but, though the doctor tried hard, and never ceased trying, to get charles darnay set at liberty, or at least to get him brought to trial, the public current of the time set too strong and fast for him. the new era began; the king was tried, doomed, and beheaded; the republic of liberty, equality, fraternity, or death, declared for victory or death against the world in arms; the black flag waved night and day from the great towers of notre dame; three hundred thousand men, summoned to rise against the tyrants of the earth, rose from all the varying soils of france, as if the dragon's teeth had been sown broadcast, and had yielded fruit equally on hill and plain, on rock, in gravel, and alluvial mud, under the bright sky of the south and under the clouds of the north, in fell and forest, in the vineyards and the olive-grounds and among the cropped grass and the stubble of the corn, along the fruitful banks of the broad rivers, and in the sand of the sea-shore.