Quarter staff, an old military weapon, made of strong even wood, bigger and heavier than a pike: it is 6¹⁄₂ feet long between the ferrules that keep fast the two pikes of iron stuck into the ends of the staff.
Quarter, in the manége, as to work from quarter to quarter, is to ride a horse three times in upon the first of the four lines of a square; then, changing your hand, to ride him three times upon the second; and so to the third and fourth; always changing hands, and observing the same order.
Quarter-facing, is in the new discipline substituted for the old aukward oblique marching; it is also called the line of science; in ranks every man turns to the right or left as ordered, and if ordered to march, the lines or ranks thus keep parallel to their former front, but march on a line oblique to it.
Quarter-Wheeling, in the old discipline, was the motion by which the front of a body of men was turned round to where the flank stood, by taking a quarter of a circle; but in the new discipline which reduces all principles to the strictest simplicity, the wheelings take all their proportions from half a circle; and for obvious causes, since the wheeling of any number of men on a whole circle, would be only moving them to bring them into the place in which they stood before they were wheeled or moved; now the purpose of wheeling is to change from one position to some other required position, and hence quarter wheeling means a quarter wheel of half a circle; thus wheeling about, is changing the front to the rear; and this wheeling is simply half the half circle, or placing the ranks on the same line from which they were moved; the quarter wheel is a movement of ¹⁄₄ of the half circle, or in a line oblique to the line from which they were moved; a regiment quarter wheeled by companies display the regiment in echellon.
Quartering troops, is to provide them with quarters.
QUARTERON, one, Fr. A quarteron; one born of a white man and a mulatto woman, or of a mulatto man and a white woman.
QUARTIER, Fr. For its general acceptation see [Quarters].
Quartier d’un Siége, Fr. A station taken, or an encampment made in one of the leading avenues to a besieging town or place. When the Quartier d’un Siége was commanded by a general officer, during the French monarchy, it was called Quartier du Roi. The king’s quarters.
Quartier des Vivres, Fr. The park of stores, provisions, &c.
Quartier d’Hiver, Fr. Winter quarters. Count de Turpin has written largely upon this subject. See Essai sur l’Art de la Guerre; likewise, Suite de la Science de la Guerre, tom. iv. p. 170.