arms-bearer

noun arms-bearers · arms bearer · armsbearer

1. One who carries weapons for another. As for women, only Venus, stripped of her femininity as arms-bearer for Caesar, and the virginal goddess Vesta are present (4.1.46 and 4.1.21).
2. An armed fighter, such as a soldier or knight; one who carries and uses a weapon, as opposed to a member of the support personnel. Lamenting the fact that "scarcely an inch of the page of history has been appropriated" to the memory of the black arms-bearers of the Revolutionary War, Henry Highland Garnet sought to redress the balance in an address before the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1840.