and in the forts, where several of the guns had been rendered useless and a number of men had been killed. Hostilities had commenced.
Never during the century had such scenes been witnessed in the streets of London as on that memorable Sunday morning. The metropolis was thrilled.
Dawn was spreading, saffron tints were in the sky heralding the sun's coming. Yet Regent Street, Piccadilly, and the Strand, usually entirely deserted at that hour on a Sabbath morning, were crowded as if it were midday.
Everywhere there was excitement. Crowds waited in front of the newspaper offices in Fleet Street, boys with strident voices sold the latest editions of the papers, men continued their snatches of patriotic ballads, while women were blanched and scared, and children clung to their mothers' skirts timidly, vaguely fearing an unknown terror.
The shadow of coming events was black and dim, like a funeral pall. The fate of our Empire hung upon a thread.
Twenty-four hours ago England was smiling, content in the confidence of its perfect safety and immunity from invasion; yet all the horrors of war had, with a startling, appalling suddenness, fallen and bewildered it. The booming of French cannon at Newhaven formed the last salute of many a brave Briton who fell shattered and lifeless.
As the sun rose crimson from the grey misty sea, the work of destruction increased in vigour. From the turrets of the floating monsters smoke and flame poured forth in continuous volume, while shot and shell were hurled into the town of Newhaven, which, it was apparent, was the centre of the enemy's attack, and where, owing to the deepening of the harbour, troops could effect a landing under cover of the fire from the ironclads.
Frightful havoc was wrought by the shells among the houses of the little town, and one falling on board the Brighton Railway Company's mail steamer Paris, lying alongside the station quay, set her on fire. In half an hour railway station and quays were blazing furiously, while the flames leaped up about the ship, wrapping themselves about the two white funnels and darting from every porthole.
The Custom House opposite quickly ignited, and the inflammable nature of its contents caused the fire to assume enormous proportions. Meanwhile the bombardment was kept up, the forts on shore still replying with regularity, steadiness, and precision, and the armoured coast train of the 1st Sussex 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 glass of which were a number of mysterious marks. This glass 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 glass. Suddenly he saw a French gunboat, after a series of smartly-executed manœuvres, 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 shores practically unprotected!
CHAPTER VI
LANDING OF THE FRENCH IN SUSSEX
The Briton is, alas! too prone 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 shelling 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 Hôtel Métropole stood a great gaunt ruin. Shells had carried large portions of the noble 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 shells 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 shells 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 shells 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 débris. 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 débris, or had their limbs shattered by flying pieces of shell.
The situation was awful. The incessant thunder of cannon, the screaming of shells 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