God of armies! Thou hast given us success and victory against our
enemies, and hast put them to flight before us. Not unto us, O Lord,
not unto us, but to Thy holy name alone be all the honour! Thou hast
done great things for us, therefore our hearts are glad. Without Thy
aid we should have been worsted; only with God could we have done
mighty deeds and subdued the power of the enemy. The eye of our general
Thou hast quickened and guided; Thou hast strengthened the courage of
our army, and lent it stubborn valour. Yet not the strategy of our
leader, nor our courage, but Thy great mercy has given us the victory.
Lord, who are we, that we dare to stand before Thee as soldiers, and
that our enemies yield and fly before us? We are sinners, even as they
are, and have deserved Thy fierce wrath and punishment; but for the
sake of Thy name Thou hast been merciful to us, and hast so marked the
sore peril of our threatened Fatherland, and hast heard the prayer of
our king, our people, and our army, because we called upon Thy name,
and held out our buckler in the name of the Lord of Sabaoth. Blessed be
Thy holy name for ever and ever. Amen.
The surrender of the French army of Sedan has been consummated, and
Napoleon has departed into captivity; while Hans, marching down by
Rethel, and through grand old Rheims, and along the smiling vinebergs
of the Marne Valley, is now _vor Paris_. He is on the _Feldwache_ in
the forest of Bondy before Raincy, and his turn comes to go on the
uttermost sentry post. As the snow-drift blows to one side he can see
the French watch-fires close by him in Bondy; nearer still he sees the
three stones and the few spadefuls of earth behind which, as he knows,
is the French outpost sentry confronting him. The straggling rays of
the watery moon now obscured by snow-scud, now falling on him faintly,
could not aid him in reading even if he dared avert his eyes from his
front. But Hans had come to know the value of the little gray volume;
and while he lay in the _Feldwache_ waiting for his spell of sentry go,
he had learnt by heart the following prayer