"Common soldier" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... aided by a disorderly rabble of country people. An affray ensued, during which the old market-house was burnt, and Major-General Lawley, who commanded the foot, "a bold and sprightly man," with two other officers, were shot dead from a window, although not one common soldier was hurt. Colonel Brett was then put in command of the foot, Lord John Somerset continuing at the head of the horse. They forced a passage through, after capturing Lieutenant-Colonel Winter, together with some inferior officers and common soldiers, ...
— The Forest of Dean - An Historical and Descriptive Account • H. G. Nicholls
... 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
... 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
... 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 victory, was graced ...
— Chronicles of Strathearn • Various
... the sturdiest patriots of the Revolution, and fought clear 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 ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various
... 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, ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... 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 ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... throne (A.D. 180). Then, however, we hear of a serious inroad of the northern barbarians, who burst over the Roman Wall and were not repulsed without a hard campaign. The Roman commander was Ulpius Marcellus, a harsh but devoted officer, who fared like a common soldier, and insisted on the strictest vigilance, being himself "the most sleepless of generals."[268] The British Army, accordingly, swore by him, and were minded to proclaim him Emperor,[2] a matter which all but cost him his ...
— Early Britain—Roman Britain • Edward Conybeare
... 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
... with the remarkable instances of the mutations of fortune. The new crown prince had begun life as the son of a poor French lawyer and in 1780, at the age of sixteen, entered the army as a common soldier. When the wars of the Revolution began he had risen to the rank of a sergeant, which was as high as a man of common birth could rise in the old ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 9 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. Scandinavian. • Charles Morris
... the higher order of mortals, that we are 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 ...
— The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great • Henry Fielding
... 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. ...
— A Dialogue Between Dean Swift and Tho. Prior, Esq. • Anonymous
... 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 ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... reformer would 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," ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... to 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
... over to the Allies, and while this was going on the General had both legs blown away by a cannon shot. Lieutenants, colonels, staff officers, and, it is said, officers who were bearing despatches deserted, but it is significant that there is not a single instance given of the common soldier forsaking his great chief's cause. Lord Wolseley declares that if Napoleon had been the man he was at Austerlitz, he would have won the Battle of Waterloo. Wolseley is supported in this view by ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... 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 most sparing in diet, and most patient in extremity of cold above all others. ...
— The Discovery of Muscovy etc. • Richard Hakluyt
... sound—the god did not speak—every 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 exceedingly clever persons ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson
... 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
... five times as great as that of any person in his suite. In this particular, however, these nations are not singular, neither in ancient nor in modern times. The kings of Sparta, and indeed every Grecian hero, were always supposed to eat twice the quantity of a common soldier; and the only difference with regard to our heroes of the present day consists in their being enabled to convert quantity into quality, an advantage for which they are not a little indebted to the invention of money, into which all other articles ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... rage of the Senate, while I was praetor; still more hot madness. I faced death a thousand times in Gaul, against the Nervii, in the campaign with Vercingetorix; all this was the mere courage of the common soldier. But it is not of death I am afraid; be it death on the field of battle, or death at the hands of the executioner, should I fall into the power of my ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... as incredible, have their parallels in 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, ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 7. (of 7): The Sassanian or New Persian Empire • George Rawlinson
... Company's officers of a very low character. One of them was formerly a trumpeter at a raree show in this country, and when he was discharged that honourable service he listed himself in the Company's service as a common soldier, and I suppose was made an officer by one of those governors for trumpeting to him better than any other man could do it in the country. Another, I am told, was a low sort of barber—one of our shave-for-a-penny barbers—here in London. And another ...
— The Pirates of Malabar, and An Englishwoman in India Two Hundred Years Ago • John Biddulph
... which now became supreme in the state was an army very different from any that has since been seen among us. At present the pay of the common soldier is not such as can seduce any but the humblest class of English laborers from their calling. A barrier almost impassable separates him from the commissioned officer. The great majority of those who rise high in the service rise by purchase. ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... Fort appeared again in the emperor's presence wearing the uniform of a common soldier. The emperor examined this dress too, and saw the superiority of it in respect to its convenience, and its adaptedness to the wants and emergencies of military life. He said at once that he should like to have a company of guards dressed and equipped in that manner, and should ...
— Peter the Great • Jacob Abbott
... 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, without ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... The demeanor of Caracalla was haughty and full of pride; but with the troops he forgot even the proper dignity of his rank, encouraged their insolent familiarity, and, neglecting the essential duties of a general, affected to imitate the dress and manners of a common soldier. ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... to fight," I 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 ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... 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. ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... constitute a gentleman must be somewhat vague!" Mrs Fanshawe said disagreeably. She felt disagreeable, and she never made any effort to conceal her feelings, kindly or the reverse. It was annoying that one of her own guests should be mixed up in an unsavoury scandal with a common soldier: annoying to have people going about with long faces, when she had planned a festive week. Really this Claire Gifford was becoming more and more of an incumbrance! Mrs Fanshawe paused with her hand on the coffee-pot, to ask a ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... Suwarrow? Behold his portrait. Born in a village of the Ukraine, the boy was sent by his father, an army officer, to the military academy at St. Petersburg, whence he entered the army as a common soldier, and ever after, for more than sixty years, he lived in incessant battles in Sweden, Turkey, Poland. In the storm of Ismael, forty thousand men, women and, children fell in indiscriminate massacre at his command. In the campaign which resulted in the ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... only a common soldier, has a heart and feelings which would do no dishonour to a gentleman of education, would have preferred coming into Melbourne, after the loss of his officers, at least unostentatiously, if not in sackcloth and ashes. But he was greeted with a howling and shouting ...
— Successful Exploration Through the Interior of Australia • William John Wills
... 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 Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut • M. Louise Greene, Ph. D.
... 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 ...
— The Life of Horatio Lord Nelson • Robert Southey
... few of them 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 Republic, noble birth consigned, or ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... 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 ...
— Latin for Beginners • Benjamin Leonard D'Ooge
... several years physician to the army at Minorca, and had now the same office in Corsica. I called him the physician of the isles. He was indeed an excellent one. That gayete de coeur which the French enjoy, runs through all their professions. I remember the phrase of an English common soldier who told me, "that at the battle of Fontenoy, his captain received a shot in the breast, and fell," said the soldier, "with his spontoon in his hand, as prettily killed as ever I see'd a gentleman." The soldier's phrase might be used in talking of almost every thing which the French do. ...
— Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica • James Boswell
... herself? He knew enough already, and 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 ...
— Molly McDonald - A Tale of the Old Frontier • Randall Parrish
... recorded wars 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, and it is recorded that the wounded Christian soldiers were, where it was ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... of these staff-corps and departments are selected and chosen from the army itself, or fresh from West Point, and too commonly construe themselves into the elite, as made of better clay than the common soldier. Thus they separate themselves more and more from their comrades of the line, and in process of time realize the condition of that old officer of artillery who thought the army would be a delightful place for a gentleman if it were not for the d-d soldier; or, better ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... exceedingly obscure. He had long affected to conceal it; but when he found curiosity had proceeded into serious investigation of his origin, he had suddenly appeared to make a virtue of necessity; proclaimed of his own accord that his father was a common soldier of Valladolid, and even invited to Madrid, and lodged in his own palace, his low-born progenitor. This prudent frankness disarmed malevolence on the score of birth. But when the old soldier died, rumours went abroad that he had confessed on his death-bed that he was not in any way related ...
— Calderon The Courtier - A Tale • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... his master took so much care of him that he was in a fair way of doing well if he would have been industrious; but instead of that he quitted his employment to fall into that sink of vice and laziness, the entering into a regiment as a common soldier. However, it were, he behaved himself in this state so well that he became a corporal and serjeant, which last, though a preferment of small value, is seldom given to persons of no education. But it seems Bailey had address enough to get that passed by, and lived with ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... horrified mother. "Clarence, you can't mean to tell us you've enlisted as an ordinary common soldier! I couldn't possibly permit you to throw yourself away like that, nor, I am sure, will your Father! Sidney, of course you will insist on Clarence's explaining at once to the Colonel, or whoever accepted him, that he ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... 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 ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... 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, or set off against any others, nor the balances due on them, be withheld as a satisfaction ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... himself upon me. On the contrary. He conscientiously keeps the distance that separates him, the common soldier, from the officer that he must respect in me. Strictly according to regulations he stands three paces off in some corner or behind some column and only dares to cast his shy ...
— Men in War • Andreas Latzko
... and one who at that season enjoyed too much power. For as a serpent that has its hole underground and hidden from the sight of man observes the different passers-by, and attacks whom it will with a sudden spring, so this man, having been raised from being a common soldier of the lowest class to the highest military dignities, without having received any injury or any provocation, polluted his conscience from an insatiable ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... adventure. Whether he was 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 ...
— History of the English People, Volume III (of 8) - The Parliament, 1399-1461; The Monarchy 1461-1540 • John Richard Green
... country. According to that doctrine, Curtius was a fool, and Leonidas an idiot; and to die for one's country is no longer beautiful and glorious, but a mere absurdity. Then it is no longer to be asked that the common soldier shall receive in his bosom the sword or bayonet-thrust which otherwise would let out the life of the great commander on whose fate hang the liberties of his country, and the ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... his career as a common soldier, afterwards becoming an officer. Deserting the army after a period of service, he made his way to Poland, where he dwelt with the monks of that country and pretended to equal the best of them in ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 8 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... his father and his brothers. Thence he marched straight on Lisbon, which the King covered from Santarem with 30,000 men. At the rivulet of Alfarrobeira the armies met; a lance thrust or a cross-bow shot killed the Infant; a common soldier cut off his head and carried it to Affonso in the hope of knighthood. Almada, who fought till he could not stand from loss of blood, died with his friend. Hurling his sword from him, he threw himself on the ground, with a scornful, ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley
... 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
... 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 ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard
... "mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds," then the weak are strong. This is the part of faith, to take God at His Word, and then expect Him to make it real. A French commander thanked a common soldier who had saved his life and called him captain, although he was but a private, but the man took the commander at his word, accepted the new name and was ...
— Days of Heaven Upon Earth • Rev. A. B. Simpson
... 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 crowds ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... 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, patience in suffering, ...
— Proserpina, Volume 2 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... Night was spreading once more over the vast battle field, stretching over thirty leagues maybe. The common soldier knew nothing, majors and colonels knew little more, but the silent man whose invisible hand had swept the gigantic German army back from Paris knew much. While the fire of the artillery continued under the searchlights the exhausted infantry sank down. Then ...
— The Forest of Swords - A Story of Paris and the Marne • Joseph A. Altsheler
... 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 ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... 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 ...
— Harper's Young People, February 17, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... mouth and beautifully chiseled nose and ears were really mysteries of loveliness so rare, that few could entertain the idea that she who possessed them could have laid her whole heart at the feet of a common soldier, and that, too, when it was in her power to turn such charms to high account in the every day market of society. But she knew Nicholas Barry and the nobility of his nature, and was aware, in addition, that had ...
— Ridgeway - An Historical Romance of the Fenian Invasion of Canada • Scian Dubh
... sixpence of our present money; in the second week, a third more. A master carpenter was limited through the whole year to threepence a day, a common carpenter to twopence, money of that age.[***] It is remarkable that, in the same reign, the pay of a common soldier, an archer, was sixpence a day; which, by the change both in denomination and value, would be equivalent to near five shillings of our present money.[****] Soldiers were then enlisted only for a very short time; ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... occurred to 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 ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Various
... there are brutes. You are strangers; and if you passed along the road to-day some of our more ignorant men, seeing that you were not natives and suspecting your motives, might harm you. There might be some stupid, angry common soldier, some over- zealous under officer—you understand ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... 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 adopted, ...
— Richard I - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... heretofore moved with a pitiful consideration of the poor distressed, how rewards, pensions, and annuities also do reign in other cases whereby the giver is brought sometimes into extreme misery, and that not so much as the room of a common soldier is not obtained oftentimes without a "What will you give me?" I am brought into such a mistrust of the sequel of this device that I dare pronounce (almost for certain) that, if Homer were now alive, it should be said ...
— Chronicle and Romance (The Harvard Classics Series) • Jean Froissart, Thomas Malory, Raphael Holinshed
... was over, we then prepared to ride back. When we came to the field we found that all was changed. The main body of the Roundheads had pressed hotly upon ours and had driven them back. Lord Lindsey himself, who had gone into the battle at the head of the pikemen carrying a pike himself like a common soldier, had been mortally wounded and taken prisoner, and grievous slaughter had been inflicted. The king's standard itself had been taken, but this had been happily recovered, for two Royalist officers, putting ...
— Friends, though divided - A Tale of the Civil War • G. A. Henty
... a complimentary title—he was a common soldier. M'Barak means "the blessed one," and is one of the names usually set ...
— Morocco • S.L. Bensusan
... keenest power of 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,' ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... appreciate this. It is worthy of note that, while in this the government's hour of trial large numbers of those in the army and navy who have been favored with the offices have resigned and proved false to the hand which had pampered them, not one common soldier or common sailor is known to ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... $1,221,000,000; the State Governments, the counties and cities, probably owed as much more. Paper money, the only medium of exchange, was fast giving way to barter. One dollar in gold was worth twenty dollars in Confederate currency. The monthly wage of a common soldier was not sufficient to buy a bushel of wheat. People who lived in the cities converted their tiny yards into vegetable gardens; the planters no longer produced cotton and tobacco, but supplies for "their people" and for the armies. ...
— Expansion and Conflict • William E. Dodd
... order that the commissioners and collectors of the king's money shall receive them, and that the army is to be paid with them, then he thinks his work shall be done. And this is the difficulty you will be under in such a case: for the common soldier when he goes to the market or ale-house will offer this money, and if it be refused, perhaps he will swagger and hector, and threaten to beat the butcher or ale-wife, or take the goods by force, and throw them the bad half-pence. In ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury
... one of the persons committed for highway-robbery was not a little extraordinary. He was a common soldier of a most engaging physiognomy, and two-and-twenty years of age. The prosecutor, who had been robbed one evening, as he returned late from the alehouse, of the sum of three shillings, swore positively to his person. The character of the prisoner was such as has seldom been equalled. He ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... massacre, they gathered together the blackened corpses of Grant's men and the whitened bones of Braddock's men, and, digging a huge pit, buried them in one common grave. In this pious duty all took part alike, from the general down to the common soldier. ...
— The Farmer Boy, and How He Became Commander-In-Chief • Morrison Heady
... 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 ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Inquisition; of Lope de Vega and Cervantes—for he was, in the Hispanian peninsula, his own greatest contemporary—and to this hour this battle-scarred soldier of fortune stands the tallest figure of Spanish literature. His was a lettered rearing, and a young manhood spent as a common soldier. At Lepanto he lost hand and arm. In five long, weary, and bitter years of slavery among Algerine pirates, he held up his head, being a man; plotted escape in dreams and waking; fought for freedom as a pinioned eagle might; was at last rescued ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... they would 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 wishes, rained blows ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... the road and springing over the puddles, I thought to myself that it was small wonder such a wench was pestered in a common soldier's camp. For she had about her everything to allure the grosser class—a something—indescribable perhaps—but which even such a man as I had become unwillingly aware of. And I must have been very conscious of it, for it made me restless and vaguely ashamed that I should condescend ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... 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 ...
— Tamburlaine the Great, Part I. • Christopher Marlowe
... like steel, as in the case of Piar, and it could be soft, as in his untiring forgiveness to Santander. His generosity was unlimited. He gave all. Any soldier could come to him and receive money. It is said that no common soldier went away from him with less than a dollar. When he was on his way to Cartagena, having resigned power forever, when he was writing to Caracas for money, at a time when he had not enough to pay his transportation abroad, he was still ...
— Simon Bolivar, the Liberator • Guillermo A. Sherwell
... establishment: for the war may have made some alteration. All the honorable, all the lucrative situations of the army, all the supplies and contracts of whatever species that belong to it, are solely in the hands of the English; so that whatever is beyond the mere subsistence of a common soldier and some officers of a lower rank, together with the immediate expenses of the English officers at their table, is sooner or later, in one shape or another, sent out ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VIII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... 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
... the Soul intends That lives and moves behind our deeds; We wheel and march to glorious ends Beyond the common soldier's needs: And some are raised to high rewards, And some by regiments are hurled To die upon the opposing swords ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... 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 ...
— World's War Events, Vol. II • Various
... the voyage 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 ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross
... 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 ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... 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 sheltered place ...
— Lady Bountiful - 1922 • George A. Birmingham
... 1776. Believing that a faithful transcript of those Journals, given verbatim et literatim, as recorded by the actors themselves, might have an interest for American readers, as exhibiting the every-day life of a common soldier in those wars which led to the founding of our republic, I have yielded to the solicitations of friends, and the dictates of my own judgment and feelings, and in the following pages present to the public ...
— The Military Journals of Two Private Soldiers, 1758-1775 - With Numerous Illustrative Notes • Abraham Tomlinson
... was supposed 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 ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... 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
... 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 ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... reason to be pleased with the treatment he had received immediately after the action. He had returned to the castle for his sabre, and advanced with it to the gate, in order to deliver it up to some English officer, when it was seized and forced from his hand by a common soldier of Fraser's. He came in, got another sword, which he surrendered to an officer, and turned to reenter the hall. At this moment a second Highlander burst through the gate, in spite of the sentinel placed there by the general, and ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... even a momentary regret for the choice he has made, he freely admits that trench warfare is "anything but romantic". For the artilleryman it is "doubtless very interesting" but "the poor common soldier" has a ...
— Poems • Alan Seeger
... part of the common soldier's patriotism was this heart-response of "the boys" to the great "boy" in the White House. That was the meaning of their song as they trooped to the front ...
— The Story of Young Abraham Lincoln • Wayne Whipple
... Wodrow, minister of Tarbolton: he was a good preacher, a moderate man in matters of discipline, and an intimate of the Coilsfield Montgomerys. His dependent condition depressed his spirits: he grew dissipated; and finally, it is said, enlisted as a common soldier, and ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... on the part of his men, a general can effect little; with it, he may accomplish almost any thing. The common soldier is a child, and feels that the directing authority is above him; that he should look upon that authority with respect and confidence is the first necessity of effecting military organization. Lee had already inspired the troops with this sentiment, and it was mainly the secret of ...
— A Life of Gen. Robert E. Lee • John Esten Cooke
... willing to go into the army as a captain, or even as a lieutenant; but I couldn't quite stand it to go in as a common soldier, while my brother made a beginning ...
— Taken by the Enemy • Oliver Optic
... Puritan history you know what that means. For example: if Jack had hesitated a moment or made delay to get rank in the army, I should have abhorred him. So would our mother, though she seems to be dismayed at his serving as a common soldier. I adore Jack; I think him the finest, the most perfect nature after my father's—that lives. But I give him up gladly, because to keep him would be to degrade him. We know that he may fall; that he may come back to us a cripple or worse. But, as you see, we make no sign. Not ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... himself read the great deeds of his father, Alexis Mikhailovitch, and those of the Czar, Ivan Vasilievitch, their campaigns, their distant expeditions, their battles and sieges: how they endured fatigues and privations better than any common soldier; what benefits they had conferred on the empire, and how they extended the frontiers ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... prisoners in the hands of the Prussians; while upon the battle-field six thousand of their dead and wounded were lying, with but two thousand dead and wounded Prussians. The victory belonged to Prussia. They had all distinguished themselves; the king and every common soldier had done his duty. Frederick, accompanied by his staff, to which Lieutenant Frankenberg and his fifty men did not now belong, passed the bloody, smoking battle-field. His countenance was sparkling with joy—his eyes shone like stars. ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... fair 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 ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... of a dreadful playfulness. There are stories 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, such as "To be with those we are fond of, that is ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse
... 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 ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... your 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 watchtower waiting for ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... was 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 ...
— Household Stories by the Brothers Grimm • Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm
... own eyes before he could trust himself to describe them. And he tells us 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 be to our historians and ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... limits, don't you 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
... His pride suffered a shock that appalled him; his unconscious egotism, born of hereditary conquests, revolted against the thought that his progress toward her heart was to be turned aside by the intervention of a common soldier in the ranks. Gentleman though he was, he could not subdue the feeling of exultation that came over him when she approached with her plea. He knew that it was a base sense of power that made him feel that he could punish his pride's offender by either denying or granting her appeal. The attitude ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... forth so many arms and branches leading to several countries and provinces, above 2,000 miles east and west and 800 miles south and north, and of these the most either rich in gold or in other merchandises. The common soldier shall here fight for gold, and pay himself, instead of pence, with plates of half-a-foot broad, whereas he breaketh his bones in other wars for provant and penury. Those commanders and chieftains that shoot at honour and abundance shall find there more rich and beautiful cities, ...
— The Discovery of Guiana • Sir Walter Raleigh
... used to feel for the strong and aggressive beast. . . . The high-born dames who a few months ago were complicating their desires with psychological subtleties, are now admiring the military man with the same simplicity that the maid has for the common soldier. Before a uniform, they feel the humble and servile enthusiasm of the female of the lower animals before the crests, foretops and gay plumes of the fighting males. Look out, master! . . . We shall have to follow the new ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... with this series is appearing a number of briefer sketches, entitled "RECOLLECTIONS OF A PRIVATE," reflecting with interesting and life-like details the experiences of the common soldier from the time of enlistment to the muster-out: the drill, the march, the bivouac, the skirmish, the charge, the pursuit, the retreat, etc., etc. Auxiliary branches of the service will also be treated in this supplementary way, and in several instances briefer supplementary ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 6 • Various
... going to 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 ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor
... Mission life allowed (and they were rare) to endeavor to awake a response in her heart. But she held herself aloof from all. Proud of the Spanish blood in her veins, though that blood was but that of a common soldier, she counted herself to be of the gente de razon, far above the level of the mere Indians, her mother's people. And, indeed, in her finer features, quick glance, and more spirited bearing, the difference of strain was manifest: the Latin ...
— The Penance of Magdalena & Other Tales of the California Missions • J. Smeaton Chase
... fought in the War of the Revolution; a grandson, in the War of 1812. There have been no wars since in which the Standings have not been represented. I, the last of the Standings, dying soon without issue, fought as a common soldier in the Philippines, in our latest war, and to do so I resigned, in the full early ripeness of career, my professorship in the University of Nebraska. Good heavens, when I so resigned I was headed for the Deanship of the College of Agriculture in that ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... against all comers. By degrees the stern man with the worn features, darkened by prison cell and hardened by battle-fields, had mellowed into a Falstaff. Long struggles with poverty had made Ben arrogant, for he had worked as a bricklayer in early life and had served in Flanders as a common soldier; he had killed a rival actor in a duel, and had been in danger of having his nose slit in the pillory for a libel against King James's Scotch courtiers. Intellectually, too, Ben had reason to claim a sort of sovereignty ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... grew up to manhood, and married a woman in his own sphere of life, by the name of Mary Hawkins. He enlisted as a common soldier in the Revolutionary War, and took part in the battle of King's Mountain. At the close of the war he reared a humble cabin in the frontier wilds of North Carolina. There he lived for a few years, at but one remove, in point of civilization, from the savages around him. It is not probable that ...
— David Crockett: His Life and Adventures • John S. C. Abbott
... they inhabited, surrounded with men in whom their cruel situation inspired no pity, our countrymen again abandoned, gave vent to their distress in useless complaints. In vain they represented to the English physician that the ordinary ration of a common soldier, which had been hitherto given them, was wholly unfit for them, first, because their health required, if it was indeed wished to recover them, better nourishment than is given to a soldier in good health in his barracks: that, besides, ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to Senegal in 1816 • J. B. Henry Savigny and Alexander Correard
... 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 and bayonet very probably ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells
... estates; this and the fire of his youth, fanned by flattering hopes from his famous kinsman, rendered him too haughty to his King; and this alone was the origin of all his future sufferings. I, on the contrary, though the son of a Silesian nobleman of property, did not inherit so much as the pay of a common soldier; the family having been robbed by the hand of power, after being accused by wickedness under the mask of virtue. You know my father's fate, the esteem in which he was held by the Empress Theresa; and that a pretended miracle was the occasion ...
— The Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck - Vol. 2 (of 2) • Baron Trenck
... same effect. The keynote of [190] Shakespeare's treatment is indeed expressed by Henry the Fifth himself, the greatest of Shakespeare's kings.—"Though I speak it to you," he says incognito, under cover of night, to a common soldier on the field, "I think the king is but a man, as I am: the violet smells to him as it doth to me: all his senses have but human conditions; and though his affections be higher mounted than ours yet when they stoop they stoop with ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... 1777, undoubtedly in the vicinity of Arles. A common soldier during the wars at the close of the eighteenth century, he took part in the expedition of General Desaix into upper Egypt. Having been taken prisoner by the Maugrabins he escaped only to lose himself ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... were wet and slippery. He could not see the hand, but he knew 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
... seen the extraordinary force of my genius beyond any comparison with all other kings, that I thought it no degradation or diminution of my greatness to descend from my throne, and go and work in the dockyards of a foreign republic; to serve as a private sailor in my own fleets, and as a common soldier in my own army, till I had raised myself by my merit in all the several steps and degrees of promotion up to the highest command, and had thus induced my nobility to submit to a regular subordination in the sea and land service by a lesson hard to their pride, and which they ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton
... attend that Work. Our whole Army was under Movement to cover that Resolution; 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 Ways he had screw'd himself into the ...
— Military Memoirs of Capt. George Carleton • Daniel Defoe
... 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
... 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 of robbers, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... 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. Is an Englishman ...
— Press Cuttings • George Bernard Shaw
... fast to 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 fondly ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon
... 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
... that of a man of the people, perhaps a common soldier. As may be seen in the cut, he is of almost colossal size; he lies on his left arm extended by his side, and his head rests on his right hand, and his legs drawn up as if, finding escape impossible, he had laid himself down to meet death like a brave man. His dress ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... still breathed. He was a young fellow, wearing the uniform of a common soldier of the line. He was unarmed, and his large bluish gray cloak was partly open, revealing his bare chest. The agents lifted him very carefully—for he groaned piteously at the slightest movement—and placed him in an upright position, with his back leaning ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... accorded to the new Emperor. libera while yet free, emphatic. The State was no longer free when Augustus received this title, 2B.C.—Duff. 247. frangebat vertice vitem he had the vine-switch (rattan) broken on his head, i.e. served as a common soldier. —D. 248. dolabra half-hatchet for cutting stakes, and half-pickaxe for digging the fossa. For dolabra, cf. Dolabella. 249. Cimbros, annihilated by Marius and Catulus near Vercellae, 101 B.C. 250. Excipit ...
— Helps to Latin Translation at Sight • Edmund Luce
... to a wood on the 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, near ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 576 - Vol. 20 No. 576., Saturday, November 17, 1832 • Various
... as other 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 ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... it to my 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, by force oftentimes, to carry away something; and this is the difference ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... "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 about it that she ceased to be invited to those lively entertainments; ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... 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 and his officers, or the enemy, injustice. Yet I may be excused, since I am not ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... daughter, the solemn secret descended, and gradually spread, still in its inviolable nature, through every rank and every profession, from the highest priest to the lowest friar, the general to the common soldier, the noble to the peasant, over the whole land. There were indeed some few in Spain, before the final edict of expulsion in 1492, who were Hebrews in external profession as well as internal observance; but their condition was ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar
... main work still halted; but so long as he had a single Japanese to enlighten and prepare for the better future, he could still feel that he was working for Japan. Now, he had scarce returned from Nangasaki, when he was sought out by a new inquirer, the most promising of all. This was a common soldier, of the Hemming class, a dyer by birth, who had heard vaguely[4] of Yoshida's movements, and had become filled with wonder as to their design. This was a far different inquirer from Sakuma-Shozan, or the councillors of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... "No, miss!" (shaking her finger at Fel.) Now listen to one word from me. You get wed to your common soldier as soon as you can hook ...
— The Squire - An Original Comedy in Three Acts • Arthur W. Pinero
... a civil college at the age of twenty, the only way for me to enter the army was by enlisting as a common soldier; so, weary of the dismal outlook that lay before a lawyer, I acquired the knowledge needed for a sailor. I imitate Juste, and keep out of France, where men waste, in the struggle to make way, the energy needed for the noblest works. Follow my example, friends; I am going where ...
— Z. Marcas • Honore de Balzac
... a common soldier! What does he know?" said the girl, scornfully. "I think my papa ...
— Angelot - A Story of the First Empire • Eleanor Price
... 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
... smoked, and so did Prior, who seems to have had a weakness at times for low company. After spending an evening with Oxford, Bolingbroke, Pope and Swift, it is recorded that he would go "and smoke a pipe, and drink a bottle of ale, with a common soldier and his wife, in Long Acre, before he went to bed." Some of Prior's poems, as Thackeray caustically remarks, smack not a little of the conversation of his Long Acre friends. Pope for awhile attended the symposium at Button's coffee-house, where Addison ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson
... his troops supported themselves by a system of rapine and plunder unprecedented even in those days of military license. Merit was rewarded with princely munificence, and the highest offices were within the reach of every common soldier who distinguished himself;—trivial breaches of discipline were punished with death. The dark and ambitious spirit of Wallenstein would not allow him to rest satisfied with the rewards and dignities heaped upon him by ...
— Visit to Iceland - and the Scandinavian North • Ida Pfeiffer
... 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 ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed
... was in the prime of life about 530. He is believed to have been the son of a peasant of Thrace, probably of Slavonian descent, as his name, stripped of its classical form, would belong to that language and would be Beli-than, or the White Prince. Apparently he began life as a common soldier, and gradually rose by courage and ability. His master, the Emperor Justinian, was an equally remarkable personage, capable of conceiving and accomplishing magnificent designs, yet withal of a mean, ungenerous, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... were poor, compared with those of the better class of Normans. They were enthusiastic in out-door sports, such as wrestling and hunting. They fought on foot, armed with the shield and axe. The common soldier, however, often had no better weapon than a fork or a sharpened stick. The ordeals in vogue, as a test of guilt and innocence when one was accused of a crime, were, plunging the arm into boiling water, or holding a hot iron in the hand for three paces. London was fast growing ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... boy, and 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 ...
— A Journey in Russia in 1858 • Robert Heywood
... that on his going out of the church at Jerusalem, a woman was healed of a cancer on the spot, by only touching his garments. The emperor sent an order for his banishment, which was executed; but dying soon after, Theodosius was recalled by his Catholic successor, Justin; who, from a common soldier, had gradually ascended ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... frequently is used to signify indecent. Sabotage, from a French term meaning wooden shoe, has come to be applied to the deliberate and systematic scamping of one's work in order to injure one's employer. Idiot (common soldier) crystallizes the exasperated ill opinion of officers for privates. (Infantry—an organization of military infants—has on the contrary sloughed its reproach and now enshrines the dignity of lowliness.) Somewhat akin to words of this ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... the battle of Rosbach, Frederic, with forty thousand men, and Prince Charles, at the head of not less than sixty thousand, met at Leuthen, hard by Breslau. The King, who was, in general, perhaps too much inclined to consider the common soldier as a mere machine, resorted, on this great day, to means resembling those which Bonaparte afterwards employed with such signal success for the purpose of stimulating military enthusiasm. The principal ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... 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
... twenty-six years and your service in two armies, you are ignorant of the principle 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 ...
— Graham of Claverhouse • Ian Maclaren
... his Accession, 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, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... this Swiss, I am done with him. He hath a wife, Shubenacadie. She sits down there by the oven now; a miserable thing turned off by D'Aulnay de Charnisay. Have I told thee the Swiss had a soul above a common soldier and I picked him out to pay court to me? Beat me for it. Pull the red hair he condemned. I would have had him sighing for me that I might pity him. The populace is beneath us, but we must amuse ourselves. Beat me, I ...
— The Lady of Fort St. John • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... folly, 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 ...
— What Answer? • Anna E. Dickinson
... must fight and expose himself without stint, and disregard those who say that a general should die of old age, or at any rate, when an old man. But where the gain is small in case of success, while failure ruins everything, no one demands that the work of the common soldier be performed at the risk of the ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... tiresome people, and never to have one's own 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
... Their agent, or leader, in this horrible warfare, was a wretch named Benavides, who may fairly lay claim to the distinction of being the most perfect monster who ever disgraced humanity. He had originally been a common soldier in the Buenos Ayrean army, and, together with his brother, had carte blanche from the Spaniards to commit the most fearful atrocities on the Chilian patriots, who could not defend themselves against the stealthy ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 1 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald
... had been sent on a mission as an armed ambassador, i.e. as a common soldier, whose pay ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... 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 could have been otherwise? Is it not amazing that ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... breaking out 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. ...
— The Young Llanero - A Story of War and Wild Life in Venezuela • W.H.G. Kingston
... 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, had ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang
... "The French common soldier is exceedingly brave—quite reckless," one of them said. "Take, for instance, the case, a day or so ago, of Philibert Musillat, of the 168th Infantry. We had captured a communication trench from the Germans ...
— Kings, Queens And Pawns - An American Woman at the Front • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... his own horse, and standing over 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 ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens
... to St. Louis. Baron Roger was absent, and his representative was by no means friendly. The explorer had to content himself with the pay of a common soldier until the return of his protector, to whom he sent the notes he had made when amongst the Bracknas, but all his offers of service were rejected. He was promised a certain sum on his return from Timbuctoo; but how was he even ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... Badajos, 1767. A common soldier, he became the queen's lover, and the virtual ruler of Spain; ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... below the town. Some cannon were sent for from Boston. Several eighteen-pounders were obtained in New York, and more were ordered from London. In manning the battery, Franklin took his turn of duty as a common soldier. ...
— Benjamin Franklin, A Picture of the Struggles of Our Infant Nation One Hundred Years Ago - American Pioneers and Patriots Series • John S. C. Abbott
... 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 |
