Part 4 (1/2)
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 s.h.i.+ps; 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 flags.h.i.+p, 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 s.h.i.+ps 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 s.h.i.+p _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 wars.h.i.+ps 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 astonis.h.i.+ng 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.