The Great War in England in 1897 Part 4

The Custom House opposite quickly ignited, and the inflammable nature of its contents caused the fire to a.s.sume enormous proportions. Meanwhile the bombardment was kept up, the forts on sh.o.r.e still replying with regularity, steadiness, and precision, and the armoured coast train of the 1st Suss.e.x Artillery Volunteers, under Captain Brigden, rendering excellent service. In one of the forts a man was standing in front of a small camera-obscura, on the gla.s.s of which were a number of mysterious marks. This gla.s.s reflected the water and the ships; and as he stood by calmly with his hand upon a keyboard, he watched the reflections of the hostile vessels moving backwards and forwards over the gla.s.s. Suddenly he saw a French gunboat, after a series of smartly-executed manoeuvres, steaming straight over one of the marks, and, quick as lightning, his finger pressed one of the electric keys. A terrific explosion followed, and a column of green water shot up at the same instant. The gunboat _Lavel_ had been suddenly blown almost out of the water by a submarine mine! Broken portions of her black hull turned over and sank, and mangled remains of what a second before had been a crew of enthusiastic Frenchmen floated for a few moments on the surface, then disappeared.

Not a soul on board escaped.

Along the telegraph line from the signal-station on Beachy Head news of the blowing up of the enemy's gunboat was flashed to London, and when, an hour later, it appeared in the newspapers, the people went half mad with excitement. Alas, how they miscalculated the relative strength of the opposing forces!

They were unaware that our Channel Fleet, our Coastguard Squadron, and our Reserve were steaming away, leaving our southern sh.o.r.es _practically unprotected_!

CHAPTER VI.

LANDING OF THE FRENCH IN SUSs.e.x.

The Briton is, alas! too p.r.o.ne to underrate his adversary. It is this national egotism, this fatal over-confidence, that has led to most of the reverses we have sustained in recent wars.

The popular belief that one Briton is as good as half a dozen foreigners, is a fallacy which ought to be at once expunged from the minds of every one. The improved and altered conditions under which international hostilities are carried on nowadays scarcely even admit of a hand-to-hand encounter, and the engines of destruction designed by other European Powers being quite as perfect as our own, tact and cunning have now taken the place of pluck and perseverance. The strong arm avails but little in modern warfare; strategy is everything.

Into Brighton, an hour after dawn, the enemy's vessels were pouring volley after volley of deadly missiles. A party had landed from the French flagship, and, summoning the Mayor, had demanded a million pounds. This not being forthcoming, they had commenced sh.e.l.ling the town. The fire was, for the most part, directed against the long line of shops and private residences in King's Road and at Hove, and in half an hour over a hundred houses had been demolished. The palatial Hotel Metropole stood a great gaunt ruin. Sh.e.l.ls had carried large portions of the n.o.ble building away, and a part of the ruin had caught fire and was burning unchecked, threatening to consume the whole. Church steeples had been knocked over like ninepins, and explosive missiles dropped in the centre of the town every moment, sweeping the streets with deadly effect. The enemy met with little or no opposition. Our first line of defence, our Navy, was missing! The Admiralty were unaware of the whereabouts of three whole Fleets that had mobilised, and the ships remaining in the Channel, exclusive of the Harbour Defence Flotilla, were practically useless.

At Eastbourne, likewise, where a similar demand had been made, shot fell thick as hail, and sh.e.l.ls played fearful havoc with the handsome boarding-houses and hotels that line the sea front. From the redoubt, the Wish Tower, and a battery on the higher ground towards Beachy Head, as well as a number of other hastily constructed earthworks, a reply was made to the enemy's fire, and the guns in the antiquated martello towers, placed at intervals along the beach, now and then sent a shot towards the vessels. But such an attempt to keep the great ironclads at bay was absurdly futile. One after another sh.e.l.ls from the monster guns of the Russian ship _Pjotr Velikij_, and the armoured cruisers _Gerzog Edinburskij_, _Krejser_, and _Najezdnik_, crashed into these out-of-date coast defences, and effectually silenced them. In Eastbourne itself the damage wrought was enormous. Every moment sh.e.l.ls fell and exploded in Terminus and Seaside Roads, while the aristocratic suburb of Upperton, built on the hill behind the town, was exposed to and bore the full brunt of the fray. The fine modern Queen Anne and Elizabethan residences were soon mere heaps of burning debris. Every moment houses fell, burying their occupants, and those people who rushed out into the roads for safety were, for the most part, either overwhelmed by debris, or had their limbs shattered by flying pieces of sh.e.l.l.

The situation was awful. The incessant thunder of cannon, the screaming of sh.e.l.ls whizzing through the air, to burst a moment later and send a dozen or more persons to an untimely grave, the crash of falling walls, the clouds of smoke and dust, and the blazing of ignited wreckage, combined to produce a scene more terrible than any witnessed in England during the present century.

And all this was the outcome of one man's indiscretion and the cunning duplicity of two others!

At high noon Newhaven fell into the hands of the enemy.

The attack had been so entirely unexpected that the troops mobilised and sent there had arrived too late. The town was being sacked, and the harbour was in the possession of the French, who were landing their forces in great numbers. From Dieppe and Havre transports were arriving, and discharging their freights of fighting men and guns under cover of the fire from the French warships lying close in land.

Notwithstanding all the steps taken during the last twenty years to improve the condition of our forces on land and sea, this outbreak of hostilities found us far from being in a state of preparedness for war.

England, strangely enough, has never yet fully realised that the conditions of war have entirely changed. In days gone by, when troops and convoys could move but slowly, the difficulty of providing for armies engaged in operations necessarily limited their strength. It is now quite different. Improved communications have given to military operations astonishing rapidity, and the facilities with which large ma.s.ses of troops, guns, and stores can now be transported to great distances has had the effect of proportionately increasing numbers. As a result of this, with the exception of our own island, Europe was armed to the teeth. Yet a mobilisation arrangement that was faulty and not clearly understood by officers or men, was the cause of the enemy being allowed to land. It is remarkable that the military authorities had not acted upon the one principle admitted on every side, namely, that the only effective defence consists of attack. The attack, to succeed, should have been sudden and opportune, and the Army should have been so organised that on the occurrence of war a force of adequate strength would have been at once available.

In a word, we missed our chance to secure this inestimable advantage afforded by the power of striking the first blow.

There was an old and true saying, that "England's best bulwarks were her wooden walls." They are no longer wooden, but it still remains an admitted fact that England's strongest bulwarks should be her Navy, and that any other nation may be possessed of an equally good one; also that our best bulwark should be equal to, or approach, the fighting power of the bulwarks owned by any two possible hostile nations.

To be strong is to stave off war; to be weak is to invite attack. It was our policy of _laissez faire_, a weak Navy and an Army bound up with red tape, that caused this disastrous invasion of England. Had our Fleet been sufficient for its work, invasion would have remained a threat, and nothing more. Our Navy was not only our first, but our last line of defence from an Imperial point of view; for, as a writer in the _Army and Navy Gazette_ pointed out in 1893, it was equally manifest and unquestionable that without land forces to act as the spearhead to the Navy's over-sea shaft, the offensive tactics so essential to a thorough statesmanlike defensive policy could not be carried out. Again, the mobility and efficiency of our Regular Army should have been such that the victory of our Fleet could be speedily and vigorously followed by decisive blows on the enemy's territory.

Already the news of the landing of the enemy had--besides causing a thrill such as had never before been known in our "tight little island"--produced its effect upon the price of food in London as elsewhere. In England we had only five days' bread-stuffs, and as the majority of our supplies came from Russia the price of bread trebled within twelve hours, and the ordinary necessaries of life were proportionately dearer.

But the dice had been thrown, and the sixes lay with Moloch.

CHAPTER VII.

BOMB OUTRAGES IN LONDON.

On that never-to-be-forgotten Sunday, scenes were witnessed in the metropolis which were of the most disgraceful character. The teeming city, from dawn till midnight, was in a feverish turmoil, the throngs in its streets discussing the probable turn of affairs, singing patriotic songs, and giving vent to utterances of heroic intentions interspersed with much horse play.

In Trafalgar Square, the hub of London, a ma.s.s meeting of Anarchists and Socialists was held, at which the Government and military authorities were loudly denounced for what was termed their criminal apathy to the interests and welfare of the nation. The Government, it was contended, had betrayed the country by allowing the secret of the German alliance to fall into the hands of its enemies, and the Ministers, adjudged unworthy the confidence of the nation, were by the resolutions adopted called upon to resign immediately. The crisis was an excuse for Anarchism to vent its grievances against law and order, and, unshackled, it had spread with rapidity through the length and breadth of the land.

In "The Square" the scarlet flag and the Cap of Liberty were everywhere in evidence, and, notwithstanding the presence of the police, the leaders of Anarchy openly advocated outrage, incendiarism, and murder.

At length the police resolved to interfere, and this was the signal for a terrible uprising. The huge mob, which in the mellow sunset filled the great Square and blocked all its approaches, became a seething, surging ma.s.s of struggling humanity. The attack by the police, who were ordered to disperse them, only incensed them further against the authorities, whom they blamed for the catastrophe that had befallen our country. Angry and desperate they fought with the police, using both revolvers and knives.

The scene was terrible. The sc.u.m of the metropolis had congregated to wage war against their own compatriots whom they cla.s.sed among enemies, and for an hour in the precincts of the Square the struggle was for life. Dozens of constables were shot dead, hundreds of Anarchists and Socialists received wounds from batons, many succ.u.mbing to their injuries, or being trampled to death by the dense mob. It was a repet.i.tion of that historic day known as "b.l.o.o.d.y Sunday," only the fight was more desperate and the consequences far worse, and such as would disgrace any civilised city.

Before sundown the police had been vanquished; and as no soldiers could be spared, Anarchism ran riot in the Strand, Pall Mall, St. Martin's Lane, Northumberland Avenue, and Parliament Street. Pale, determined men, with faces covered with blood, and others with their clothes in shreds, shouted hoa.r.s.e cries of victory, as, headed by a torn red flag, they rushed into Pall Mall and commenced breaking down the shutters of shops and looting them. Men were knocked down and murdered, and the rioters, freed from all restraint, commenced sacking all establishments where it was expected spoil could be obtained. At one bank in Pall Mall they succeeded, after some difficulty, in breaking open the strong room with explosives, and some forty or fifty of the rebels with eager greediness shared the gold and notes they stole.

At the Strand corner of the Square a squad of police was being formed, in order to co-operate with some reinforcements which were arriving, when suddenly there was a terrific explosion.

A bomb filled with picric acid had been thrown by an Anarchist, and when the smoke cleared, the shattered remains of thirty-four constables lay strewn upon the roadway!

This was but the first of a series of dastardly outrages. The advice of the Anarchist leaders in their inflammatory speeches had been acted upon, and in half an hour a number of bomb explosions had occurred in the vicinity, each doing enormous damage, and killing numbers of innocent persons. After the petard had been thrown in Trafalgar Square a loud explosion was almost immediately afterwards heard in Parliament Street, and it was soon known that a too successful attempt had been made to blow up the Premier's official residence in Downing Street. The programme of the outrages had apparently been organised, for almost before the truth was known another even more disastrous explosion occurred in the vestibule of the War Office in Pall Mall, which wrecked the lower part of the building, and blew to atoms the sentry on duty, and killed a number of clerks who were busy at their important duties in the apartments on the ground floor.

Through Pall Mall and along Whitehall the mob ran, crying "Down with the Government! Kill the traitors! Kill them!" About three thousand of the more lawless, having looted a number of shops, rushed to the Houses of Parliament, arriving there just in time to witness the frightful havoc caused by the explosion of two terribly powerful bombs that had been placed in St. Stephen's Hall and in Westminster Abbey.

A section of the exultant rioters had gained access to the National Gallery, where they carried on ruthless destruction among the priceless paintings there. Dozens of beautiful works were slashed with knives, others were torn down, and many, cut from their frames, were flung to the howling crowd outside. Suddenly some one screamed, "What do we want with Art? Burn down the useless palace! Burn it! Burn it!"

This cry was taken up by thousands of throats, and on every hand the rebels inside the building were urged to set fire to it. Intoxicated with success, maddened by anger at the action of the police, and confident that they had gained a signal victory over the law, they piled together a number of historic paintings in one of the rooms, and then ignited them. The flames leaped to the ceiling, spread to the woodwork, and thence, with appalling rapidity, to the other apartments. The windows cracked, and clouds of smoke and tongues of fire belched forth from them.

It had now grown dusk. The furious, demoniacal rabble surging in the Square set up loud, prolonged cheering when they saw the long dark building burning. In delight they paused in their work of destruction, watching the flames growing brighter as they burst through the roof, licking the central dome; and while the timber crackled and the fire roared, casting a lurid glare upon the tall buildings round and lighting up the imposing facade of the Grand Hotel, they cheered vociferously and sang the "Ma.r.s.eillaise" until the smoke half choked them and their throats grew hoa.r.s.e.

These denizens of the slums, these criminal crusaders against the law, were not yet satiated by their wild reckless orgies. Unchecked, they had run riot up and down the Strand, and there was scarcely a man among them who had not in his pocket some of the spoils from jewellers' or from banks. In the glare of the flames the white bloodstained faces wore a determined expression as they stood collecting their energies for some other atrocious outrage against their so-called enemies, the rich.

At the first menace of excesses, dwellers in the locality had left their houses and fled headlong for safety to other parts of the city. The majority escaped, but many fell into the hands of the rioters, and were treated with scant humanity. Men and women were struck down and robbed, even strangled or shot if they resisted. The scene was frightful--a terrible realisation of Anarchist prophecies that had rendered the authorities absolutely helpless. On the one hand, an enemy had landed on our sh.o.r.es with every chance of a successful march to London, while on the other the revolutionary spirit had broken out unmistakably among the criminal cla.s.s, and lawlessness and murder were everywhere rife.

The homes of the people were threatened by double disaster--by the attack of both enemy and "friend." The terrible bomb outrages and their appalling results had completely disorganised the police, and although reinforcements had been telegraphed for from every division in London, the number of men mustered at Scotland Yard was not yet sufficient to deal effectually with the irate and rapidly increasing mob.

As evening wore on the scenes in the streets around the Square were terrible. Pall Mall was congested by the angry mob who were wrecking the clubs, when suddenly the exultant cries were succeeded by terrified shrieks mingled with fierce oaths. Each man fought with his neighbour, and many men and women, crushed against iron railings, stood half suffocated and helpless. The National Gallery was burning fiercely, flames from the great burning pile shot high in the air, illuminating everything with their flood of crimson light, and the wind, blowing down the crowded thoroughfare, carried smoke, sparks, and heat with it.

Distant shrieks were heard in the direction of the Square, and suddenly the crowd surged wildly forward. Gaol-birds from the purlieus of Drury Lane robbed those who had valuables or money upon them, and committed brutal a.s.saults upon the unprotected. A moment later, however, there was a flash, and the deafening sound of firearms at close quarters was followed by the horrified shrieks of the yelling mob. Again and again the sound was repeated. Around them bullets whistled, and men and women fell forward dead and wounded with terrible curses upon their lips.

The 10th Hussars had just arrived from Hounslow, and having received hurried orders to clear away the rioters, were shooting them down like dogs, without mercy. On every hand cries of agony and despair rose above the tumult. Then a silence followed, for the street was thickly strewn with corpses.

CHAPTER VIII.

FATEFUL DAYS FOR THE OLD FLAG.

A cloudy moonless night, with a gusty wind which now and then swept the tops of the forest trees, causing the leaves to surge like a summer sea.

Withered branches creaked and groaned, and a dog howled dismally down in Flimwell village, half a mile away. Leaning with his back against the gnarled trunk of a giant oak on the edge of the forest, his ears alert for the slightest sound, his hand upon his loaded magazine rifle, Geoffrey Engleheart stood on outpost duty. Dressed in a rough shooting suit, with a deerstalker hat and an improvised kit strapped upon his back, he was half hidden by the tall bracken. Standing motionless in the deep shadow, with his eyes fixed upon the wide stretch of sloping meadows, he waited, ready, at the slightest appearance of the enemy's scouts, to raise the alarm and call to arms those who were sleeping in the forest after their day's march.