Michel de Montaigne

“ Alexander, the most adventurous captain that ever was, very seldom wore
armour, and such amongst us as slight it, do not by that much harm to the
main concern; for if we see some killed for want of it, there are few
less whom the lumber of arms helps to destroy, either by being
overburthened, crushed, and cramped with their weight, by a rude shock,
or otherwise. For, in plain truth, to observe the weight and thickness
of the armour we have now in use, it seems as if we only sought to defend
ourselves, and are rather loaded than secured by it. ”

“ We have enough to
do to support its weight, being so manacled and immured, as if we were
only to contend with our own arms, and as if we had not the same
obligation to defend them, that they have to defend us. Tacitus gives a
pleasant description of the men-at-arms among our ancient Gauls, who were
so armed as only to be able to stand, without power to harm or to be
harmed, or to rise again if once struck down. ”

“ Spain, ordered his soldiers to eat standing, and nothing that was drest.
The jeer that was given a Lacedaemonian soldier is marvellously pat to
this purpose, who, in an expedition of war, was reproached for having
been seen under the roof of a house: they were so inured to hardship
that, let the weather be what it would, it was a shame to be seen under
any other cover than the roof of heaven. We should not march our people
very far at that rate. ”