"Common soldier" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... or a man [common soldier], who has been ordered to go upon the king's highway [for war] does not go, but hires a mercenary, if he withholds the compensation, then shall this officer or man be put to death, and he who represented him shall take possession ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... do provide all things of their own cost; they fight not on foot, but altogether on horseback: their armour is a coat of mail, and a helmet; the coat of mail without is gilded, or else adorned with silk, although it pertain to a common soldier; they have a great pride in showing their wealth; they use bows and arrows as the Turks do; they carry lances also into the field. They ride with a short stirrup after the manner of the Turks; they are a kind of people ...
— The Discovery of Muscovy etc. • Richard Hakluyt
... humanity, which constitutes true heroism. While the French and English were hotly engaged in one of the streets, a little child ran playfully between them, having no idea of the danger to which it was exposed: a common soldier of the enemy, perceiving the life of this poor innocent at stake, grounded his piece, advanced deliberately between the lines of fire, took up the child in his arms, conveyed it to a place of safety; then returning to his place, resumed his musket, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... were as rapid as possible; Caraccioli was brought on board at nine in the forenoon, and the trial began at ten. It lasted two hours: he averred in his defence that he had acted under compulsion, having been compelled to serve as a common soldier, till he consented to take command of the fleet. This, the apologists of Lord Nelson say, he failed in proving. They forget that the possibility of proving it was not allowed him, for he was brought to trial within an hour after he was legally in arrest; and ...
— The Life of Horatio Lord Nelson • Robert Southey
... impossible they should all be asleep, they were afraid to go too near. They might also have obtained rich booty; but, intent only on their object, they crossed the camp, and arrived at length at the bloody field, where bucklers, lances, and swords lay scattered in the midst of corpses of poor and rich, common soldier and prince, horses and pools of blood. This terrible scene of carnage would have destroyed all hope of finding what they were in search of until dawn of day, were it not that the moon lent the ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... say something to you which I do hope will not hurt you. I know the common soldier better than you do, boy. Our Canadian soldiers do not like to be rebuked, criticised or even watched too closely. Forgive me this, ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor
... temples, is within the limits of the state, about eighteen miles south-east of Chhatarpur, and thirty-four miles south of Mahoba. The Pawar adventurer, who succeeded in separating Chhatarpur from the Panna state, was originally a common soldier. ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... 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 ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall
... narratives that were current within one or two centuries with respect to the founder of the Second Persian Empire, which would not have disgraced the mythologers of Achaemenian times. Artaxerxes, according to some, was the son of a common soldier who had an illicit connection with the wife of a Persian cobbler and astrologer, a certain Babek or Papak, an inhabitant of the Cadusian country and a man of the lowest class. Papak, knowing by his art that the soldier's son would attain a lofty position, voluntarily ceded his rights as husband ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 7. (of 7): The Sassanian or New Persian Empire • George Rawlinson
... the old lady, when her emotion would allow her to speak, "this is indecorous—vulgar—the conduct of a common soldier—of a cannibal! My head is split open; I am sure to have an awful neuralgia in a quarter of an hour. It is the conduct of ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... round game at a "surprise" party, it came her turn to be kissed by a young blacksmith, who did his duty in spite of her struggles with strong arms and a willing heart. Mr. Browning makes a certain queen, mourning over her lofty loneliness, wish that some common soldier would throw down his halberd and clasp her to his heart. It is doubtful if she would really have liked it better than Miss Maud did, and she was furious as a young lioness. She made herself so disagreeable ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... affectation of popularity and an excessive enforcement of discipline. His first measure was to remove incentives to idleness, by a general order that no one should sell bread, or any other dressed provisions, in the camp; that no sutlers should follow the army; and that no common soldier should have a servant, or beast of burden, either in a camp or on a march. He made the strictest regulations, too, with regard to other things.[154] He moved his camp daily, exercising the soldiers by marches across the country; he fortified ...
— Conspiracy of Catiline and The Jurgurthine War • Sallust
... 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 ...
— Richard I - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... for their tenants' 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 ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... fighting for,—if they did, most of them would not fight at all. In these days of common schools and newspapers it becomes ever more and more difficult to recruit armies with men who neither know nor think; the common soldier is beginning to have opinions; by and by he will not fight unless convinced he is right,—then there will ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy
... "Captain" before, and it touched me in a tender spot. The rebel evidently thought I looked like a captain, and I was proud. He had probably watched my maneuvers, and the way I handled my men, and thought I was no common soldier. ...
— How Private George W. Peck Put Down The Rebellion - or, The Funny Experiences of a Raw Recruit - 1887 • George W. Peck
... precipitate. Nature gave him the warm and responsive soul by reason of which he became a part of all he met. Unlike most of his associates among the upper classes to which he rose, his sympathies could include the freedman, the peasant, and the common soldier. Unlike most of the multitude from which he sprang, he could extend his sympathies to the careworn rich and the troubled statesman. He had learned from his own lot and from observation that no life was wholly happy, that the ...
— Horace and His Influence • Grant Showerman
... 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 had ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... 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 are ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... 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 ...
— Tamburlaine the Great, Part I. • Christopher Marlowe
... distinguishing the soldier's accoutrements. The Dane approached the iron gate, and, leering through the bars, seemed to doubt our gentility. We could not speak Danish; he did not speak English; and what was to be done with a common soldier at dead of night? P—— went near to ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... association 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 paean of ...
— Chronicles of Strathearn • Various
... 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, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... the matter, rather than have a mutiny in the army. Doolittle began to doubt the complete humor in his idea, but its dramatic possibilities were enhanced by this revelation. Of course this spitfire would never marry a common soldier, either American or of any other race. He did not doubt that she claimed descent from the Navarrese royal family and the Bourbons, to judge from her name. But then De Launay was certainly not an ordinary soldier. His very extraordinariness was what qualified him in Doolittle's mind. ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter
... the conflict by a crashing blow, he tried to distinguish the face behind the bars of the visor. At first he had thought it was some retainer masquerading in one of Lord Darby's suits of mail, but the sword play was manifestly that of no common soldier; it was too graceful and too skillful to have been learned amid the turmoil of the camp and battle. And suddenly the great hope came that it was Darby himself—who had eluded the King and, following after, had passed him at Pontefract. Instantly the cool method of his ...
— Beatrix of Clare • John Reed Scott
... his men. One of his soldiers was suffering from an abscess, and Wu Ch'i himself sucked out the virus. The soldier's mother, hearing this, began wailing and lamenting. Somebody asked her, saying: 'Why do you cry? Your son is only a common soldier, and yet the commander-in-chief himself has sucked the poison from his sore.' The woman replied, 'Many years ago, Lord Wu performed a similar service for my husband, who never left him afterwards, ...
— The Art of War • Sun Tzu
... judge: solicitors whisper that there is something in him, and clerks express their conviction that he is a "trump:" the young man eloquent is rewarded in one hour for the toil, rust, and enforced obscurity of years: he is no longer a common soldier of the bar; he steppeth by right divine, forth of the ranks, and becometh a man of mark and likelihood: he is now an aristocrat of the bar—perhaps, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... might know 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, though born ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Wherever I have met with Brazilians, from the greatest to the meanest, I must say I have always experienced the greatest politeness: from the fidalgo who calls on me in full court costume, to the peasant, or the common soldier, I have had occasion to admire, and be grateful ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham
... The Frenchman's hand took only his money, which was not much, and again sent him adrift. He now set his pen to writing epigrams on the Emperor, wherein Maximilian was compared to the eagle which should devour the frogs in the swamps of Venice. Meanwhile he enlisted as a common soldier in Maximilian's army. ...
— The Story of the Innumerable Company, and Other Sketches • David Starr Jordan
... 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 told. ...
— Marcus: the Young Centurion • George Manville Fenn
... Assyrian and Persian monarchies 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
... is wonderful to find so much loyalty and zeal in a common soldier," replied Isahaya Buzen, after a moment's reflection; "still it is impossible to allow a man of such low rank to perform the office of watching over ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... born in the class of inferior nobles or in the ordinary bourgeois class, mostly among the people or even amongst the populace, and, in its lowest ranks, Massena, the son of a wine-dealer, once a cabin-boy and then common soldier and non-commissioned officer for fourteen years; Ney, son of a cooper, Lefebvre, son of a miller, Murat, son of a tavern-keeper, Lannes, son of an hostler, and Augereau, son of a mason and a female dealer in fruit and vegetables.—Under ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... and Madagascar; and, in their place, a new national guard created, who should be bound to the interest of the legitimate Government by receiving the waste crown lands to be shared among them, from the common soldier to its generals and Field-marshals. Thus would the whole mass of rebellious blood have been reformed. To ensure an effectual change, Mr. Burke advised the enrolment, in rotation, of sixty thousand Irish troops, twenty thousand always to remain ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 6 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... day. 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. Some of those ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson
... 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 windows and began ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... and believe I am the first Prince that dated from this Palace since John of Gaunt. Such is the Uncertainty of all human Greatness, that I who lately never moved without a Guard, am now pressed as a common Soldier, and am to sail with the first fair Wind against my Brother Lewis of France. It is a very hard thing to put off a Character which one has appeared in with Applause: This I experienced since the Loss of my Diadem; for, upon quarrelling with another ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... 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, and urged his services on the doctors, ...
— Shelled by an Unseen Foe • James Fiske
... yielded to the effect of stones which struck it, and left a breach, at which the 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 ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume II (of X) - Rome • Various
... one of the larger mountains in the neighbourhood had fallen on top of him. Then he thought that there must have been an earthquake. Then it gradually dawned upon him that he had been hit by a mere common soldier with a ...
— William Tell Told Again • P. G. Wodehouse
... 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 front, they don't see a bloomin' thing. ...
— Captain Jinks, Hero • Ernest Crosby
... 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 ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... earnest, calm, obedient, orderly, with empty stomach, soaked clothes, wet camp, little sleep, shoe-soles dropping off, kindly to all, no sacking or burning, paying what they can and eating mouldy bread. There must surely be a solid basis of fear of God in the common soldier of our army, or all this could not be. News of our friends is hard to get; we lie miles apart from one another, none knowing where the other is, and nobody to send—that is, men might be had, but no horses. For four days I have had ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... treated with attention. The character of a soldier always stands him in stead[31].' BOSWELL. 'Yet, Sir, I think that common soldiers are worse thought of than other men in the same rank of life; such as labourers.' JOHNSON. 'Why, Sir, a common soldier is usually a very gross man[32], and any quality which procures respect may be overwhelmed by grossness. A man of learning may be so vicious or so ridiculous that you cannot respect him. A common soldier too, generally eats more than he can pay for. But when a common ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... 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 ...
— Henry IV, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... proportion, according to the relative proportion of their numbers in the community. They contribute all the mind that actuates the whole machine. The fortitude required of them is very different from the unthinking alacrity of the common soldier, or common sailor, in the face of danger and death; it is not a passion, it is not an impulse, it is not a sentiment; it is a cool, steady, deliberate principle, always present, always equable; having no connection with anger; tempering honour with prudence; ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... the American soldiers were at Pasi; and that the man who led them lived in one of the white tents they had set up there. This man in the brown clothes, which looked so tight that it made the Filipino tired just to look at them, could be no common soldier, else he would not be paying three big silver dollars for a "banca." If anything was to happen to this man—that is if he was to disappear, and still not be dead, and the officer in the white tent should know of it—the leader of the ...
— Anting-Anting Stories - And other Strange Tales of the Filipinos • Sargent Kayme
... monsieur," said the young soldier, whose 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 love and jest ...
— An Enemy To The King • Robert Neilson Stephens
... the low voice, "I thought all was over, and my mind was very near made up to enlist as a common soldier, and leave no trace behind. I see now, it should have been ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... mayor, and Joseph—employed at last!—as his secretary. A local guard was also raised and equipped. Being French, however, and not Corsican, Napoleon could not accept a command in it, for he was already an officer in the French army. But he served in the ranks as a common soldier, and was an ardent agitator in the club, which almost immediately reopened its doors. In the impossibility of further action there was a relapse into authorship. The history of Corsica was again revised, though not softened; the letters into ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... recruit soldiers there. The lanzknechts, who had formerly served under him in France, rushed to him in shoals; he had received from nature the gifts most calculated to gain the hearts of campaigners: kind, accessible, affable and even familiar with the common soldier, he entered into the details of his wants and alleviated them. His famous bravery, his frankness, and his generosity gained over those adventurers who were weary of remaining idle; their affection consoled Bourbon and stood him in ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... Constantine; and his grateful country 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
... Of but sixteen years, Shimo was in the hands of father and mother. To admit a lover would be unfilial.... The father? Kawasaki Cho[u]bei, attached to the palace stables. Humble was his rank in the minor office he held; but a one time ashigaru (common soldier) his service had entitled him to the position and the suzerain's stipend of twenty koku. Hence he was of some consequence among his neighbours. At this information, given with some heat, the samurai smiled and praised ...
— Bakemono Yashiki (The Haunted House) - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 2 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... and potential loose-lipped journalist, he was afterwards appointed one of the few officially accredited journalists attached to the British forces on the Western front. Thereafter Gibbs continued filing dispatches till the end of hostilities. His writing is heartily sympathetic to the common soldier and war-time refugees, but quite critical to those in power. After the war he was knighted for his valuable patriotic services and enjoyed a distinguished career ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... persistence, raise the value of the raw material to almost fabulous heights. It was thus that Columbus, the weaver, Franklin, the journeyman printer, Aesop, the slave, Homer, the beggar, Demosthenes, the cutler's son, Ben Jonson, the bricklayer, Cervantes, the common soldier, and Haydn, the poor wheelwright's son, developed their powers, until they towered head and shoulders above ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... quality or other may not be discovered.—Do you remember Nechebt, the horrible woman who poisoned her two brothers and her own father? She was captured scarcely three weeks ago; and that very monster in human form could almost die of hunger and thirst for the sake of her rascally son, who is a common soldier in the imperial army; at last she took to concocting poisons, not to improve her own wretched condition, but to send the shameless wretch means for a fresh debauch. I have known a thousand similar cases, but I will only mention that of one of the wildest and blood-thirstiest ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... of antiquity, we find high-born maidens administering solace to the wounded heroes on the field of battle, and attempting to heal their wounds by the appliances of their rude and simple surgery; but it was only the favorite leaders, never the common soldier, or the subordinate officer, who received these gentle attentions. The influence of Christianity, in its earlier development, tended to expand the sympathies and open the heart of woman to all gentle and holy influences, ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... through the contest. Is it wrong to feel satisfaction at being descended from a worthy race of men—from a family of brave, truthful gentlemen? I think not. I trust I'm no absurd aristocrat—but I would rather be the grandson of a faithful common soldier than of General Benedict Arnold, the traitor. I would rather trace my lineage to the Chevalier Bayard, simple knight though he was, than to France's great Constable ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various |
