When the company of Englishmen in their farthingale-breeches, slashed sleeves and white ruffs, their swords and buckles glistening, accompanied by a few soldiers bearing halberds and long muskets, arrived, the entire population of the village and those of other villages for leagues about were awaiting them.
"The Princess Pocahontas"
Virginia Watson
I need not remind you of the cold morning on the retreat from Burgos, when the inexorable Lake brought five men to the halberds for stealing turkeys, that at the same moment, I was engaged in devising an ox-tail soup, from a heifer brought to our tent in jack-boots the evening before, to escape detection by her foot tracks."
"The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete"
Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
This was an honour which the Queen did not very often enjoy; and very fine they looked in their scarlet and gold, with their halberds, all the way up from the bottom to the top.
"Oddsfish!"
Robert Hugh Benson