; their children in turn grew up, married, died--the war raged
on; their children, growing, saw France struck down again; this time
under the incredible disaster of Agincourt--and still the war raged on,
year after year, and in time these children married in their turn.

France was a wreck, a ruin, a desolation. The half of it belonged to
England, with none to dispute or deny the truth; the other half belonged
to nobody--in three months would be flying the English flag; the French
King was making ready to throw away his crown and flee beyond the seas.

Now came the ignorant country-maid out of her remote village and
confronted this hoary war, this all-consuming conflagration that had
swept the land for three generations. Then began the briefest and most
amazing campaign that is recorded in history. In seven weeks it was
finished. In seven weeks she hopelessly crippled that gigantic war that
was ninety-one years old. At Orleans she struck it a staggering blow; on
the field of Patay she broke its back.

Think of it. Yes, one can do that; but understand it? Ah, that is
another matter; none will ever be able to comprehend that stupefying
marvel.

Seven weeks--with her and there a little bloodshed. Perhaps the most of
it, in any single fight, at Patay, where the English began six thousand
strong and left two thousand dead upon the field. It is said
and believed that in three battles alone--Crecy, Poitiers, and
Agincourt--near a hundred thousand Frenchmen fell, without counting
the thousand other fights of that long war. The dead of that war make a
mournful long list--an interminable list. Of men slain in the field the
count goes by tens of thousands; of innocent women and children slain by
bitter hardship and hunger it goes by that appalling term, millions.

It was an ogre, that war; an ogre that went about for near a hundred
years, crunching men and dripping blood from its jaws. And with her
little hand that child of seventeen struck him down; and yonder he lies
stretched on the field of Patay, and will not get up any more while this
old world lasts.

32 The Joyous News Flies Fast

THE GREAT news of Patay was carried over the whole of France in twenty
hours, people said. I do not know as to that; but one thing is sure,
anyway: the moment a man got it he flew shouting and glorifying God and
told his neighbor; and that neighbor flew with it to the next homestead;
and so on and so on without resting the word trave