This Indifference, However, Was A Result
Rather Of A General Dread Of Military Topography Than
Of A Want Of Admiration Of This Particular Victory,
Which I Have Always Supposed To Be One Of The Most
Brilliant On Record.
Indeed, I should be almost
ashamed, and very much at a loss, to say what light
it was that
This glorious day seemed to me to have
left forever on the horizon, and why the very name of
the place had always caused my blood gently to tingle.
It is carrying the feeling of race to quite inscrutable
lengths when a vague American permits himself an
emotion because more than five centuries ago, on
French soil, one rapacious Frenchman got the better
of another. Edward was a Frenchman as well as
John, and French were the cries that urged each of
the hosts to the fight. French is the beautiful motto
graven round the image of the Black Prince, as he
lies forever at rest in the choir of Canterbury: _a la
mort ne pensai-je mye_. Nevertheless, the victory of
Poitiers declines to lose itself in these considerations;
the sense of it is a part of our heritage, the joy of it
a part of our imagination, and it filters down through
centuries and migrations till it titillates a New Yorker
who forgets in his elation that he happens at that
moment to be enjoying the hospitality of France. It
was something done, I know not how justly, for Eng-
land; and what was done in the fourteenth century
for England was done also for New York.
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