ood for France, indeed she was France
to both sides--whichever won her won France, and could keep it forever.
Right there in that small spot, and in ten minutes by the clock, the fate
of France, for all time, was to be decided, and was decided.

If the English had captured Joan then, Charles VII. would have flown the
country, the Treaty of Troyes would have held good, and France, already
English property, would have become, without further dispute, an English
province, to so remain until Judgment Day. A nationality and a kingdom
were at stake there, and no more time to decide it in than it takes to
hard-boil an egg. It was the most momentous ten minutes that the clock
has ever ticked in France, or ever will. Whenever you read in histories
about hours or days or weeks in which the fate of one or another nation
hung in the balance, do not you fail to remember, nor your French hearts
to beat the quicker for the remembrance, the ten minutes that France,
called otherwise Joan of Arc, lay bleeding in the fosse that day, with
two nations struggling over her for her possession.

And you will not forget the Dwarf. For he stood over her, and did the
work of any six of the others. He swung his ax with both hands; whenever
it came down, he said those two words, "For France!" and a splintered
helmet flew like eggshells, and the skull that carried it had learned its
manners and would offend the French no more. He piled a bulwark of
iron-clad dead in front of him and fought from behind it; and at last
when the victory was ours we closed about him, shielding him, and he ran
up a ladder with Joan as easily as another man would carry a child, and
bore her out of the battle, a great crowd following and anxious, for she
was drenched with blood to her feet, half of it her own and the other
half English, for bodies had fallen across her as she lay and had poured
their red life-streams over her. One couldn't see the white armor now,
with that awful dressing over it.

The iron bolt was still in the wound--some say it projected out behind
the shoulder. It may be--I did not wish to see, and did not try to. It
was pulled out, and the pain made Joan cry again, poor thing. Some say
she pulled it out herself because others refused, saying they could not
bear to hurt her. As to this I do not know; I only know it was pulled
out, and that the wound was treated with oil and properly dressed.

Joan lay on the grass, weak and suffering, hour after hour,