But to that distance it never came. For at this last phase of the battle, or, rather, of the cannonade,--it was no true battle,--there happened the wholly unexpected, the almost miraculous and, in the eyes of many historians, the inexplicable thing. The Prussian companies in all their length, now within four hundred yards of the French line, thinned a little by French cannon fire, but quite unmoved and morally prepared for the advance, halted. Their progress, resumed, watched anxiously by their commanders upon the height behind, grew slower and slower, was made in jerks, checked in a yard or two, finally stood still. There standing, one would say, within touch of victory, suffering with admirable obedience the steady loss under the French shot, and with admirable discipline closing its ranks, this Prussian infantry was seen at last to fall back, to turn, and to retire. As slowly as they had come, in the same order, with the same absence of looseness anywhere, the files, suffering less and less with every yard of their retirement from the French batteries, came nearly to their ancient stations, were drawn up just below the crest from which they had started somewhat over half an hour before. Valmy became again a cannonade and only a cannonade; but at the sight of this returning of their foes the French continually cheered, and the guns seemed to put on more vigour, and it almost seemed as though the very numbers of the defenders grew. The afternoon wore on, the cannonade slackened toward evening, and it was one fitful shot and then another, and then none at last, and when darkness fell the two lines stood where they had stood in the morning. But the assault had failed. What had happened? Why had not the Prussian charge proceeded? Now, to that question, which has produced many and strange, false, fantastic answers, I think a true answer can be provided, and I shall attempt to provide it upon the authority of an observation made very closely and with the unique intention of understanding this unique affair in the history of arms. For when I went to make myself acquainted with Valmy field it was in the same season, in the same weather, after the same rains, in the same mists, and I believe that I have as much as any man lived in the circumstances under which that issue was decided. I believe, having myself gone over that depression from the Prussian ridge toward the French, in just that weather and after just those rains, that the advance was stopped by nothing more mysterious than marshy soil.