Never had any general so much credit with his soldiers: in the beginning
of the civil wars, his centurions offered him to find every one a
man-at-arms at his own charge, and the foot soldiers to serve him at
their own expense; those who were most at their ease, moreover,
undertaking to defray the more necessitous. The late Admiral Chastillon

[Gaspard de Coligny, assassinated in the St. Bartholomew
massacre, 24th August 1572.]

showed us the like example in our civil wars; for the French of his army
provided money out of their own purses to pay the foreigners that were
with him. There are but rarely found examples of so ardent and so ready
an affection amongst the soldiers of elder times, who kept themselves
strictly to their rules of war: passion has a more absolute command over
us than reason; and yet it happened in the war against Hannibal, that by
the example of the people of Rome in the city, the soldiers and captains
refused their pay in the army, and in Marcellus' camp those were branded
with the name of Mercenaries who would receive any. Having got the worst
of it near Dyrrachium, his soldiers came and offered themselves to be
chastised and punished, so that there was more need to comfort than
reprove them. One single cohort of his withstood four of Pompey's
legions above four hours together, till they were almost all killed with
arrows, so that there were a hundred and thirty thousand shafts found in
the trenches. A soldier called Scaeva, who commanded at one of the
avenues, invincibly maintained his ground, having lost an eye, with one
shoulder and one thigh shot through, and his shield hit in two hundred
and thirty places. It happened that many of his soldiers being taken
prisoners, rather chose to die than promise to join the contrary side.
Granius Petronius was taken by Scipio in Africa: Scipio having put the
rest to death, sent him word that he gave him his life, for he was a man