[null and void]

"And scattered about it, some in their overturned war-machines, some in the now rigid handling-machines, and a dozen of them stark and silent and laid in a row, were the Martians--dead!--slain by the putrefactive and disease bacteria against which their systems were unprepared; slain as the red weed was being slain; slain, after all man's devices had failed, by the humblest things that God, in his wisdom, has put upon this earth."

[Charles Martel]

I'm glad I read all the way down the thread - I was just about to post that text from War of the Worlds.

Mysterious ways, and all that...