The Seed of Empire by Fred M. White

It had been a long and bitter day, and the little force known as the Honourable Company of Musketeers had been sorely pressed, and, though no man confessed it, they were praying for the darkness. They had come up a week or two before, and had been thrown directly into the firing line. It was trying them high indeed, a terrible ordeal for young, unseasoned troops, to thrust them headlong against the cream of the German infantry, but there had been no help for it. Over in England, people were rejoicing in successive victories, and some, indeed, were obsessed with the idea that the German flood was broken, and that the crisis was past. Heaven alone knows why the authorities at home were wrapping the people in the cotton wool of optimism, but those at the front knew better; they knew that every man was needed; they knew that if that line was broken Paris was doomed.

They knew how unprepared we were, and that France was not in much better case than ourselves. And so a harassed general, who hardly knew which way to turn, had welcomed the advent of the Musketeers as something like a godsend. He did not want to do it; he hated the necessity, but there was no alternative.