But the Germans still clung to Prunay. That place was the real centre of this part of the struggle. The village lies between the Rheims-Chalons railway line and the Vesle. Out of the place the enemy had to be cleared, cost what it might. It was one of those episodes in which an army puts forth its whole strength of nerve. From the wooded heights above the valley a massing of German batteries sought to wither the attack. A massing of French batteries on the nearer side strove to put the German guns out of action. The duel was gigantic. Reports of the guns became no longer distinguishable. They were merged into what seemed one continued solid and unbroken explosion. The French infantry advanced to the assault. Their losses were heavy. Prunay was set alight by shells. Still the attack was pressed. Then the ring of fire round the distant woods which marked the line of German batteries became ragged, and died down. The French guns had proved their superiority. At the point of the bayonet the Germans were driven out of Prunay and across the railway. Here they made a last stand. It was in vain. French gunners were now racing their pieces forward and opening in new positions; German batteries, on the other hand, were seen limbering up and in flight. At last, as night fell, the Germans broke in rout along the road to Beine. Prunay they had lost for good. These were leading but only typical episodes of those fifteen days. The fighting went on, too, through the night. As daylight faded, masses of Algerian and Moroccan troops, held in reserve, crept forward, and gathered stealthily in chalk-pits or among the woods. They moved with an almost catlike tread. In these secret rendezvous they waited until the dead of night. Then in file after file, thousands of them, they stole up, invisible, to the German trenches; and in the first faint shimmer of dawn launched themselves with a savage yell upon the foe. There was terrible work among those hills. Do these episodes throw no light on the damage done to Rheims Cathedral? Here round Rheims and north of the Aisne had been the mightiest effort the German armies had yet made. Here was concentrated the full force of their most disciplined and most valiant troops. Those troops had been sacrificed and with no result. Many storms of war had passed by the cathedral at Rheims since it was completed in 1231, and from the time when nearly a hundred more years of patient labour had put the last touches on its marvellous sculptures, and it had stood forth a thing of wonder and of beauty, no hand of violence had been laid on its consecrated stones. At the news that Prussian cannon had been turned upon it to destroy it, and had reduced it to a burned-out skeleton, from which Prussian wounded had to be carried out lest they should be roasted alive, the whole civilised world gasped.