dreadful thing to say in the seventeenth century), the ladies ran after him. I am afraid that when they did so, he repulsed them. He says about love none of the charming things which he says about friendship, ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse
... vexed, and his daughter yet more so, that she should be beaten by a discharged common soldier; and they took counsel together how they might rid themselves of him and of his companions at ...
— Household Stories by the Brothers Grimm • Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm
... only a common soldier, sir," said he. "It signifies very little what such a poor brute ...
— The Seven Poor Travellers • Charles Dickens
... to be. Why, a well-trained old soldier could not have spoken better. You're as right as right, and it is unfortunate that our chief should be surrounded here in a place where he can't use the best part of his troops. But there, we won't argue about it. 'Tarn't a common soldier's duty to talk over what his general does. What he, a fighting man, has to do is to fight and do in all things what he is ...
— Marcus: the Young Centurion • George Manville Fenn
... cannot see her," they told him. "She lives, the beautiful Princess, in a great copper castle, with walls and towers all round. Only the King visits her there, for it was once foretold that she would marry a common soldier, and that ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various
... commanded a company of about sixty men. He was a common soldier who had been promoted from the ranks for his courage and fighting qualities. The centurions were the real leaders of the men in battle. There were sixty of them in a legion. The centurion in the picture (p. 216) has in his hand a staff with a crook ...
— Latin for Beginners • Benjamin Leonard D'Ooge
... the imperial pair and Queen Caroline. Then the latter was dismissed with little ceremony, the lights were extinguished, and this daughter of a line of emperors was left to the tender mercies of one who always had about him something of the common soldier—the man who lives for loot and lust.... At eleven the next morning she was unable to rise and was served in bed by the ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... more than eleven or twelve years, without money to support, without friends to advise, and without book-learning to assist me; passing a few years dependent solely on my own labour for my subsistence; then becoming a common soldier and leading a military life, chiefly in foreign parts, for eight years; quitting that life after really, for me, high promotion, and with, for me, a large sum of money; marrying at an early age, going at once to France to acquire the French language, thence to America; passing ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett
... uniform, and then invited us to take a little brandy. After listening to his mode of treatment, we casually remarked that it looked feasible, but at the same time reprehensible in the General of the army exposing himself in the performance of a duty that could be done as well by a common soldier. He gave us a look, and kept his eyes upon us as his giant form raised up, and, with a sweep of his sword arm, said in majestic tones: "Sir, it is the duty of a General to take care of his army; should he fall another can take his place; but, without an army ...
— Autobiography of Ma-ka-tai-me-she-kia-kiak, or Black Hawk • Black Hawk
... Church, he was captured by a troop of Lord Say's soldiers from Broughton House, being soon afterwards set free on the surrender of the place to the king's forces. In 1643 he was again under arms, performing "all duties of a common soldier'' and "frequently holding his musket in one hand and his book in the other.'' At the close of the Civil War, he returned to his studies, took holy orders, was made censor and became a "noted tutor.'' But he still remained an ardent royalist. He voted for the university decree against ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... By this my sword that conquer'd Persia, Thy fall shall make me famous through the world! I will not tell thee how I'll [165] handle thee, But every common soldier of my camp Shall smile to see thy ...
— Tamburlaine the Great, Part I. • Christopher Marlowe
... all about him," affirmed Wallis. "He enlisted in the Old Tenth as a common soldier. Before he had been a week in camp they found that he knew his biz, and they made him a sergeant. Before we started for the field the Governor got his eye on him and shoved him into a lieutenancy. The first battle h'isted him to a captain. And the second—bang! ...
— The Brigade Commander • J. W. Deforest
... Middle Ages we find the sword and spear still holding sway, with the bow as an important accessory for the use of the common soldier. As for the knight, he became an iron-clad champion, so incased in steel that he could fight effectively only on horseback, becoming largely helpless on foot. At length, the greatest stage in the history of war, the notable invention ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall
... ever he came in for the Zaidos name and title, he would show them just how haughty and overbearing a young nobleman could be. But in the meantime, he thought it better to do as Zaidos commanded and say nothing about the family. Zaidos had elected to be known as a common soldier, and he would keep to his word. Velo realized that he himself could make no pretentions while Zaidos was about; he would not stand for that. So Velo acted in his best and oiliest manner, and waited on the nurse, ...
— Shelled by an Unseen Foe • James Fiske
... be seen at all," said they, all together; "she lives in a great copper castle, with a great many walls and towers round about it; no one but the King may go in and out there, for it has been prophesied that she shall marry a common soldier, and the ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... have betokened fear of the Nihilists; and the new ruler, gifted with a magnificent physique, a narrow mind, and a stern will, ever based his conduct on elementary notions that appealed to the peasant and the common soldier. In 1825 Nicholas I. had cowed the would-be rebels at his capital by a display of defiant animal courage. Alexander III. resolved to do the like. He had always been noted for a quiet persistence on which arguments fell in vain. The nickname, "bullock," which his father early gave ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... above all things, variety, and here it was in startling abundance. Nor was her new lover any the less desirable because he was some years younger than herself, or that his grandfather had been a common soldier in the army ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... to join their ranks, the figure of Gremberg comes looming up to rebuke me. He was a common soldier whose camaraderie I enjoyed for ten days during the skirmishing before Antwerp. In him the whole tragedy of Belgium was incarnated. He had lost his two brothers; they had gone down before the German bullets. He had lost his home; it had gone up in flames from the German torch. ...
— In the Claws of the German Eagle • Albert Rhys Williams
... the Colonel's cottage, sat down to the dinner table, which was decked with pale blue napkins, and a fine-looking old Voukotitch, an ex-M.P. in national costume, acted as butler. In spite of his seventy odd years he had joined the army as a common soldier. He refused all invitations to sit with us, for he knew his place. The young husband was his nephew, and they kissed ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon
... vast number commissioned in the army, whose sex was discovered through some terrible wound, or by their dead bodies on the battle-field. Even the volumes especially devoted to an account of woman's work in the war, have mostly ignored her as a common soldier, although the files of the newspapers of that heroic period, if carefully examined, would be found to contain many accounts of women who fought on the ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... last century, the younger brother, by changing his religion, was able to turn him out. Barry, when a boy, learns the slang and the gait of the debauched gentlemen of the day. He is specially proud of being a gentleman by birth and manners. He had been kidnapped, and made to serve as a common soldier, but boasts that he was at once fit for the occasion when enabled to show as a court gentleman. "I came to it at once," he says, "and as if I had never done anything else all my life. I had a gentleman ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope
... heads around her to a man bearing someone off the late bloody field, and that moment staggering across the trenches into the Alameda. It was an act that moved her, for the rescuer was a richly uniformed officer, and the other but a common soldier. With Berthe close behind, she alighted from the coach and hurried forward to help. The wounded soldier's face lay on the officer's breast, and she saw only his hair, matted and very white, from which a rusty brown wig had partly fallen. But more to the purpose she saw that he was bleeding, ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... don't go fer to abuse better men nor you aint," angrily interrupted the subject of the corporal's unflattering comparison. Then, seeing the veteran, hopeless of convincing his opponent, retire to the garden to join the children, Sylvanus waxed bold. "A soldier, Trypheeny, a common soldier! Ef I owned a dawg, a yaller dawg, I wouldn't go and make the pore beast a soldier. Old pipeclay and parade, tattoo and barricks and punishment drill, likes ter come around here braggin' up his lazy, slavish life. Why don't he git a dawg collar and a chain at wonst and git tied up ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... Lieutenant Capt Stuart's company. Collin McIver, Lieutenant Capt. Leggate's company. Alexander Maclaine, Commissary to General Macdonald's Army. Angus Campbell, Captain company 30 men. Alexander Stuart, Captain company 30 men. Hugh McDonald, Anson county, volunteer. John McDonald, common soldier. Daniel Cameron, common soldier. Daniel McLean, freeholder, Cumberland county, Lieutenant to Angus Campbell's company. Malcolm McNeill, recruiting agent for General Macdonald's Army, ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... the army. Upon the expedition up the Thames all his baggage was contained in a valise, while his bedding consisted of a single blanket, over his saddle, and even this he gave to Colonel Evans, a British officer, who was wounded. His subsistence was exactly that of a common soldier. On the night after the action upon the Thames, thirty-five British officers supped with him upon fresh beef roasted before the fire, without either salt or bread, and without ardent spirits of any kind. ...
— The Land of the Miamis • Elmore Barce
... advanced to the attack. The conflict was long and desperate, and both sides fought with great gallantry and determination. Don Pedro—who, although vicious and cruel, was brave—fought in the ranks as a common soldier, frequently cutting his way into the midst of the Spaniards, and shouting to Don Henry to cross swords with him. Henry on his part fought with great valour, although, as he had the burden of command upon him, he was less able to distinguish himself ...
— Saint George for England • G. A. Henty
... a plain simple journal of everything that was done, such as a common soldier might have written, or a sutler who followed the camp. This, however, was tolerable, because it pretended to nothing more; and might be useful by supplying materials for some better historian. I only blame him for his pompous introduction: "Callimorphus, ...
— Trips to the Moon • Lucian
... his conciliatory manners, in reconciling the men under his charge at Athlone and Kilkenny; and he was also satisfied about his thoughtfulness, his delicacy of spirit, his grace and his nobleness—for he had been bred a noble, though he had first served as a common soldier in ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles
... these subjects, facts are generally dependent upon their relations to one another for their value. Taken alone, they are ineffective fragments of knowledge, just as a common soldier or an officer in an army is ineffective in battle without definite relations to a multitude of ...
— How To Study and Teaching How To Study • F. M. McMurry
... addressed to me, in fear I snatched it out of her hand. She insisted on having it back, I refused, and we had a row. "How dare you sir? give it me." "I won't, you shant open my letter." "I will, a boy like you!" "I am not a boy, I am a man, if you ever open a letter of mine, I will go for a common soldier, instead of being an officer." "I will tell your guardian." "I mean to tell him how shamefully short of money I am, uncle says it's a shame, so does aunt." my mother sunk down in tears, it was my first ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... to be of a different class, with different education and habits from the common soldier. The revolution and conscription has leveled all those distinctions. Many a youth of good birth and education is made to bear his musket in the ranks, and does not elevate his comrades to his standard, but is soon degraded to the level of their sentiments and habits. Many ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... him, beat away at his iron armour like a blacksmith hammering on his anvil. Even when the Count owned himself defeated and offered his sword, the King would not do him the honour to take it, but made him yield it up to a common soldier. There had been such fury shown in this fight, that it was afterwards called the little ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens
... in a lofty whitewashed room of considerable dimensions, clean and airy, with high, open windows. There was no furniture in the room except a chair, a table, and a crucifix. Lothair took her in his arms and laid her on the bed; and the common soldier who had hitherto assisted him, a giant in stature, with a beard a foot long, stood by the bedside crying like a child. The chief surgeon almost at the same moment arrived with an aide-de-camp of the general, and her faithful female attendant, and in a few minutes her husband, ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... The common soldier of the American volunteer army had returned. His war with the South was over, and his fight, his daily running fight, with nature and against the injustice of his fellow men was begun again. In tlie dusk of that far-off valley his figure looms vast, his personal peculiarities ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... person magnified those things and made them objects of terror to himself." When they had excited each other by these discourses, a lictor was despatched by the consuls to Volero Publilius, a man belonging to the commons, because he stated, that having been a centurion he ought not to be made a common soldier. Volero appeals to the tribunes. When one came to his assistance, the consuls order the man to be stripped and the rods to be got ready. "I appeal to the people," says Volero, "since tribunes had rather see a Roman citizen scourged before their eyes, ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... born only to devour the fruits of the earth; and it may be as well said of the lower class, that they are born only to produce them for us. Is not the battle gained by the sweat and danger of the common soldier? Are not the honour and fruits of the victory the general's who laid the scheme? Is not the house built by the labour of the carpenter and the bricklayer? Is it not built for the profit only of the architect and for the use of the inhabitant, who could not easily have placed one brick ...
— The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great • Henry Fielding
... seventh legion, in the form of a wedge, endeavored to force their way, while the third hewed down the gate with axes and swords. The first man that entered, according to all historians, was Caius Volusius, a common soldier of the third legion. He gained the summit of the rampart, and, bearing down all resistance, in the view of all beckoned with his hand, and cried aloud that the camp was captured. The rest of the legion followed him with resistless fury, the Vitellians being panic-struck, and throwing themselves ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume II (of X) - Rome • Various
... adds, a little farther on: "Having no rights of franchise- -no legal protection of life or property—disqualified to handle a gun, even as a common soldier or a game-keeper— forbidden to acquire the elements of knowledge at home or abroad—forbidden even to render to God what conscience dictated as his due—what could the Irish be but abject serfs? What nature in their circumstances ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... the Spaniards were threatened with blockade and starvation. For this retreat Cortes was preparing in secret. He saw his troops each day more and more closely hemmed in, whilst several times he was forced himself to take his sword in his hand and to fight like a common soldier. Solis even relates, but upon what authority is not known, that during an assault which was made upon one of the edifices commanding the Spanish quarter, two young Mexicans, recognizing Cortes, who was cheering on ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... the sensation; it was running blood. In his delirium he had beaten it against the jagged fragments of the wreck, had clutched it full of splinters. He resolved that he would meet his fate more manly. He was a plain, common soldier, had no religion and not much philosophy; he could not die like a hero, with great and wise last words, even if there had been some one to hear them, but he could die "game," and he would. But if he could only know when to ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... as to the head, and told them not to vilify a British Regiment, and the Gurkhas grinned cavernously, for the Highlanders were their elder brothers and entitled to the privileges of kinship. The common soldier who touches a Gurkha is more than likely to have his head ...
— Soldier Stories • Rudyard Kipling
... 1649, and renewed upon occasion of this invasion, were that no officer nor soldier that followed James Graham should be permitted in the army, nor any officer that was in the Engagement, except such as, upon real evidence of repentance, were particularly recommended by the church, nor any common soldier, but upon sufficient testimony of his repentance. Now, since it is proved that the most part of all such continue still malignants, and retain their old principles, and that the bulk and body of the people are called forth by the public resolution, ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... suffering to the poet. In the case of certain less known writers the malevolence of the higher authorities often took on a tragic turn. For a single poem in which the poet Polezhayev described a students' debauch, the author was reduced by Nicholas I to the rank of a common soldier. Sokolovsky, another writer of this time, not being able to get a footing in literature, abandoned the pen, and like many others, sought to forget his disappointment in drink. For several years Hertzen was transferred from one place of exile to another until he came to England. And how ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... clothes, who, with a lighted cigar in his mouth, marched fore and aft the star-board side of the ship with me. In anticipation of entering Greek waters, I had read for months, and this stranger was astonished to find a common soldier so well informed on the history of Greece. I had not yet been ashore, but I had arranged to go the following day. The gentleman, on leaving, handed me a card on which he had pencilled what I think was an introduction. I had only time to ask him his ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine
... fare. He was exceedingly popular at the time of his accession to the throne, and great anticipations were cherished of a golden age about to dawn upon Austria. "His toilet," writes one of his eulogists, "is that of a common soldier, his wardrobe that of a sergeant, business his recreation, ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott
... at the other end of the straggling little town. In walking leisurely home, he followed his train of thought. The systematic brutality shown the common soldier—even the noncom. (though not in so pronounced a manner)—by his fellow-officers had from the start been very much against his taste. "They don't see the defender of the fatherland in him," thought he, "but merely the green man, unused to strict discipline and to the narrowly ...
— A Little Garrison - A Realistic Novel of German Army Life of To-day • Fritz von der Kyrburg
... complicity in the plot. His whole life and reputation give reason to suppose that he was an accomplice in the crime of which he was the cause. He was brought to the ground in front of the temple of Julius by a blow on the knee, and afterwards a common soldier named Julius Carus ran him through with ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... the servant who had to clean his boots that they were astonishingly old boots for such a rich lord. But that was because he had not yet bought new ones; next day he appeared in respectable boots and fine clothes. Now, instead of a common soldier he had become a noble lord, and the people told him about all the grand doings of the town and the King, and what a beautiful Princess ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Various
... little town, and is kept clean and in good order. The governor, Lopez, was a common soldier at the time of the revolution; but has now been seventeen years in power. This stability of government is owing to his tyrannical habits; for tyranny seems as yet better adapted to these countries than republicanism. The governor's ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... literally every department of administration felt the impulse of his will, while to the organization of the army, to the arrangement of uniforms, to the designing of gun-carriages, to questions concerning straps, buckles, and commissary stores, to the temper of the common soldier, to the opinion of the nation, to each and all these matters he gave such attention as left nothing for others to do. By this exhibition of giant strength there was created a true national impulse. With this behind them, the senate in April called out ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... golden shores nor worship in your temple. But it is something and more, to have had the vision and know that in the midst of war there is still a peace that abides in your harbors and among your hills. Greetings to all the Fellowship from a common soldier, written on the ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... relates that Lefebvre, disguised as a common soldier, mingled with the cavalry in order to escape the balls of the Tyrolese sharpshooters. A man of Passeyr is said to have captured a three-pounder and to have carried it on his shoulders across the mountain. The Tyrolese ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... proclamation, promising to redeem it from a hated tyranny. If he had succeeded, and defeated McClellan, as he had beaten Pope between Manassas and Washington, we had no reinforcements or forts to prevent his march to Philadelphia. McClellan's presence stirred the common soldier as Napoleon's did, and it was this unbounded enthusiasm which he excited, that saved the nation when he took command at Washington. I know of nothing that made me more indignant than the folly of some ladies who, among his soldiers on the Potomac, decried and denounced ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... in the army a certain Xenophon, an Athenian, who accompanied it neither in the character of general, nor captain, nor common soldier, but it had happened that Proxenus, an old guest-friend of his, had sent for him from home, giving him a promise that, if he came, he would recommend him to the friendship of Cyrus, whom he considered, he said, as a greater object of regard than his own country. 5. Xenophon, on reading the letter, ...
— The First Four Books of Xenophon's Anabasis • Xenophon
... go and tell Dick Smithson he's a common soldier, and if he ever dares to send me such a message as that again, I'll report him to the colonel for insubordination'—that's the word, sir, 'insubordination.' I've picked up a deal since I've been in the army; and, as we used to learn at school—and precious little it was!—'positive insolence; ...
— The Queen's Scarlet - The Adventures and Misadventures of Sir Richard Frayne • George Manville Fenn
... soldier-actor. Parker was born in 1732 at Green Street, near Canterbury and was 'early admitted', he says, 'to walk the quarterdeck as a midshipman on board the Falmouth and the Guernsey'. A series of youthful indiscretions in London obliged him to leave the navy, and in or about 1754 to enlist as a common soldier in the 2Oth regiment of foot, the second battalion of which became in 1758 the 67th regiment, under the command of Wolfe. In his regiment he continued a private, corporal, and sergeant for seven years, was present at ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer
... here, he tried to force the right, where lay the regiments of Titcomb, Ruggles, and Williams. The fire was hot for about an hour. Titcomb was shot dead, a rod in front of the barricade, firing from behind a tree like a common soldier. At length Dieskau, exposing himself within short range of the English line, was hit in the leg. His adjutant, Montreuil, himself wounded, came to his aid, and was washing the injured limb with brandy, when the unfortunate ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... you shall serve. Go to General Alvensleben, and present yourself to enter the guards. You are lucky to go to the field at once; to-morrow you will set off. Say to the general that I sent you, and that you are to enter as a common soldier." ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach
... embarrassment the girl bathed her undesired patient's face and hands. He had fine, strong features; there was nothing in the face to suggest weakness or cowardice. Still it remained impossible to decide his nationality or whether he was an officer or merely a common soldier, since his outfit was a patchwork of ...
— The Campfire Girls on the Field of Honor • Margaret Vandercook
... front of the Piccadilly Hotel, and found her again at the corner of Air Street. She swerved into Air Street and crossed Regent Street; he was following. In Denman Street, close to Shaftesbury Avenue, she stood still in front of another military figure—a common soldier as it proved—who also rebuffed her. The thing was flagrant. He halted, and deliberately let her go from his sight. She vanished into the dark ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... himself how Cromwell's splendid generalship all came up before him as he looked down on the town of Dunbar and out upon the ever-memorable country round about it. John Bunyan was not a great historian; he was only a common soldier in the great Civil War of the seventeenth century; but what would we not give for a description from his vivid pen of the famous fields and the great sieges in which he took part? What a find John Bunyan's 'Journals' and 'Letters Home from the Seat of War' would ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... a common soldier! What does he know?" said the girl, scornfully. "I think my papa ...
— Angelot - A Story of the First Empire • Eleanor Price
... the emigrants started as if they had been shot; for they now saw that this shabby-looking fellow, whom they had taken for a common soldier, was no other than the Czar Peter the Great himself. But little Osterman did not seem frightened in the least. He slid his soft little hand into the Emperor's huge brown fist, and ...
— Harper's Young People, August 10, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... about majorities and natural rights either—for the country west of the Ohio! He's preparing to govern the Mississippi Territory like a conquered province. Mark my words, Mr. Rand, she'll find a Buonaparte—some young demagogue, some ambitious upstart without scruple or a hostage to fortune some common soldier like Buonaparte ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... and the Train fell to my Care and Command in the March. There accompany'd the Train a Fellow, seemingly ordinary, yet very officious and courteous, being ready to do any thing for any Person, from the Officer to the common Soldier. He travell'd along and mov'd with the Train, sometimes on Foot, and sometimes getting a Ride in some one or other of the Waggons; but ever full of his Chit-chat and Stories of Humour. By these insinuating ...
— Military Memoirs of Capt. George Carleton • Daniel Defoe
... desired to know no more. Could she hope—natural coquette that she was—to regain her hold upon him? The man smiled grimly, confident of his own strength. Yet why should she care for such a conquest, the winning of a common soldier? There must be some better reason, some more subtle purpose. Could it be that she feared him, that she was afraid that he might speak to her injury? This was by far the most likely supposition. Molly McDonald—the woman was aware of their acquaintance, ...
— Molly McDonald - A Tale of the Old Frontier • Randall Parrish |
