The New York herald., 1871-02-20

That mad fallen upon the land, utterly wasted,
Ns 1t was, to the Loire, and decimated and
bowed by continual disasters. Says the
)chronicler -
s'In sooth the estate Of France was then
most miserable. There appeared nothing but
q horrible face, confusion, poverty, desolation,
Bolitarinesse and feare. The lean and bare
aaborers in the country did terrify even thieves
themselves, who had nothing left to them to
spoil but the carkasses of these poore, misera-
Die creatures, wandering up and down
plke ghostes drawne out of their
graves. The least farmes and ham,
lets were fortified by these robbers-English,
Bourguignons and French-every one striving
to do his worst all men-of-war were well
agreed to spoil the countryman and merchant.
Even the cattell, accustomed to the larums
bell, the signe of the enemy's approach, would
run home Of themselves without any guide by
this accustomed misery"
The English and Burgundians (traitors) had
in fine completely conquered and exhausted
France, to whom only one important strong
hold remained-at Orleans. All the remaining
provinces had submitted; the weak French
King was meditating fight, and the fate of Ire
land seemed certain to overtake France as the
massed iron veterans of Salisbury and the
Burgundian Duke moved on to complete their
easy conquest southwark. The world knows
the result. The final overthrow and expulsion
OF the invaders were as signal as the triumphs
they had previously won and the devastation
they had wrought. The appearance of Joan
of Arc, in 1929, was but the symbol of reviving
France, and, although she ultimately suffered
horrid death, her spirit lived after her, and in
twenty years her country was again rising to
control in Europe.
Had it been necessary to multiply these
illustrations we might have commenced farther
back, with the frightful invasion of Attia and
his Huns, defeated at last in the battle of
Chalons in 45l, or we might adduce many
illusions In more modern days, from the wars
of the Fronde, of Navarro, of the League,
down to the series of partially triumphant in
vasions (always desolations) by the monarchi-
cal allies of Eastern Europe Immediately pre-
ceding and then following the reign of the
first Napoleon. But this were needless Look
at Northern France, sacked, pillaged and bonn
barded in 1892, until the raw recruits of
Dumouriez and Kellermann 80 utterly over
threw the flower of the victory stated Prussian
army, commanded by its warlike king, at
Valmy, that even German Goethe, who wit
messed the battle, said to his friends
that evening:-'From this place and
from this day forth commences new
era in the worlds history, and you can all say
that you were present at its BIRTH"
That era was signalized by the successes
and then the suppression Of the republic, the
consulate and the empire, during which
momentous period France bled at every pore,
was overrun, ravaged and laid under contri-
button, in both North and South, at different
times, and finally saw her proud capital occu-
pied by her exulting allied foes, her last
armies defeated, surrendered or dispersed aud
her great Emperor pinned to desolate rock
iii mid ocean, like another Promotheus who
had once aspired to WELD the very lightnings
of Jove to make her great. The statistics Of
her practical loss and physical depletion by
these wars still appal the calculations of states
men, and yet within less than thirty years
after such apparently final prostration she was
again seen almost debating law to Europe.
We now behold her again cast down, again
half occupied by hostile armies, again laid
under tax and 1.-THE by the sternest of con-
querors, her still further exhaustion to be con-
jectured only by the measure OF her further
proposed resistance. Will she again arise
from her ashes stronger, grander and more
commanding than before? The past is the
only respondent to whom the future of nation
of forty millions can turn for logical reply.
CIa inf IIi3h md