the English crossbow-man with his pavoise-hearer in the fifteenth century) made a "bulwark of their great oblong wicker shields, as may he seen now in the Nimrud sculptures, and shot from behind them. But when this bulwark was once forced, the Persians had no protection but their light armour against the strong, pikes of the Greeks. Our archers turned the scale of battle against superior forces at Cressy and Poitiers, because they were the only body which had at all the character of regular troops.
The Persian officers had in some respects become luxurious and effeminate even in the time of Darius, riding in palanquins, keeping sumpter-camels, and so forth; but they do not appear to have been worse than our Anglo-Indians, who have never been reckoned deficient in valour. The French mousquetaires, who fought under Marshal Saxe, were as celebrated for their foppery as their gallantry in the field. "Hold hard—the dandies are coming!" was the word passed from one British soldier to another, when their laced coats and three-cornered hats came in sight.
There is no need to follow in detail all the pomp and circumstance of the slow march of Xerxes into Greece. The vast army crossed from Abydos to Sestos by a double pontoon bridge; and Xerxes, like the spoiled child of the harem, is said to have ordered the Hellespont to be scourged, and chains to be thrown into it, and branding-irons to be plunged into the hissing water, because a storm had destroyed the work when first attempted. He is also said to have cut in halves the eldest son of a wealthy Lydian, who had made him an offer of all his property, but requested that one of his sons might be left behind; making his troops defile
