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Seldom has the extinction of a a nation's independence appeared more inevitable than was the case in France, when the English invaders completed their lines round Orleans, four hundred and twenty-three years ago. A series of dreadful defeats had thinned the chivalry of France, and daunted the spirits of her soldiers.
Her death did the invaders no good; but above her ashes, and moistened by her tears, if such a feat were possible, liberty arose once more, and, in 1437, Charles was permitted to enter Paris and enjoy the town for the first time in twenty years. In 1444 a truce of six years was established.
Santiago! the Lombards have the gate of Bois-le-Duc!" while the same stratagem was employed to persuade the invaders on the other side of the town that their comrades had forced the gate of Tongres.
Australia was a silent and sullen blank, and for a century of exploration nature has resisted, step by step, the encroachments on her stronghold, making the invaders pay toll with many a gallant life.
They atoned, be it remembered, for their early sins by making those names in after years a terror to the invaders of their native land: but as yet their prowess was limited to drunken brawls and faction-fights; to upsetting old women at their work, levying blackmail from quiet chapmen on the high road, or bringing back in triumph, sword in hand and club on shoulder, their leader Hereward from some duel which his insolence had provoked.
They lost heavily, but their activities probably explain the great number of prisoners captured in so short a time. At nearly every point the Germans were taken completely by surprise, for their defensive fire was not opened until after the flowing tide of the invaders had passed by.
Thus through successions of Stone-Age men, Dravidian tribes, and Aryan invaders, India stretches her roots deep into the past. But while there were transpiring these "Old, unhappy, far-off things And battles long ago," where were we?
The first Anglo-Norman invaders, including Henry II himself, had no other object in view than gradually to occupy the whole territory, subject it to the feudal laws, give to Englishmen the position of feudal lords, and reduce the Irish to that of villeins, if they could not succeed in rooting them out.
WATCHET, a small port of some 2000 inhabitants, situated on the Bristol Channel. It has always been of some trading importance, as giving access to the valley between the Brendons and Quantocks, and has seen some history. In Saxon times it was more than once raided by the Danes, and on the road to Williton is a spot called "Battle Gore," which may preserve the memory of a fight with the invaders.
When we consider the military ambition of this nation, its love of glory; the splendid height to which its renown in arms had recently been carried, and with these, the tremendous reverses it had just undergone; its armies shattered, annihilated; its capital captured, garrisoned, and overrun, and that too by its ancient rival, the English, toward whom it had cherished for centuries a jealous and almost religious hostility; could we have wondered if the tiger spirit of this fiery people had broken out in bloody feuds and deadly quarrels; and that they had sought to rid themselves in any way of their invaders?
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