as though the French
would be beaten, in spite of their brave struggles to keep their enemies
back and manage their own affairs in their own way.

At one time everything went against the French. Their armies were worn
out with fighting, their supply of guns had run short, they had no
powder, and their money matters were in so bad a state that it seemed
hardly possible for France to hold out any longer. In the meantime
England, Austria, Spain, Holland, Piedmont, and Prussia, besides many of
the small German states, had joined together to fight France, and their
armies were on every side of her.

A country in such a state as that, with so many powerful enemies on
every side, might well have given up; but the French are a brave people,
and they were fighting for their liberties. Instead of giving up in
despair, they set to work with all their might to carry on the war.

The first thing to be done was to raise new armies, and so they called
for men, and the men came forward in great numbers from every part of
the country. In a little while they had more men to make soldiers of
than had ever before been brought together in France. But this was only
a beginning. The men were not yet trained soldiers, and even if they had
been, they had no guns and no powder; no clothing was to be had, and
there was very little food for them to eat. Still the French did not
despair.

Knowing that there would not be time enough to train the new men, they
put some of their old soldiers in each regiment of new ones, so that
the new men might learn from the veterans how to march and how to
fight.

In the meantime they had set up armories, and were making guns as fast
as they could. Their greatest trouble was about powder. They had
chemists who knew how to make it, but they had no nitre to make it of,
and did not know at first how to get any. At last one of their chemists
said that there was some nitre--from a few ounces to a pound or two--in
the earth of every cellar floor; and that if all the nitre in all the
cellar floors of France could be collected, it would be enough to make
plenty of powder.

But how to get this nitre was a question. The cellar floors must be dug
up, the earth must be washed, and the water must be carefully passed
through a course of chemical treatment in order to get the nitre, free
from earth and from all other things with which it was mixed. It would
take many days for a chemist to extract the nitre from the earth