Britain and France hold empires which Cæsar never knew, and they are thus enabled to draw troops from every continent on the face of the globe. Englishman, Scot, Welshman, Irishman, British and French Canadian, Australian, New Zealander, Frenchman, and Belgian, stand shoulder to shoulder with Pathan, Gurkha, Sikh, Bengali, Baluchi, Senegambian, Arab, Berber, and Moor--Christian, Mohammedan, Hindu, and heathen--all united in a vast army determined to overthrow the nation which aims at nothing less than the mastery of the whole world. Such a remarkable gathering of races in one army has never before been seen.
[Footnote 2: See chaps. x. and xi., vol. i.]
[Footnote 6: This is really the same word as "sepoys," by which the native soldiers in India were first known to Europeans.]
[Footnote 7: Original inhabitants of Algeria and Morocco. Three-fifths of the Algerians are Berbers.]
I wonder whether you have ever met with the word _dinanderie_. You will find it in an English dictionary, though it is an old word which has almost gone out of use. _Dinanderie_ means vessels of chased copper or brass used for household purposes. In the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries such vessels were largely made in the little Belgian town of Dinant; hence the name.
You can scarcely imagine a more picturesque town than Dinant. It stands on the right or eastern bank of the broad river Meuse as it sweeps northward from France to join the Sambre at Namur. The main part of the town lies at the foot of lofty limestone rocks, which are honeycombed with grottoes containing stalactites, or limestone "icicles," such as you may see in the caves of Cheddar[8] or Derbyshire. In the Grand'-Place, quite close to the foot of the limestone rocks, is the Cathedral of Notre Dame, a very handsome building with finely carved portals. Behind the cathedral there are four hundred and eight steps cut in the rock, by means of which you may ascend to the citadel which crowns the summit.
From this citadel, or from the top of the hill behind it, there is a glorious view of the Meuse valley. If we face the river, we shall see on the opposite bank the houses straggling up a wooded hillside, and to our right "Roche à Bayard," a bold pinnacle of rock with an ancient story. Bayard[9] was the prince of knights in the sixteenth century, a hero of the most noble and unselfish character, "without fear and without reproach." We can pay no greater honour to a soldier than to call him a "Bayard." Like our own King Arthur, he has become a figure of romance, and all sorts of magical deeds have been ascribed to him. It is said that on one occasion he defended a bridge single-handed against two hundred Spaniards. According to an old legend, he was once pursued by Charlemagne, and was only saved from capture by his gallant horse, which sprang right across the gorge of the river, and left a hoofmark on the rock which now bears his name.