The shell coming from an invisible point, miles away, had burst some distance on his right, scattering death and wounds over a wide radius.

But Vaugirard's brigades did not stop for one instant.

They cheered loudly, closed up the gap in their line, and went on steadily as before.

Some one began to sing the Marseillaise, and in an instant the song, like fire in dry grass, spread along a vast front.

John had often wished that he could have heard the armies of the French Revolution singing their tremendous battle hymn as they marched to victory, and now he heard it on a scale far more gigantic than in the days of the First French Republic.
The vast chorus rolled for miles and for all he knew other armies, far to right and left, might be singing it, too.