Quotes About Warfare

today the expense of modern warfare far outweighs any economic benefits it achieves.

Don't you just love the army? They take a fellow who's been turned into a catatonic mute by being shelled from here to Christmas and say he's not yet been properly diagnosed but he seems a bit nervous.

I like to kill my enemies and listen to the lamentations of their women

for next to God, who is our strength, all depends upon the valour of our arms.

You will not fight in the shield wall," my father said. "No, Father." "Only men can stand in the shield wall," he said, "but you will watch, you will learn, and you will discover that the most dangerous stroke is not the sword or ax that you can see, but the one you cannot see, the blade that comes beneath the shields to bite your ankles.

We had to fight, because to decline battle was a defeat.

His charms worked, for though the bullets flicked close none hit him. He was the tiger of Mysore, he could not die, only kill.

There's something I've noticed, sir,' he said, 'ever since we joined up with you in Spain.' 'What's that?' 'That we're always outnumbered and surrounded.' Sharpe had been listening, not to Harper, but to the day itself. 'Notice anything?' he asked. 'That we're surrounded and outnumbered, sir?

Passion, Baird reckoned, was what would take men across the river and up the breach. Damn scientific soldiering now. The science of siege warfare had opened the city, but only a screaming and insane passion would take men inside.

Tell Ragnall," I told him, "that the Saxons of Mercia are coming. Tell him that his dead will number in the thousands. Tell him that his own death is just days away. Tell him that promise comes from Uhtred of Bebbanburg.

Thou shalt not kill, they preached, then screamed at us warriors to slaughter the pagans. Thou shalt not steal, they preached, and forged charters to take men's lands. Thou shalt not commit adultery, they preached, and rutted other men's wives like besotted hares in springtime.

Do you know who wins battles, boy?" "We do, Father." "The side that is least drunk," he said, and then, after a pause, "but it helps to be drunk." "Why?" "Because a shield wall is an awful place." He gazed into the fire. "I have been in six shield walls," he went on, "and prayed every time it would be the last.

Never do what an enemy expects, Dudda. We'll go in at dawn. On the flood.

The English chevauchée was a tactic to destroy a country's power, to starve the lords of taxes, to burn their

Vi que Cippanhamm estava pegando fogo. A fumaça escurecia o céu de inverno e o horizonte estava cheio de homens, homens montados, homens com espadas, machados, escudos, lanças e estandartes, e mais cavaleiros vinham da porta leste, trovejando sobre a ponte. Porque as orações de Alfredo haviam falhado e os dinamarqueses tinham vindo a Wessex.

The cellar was spattered with blood, with bodies that showed death in a dozen horrid ways. Wine-racks stood by the walls, looted empty, but the floor was black with Spanish blood, strewn with mutilations obscene as nightmare. Young, old, men and women, all killed horribly. It struck Sharpe that these people must have died the day before, as he watched from the hilltop, killed as the French pretended the village was empty.

The Tippoo should have killed you when he had the chance. We all make mistakes, sir.

So long as one man wants another man's wife, or another man's land, or another man's cattle, or another man's silver, so long will there be war. And so long as one priest preaches that his god is the only god or the better god there will be war.

we fight them where we choose or where we must, not always when we want.

You can't take a city without shedding blood.

no one survives long by assuming his enemy is sleeping.

We cut off their long hair, for I liked to caulk my ships' planks with the hair of slain enemies

Sharpe, for most of the

An English man-at-arms had his helmet split open and his skull with it, so that he rode wavering from the fight, blood pouring down his mail coat. His horse stopped a few paces from the turmoil and the man-at-arms slowly, so slowly, bent forward and then slumped down from his saddle. One foot was trapped in a stirrup as he died but his horse did not seem to notice. It just went on cropping the grass.