Assas, Nicolas (As`sas, Nicolas) , captain of the French regiment of Auvergne, whose celebrity depends on a single act of defiance: having entered a wood to reconnoitre it the night before the battle of Kloster Kampen, was suddenly surrounded by the enemy's (the English) soldiers, and defied with bayonets at his breast to utter a cry of alarm; “Ho, Auvergne!” he exclaimed, and fell dead on the instant, pierced with bayonets, to the saving of his countrymen.
Definition taken from The Nuttall Encyclopædia, edited by the Reverend James Wood (1907)
Assarotti * Assassins