WILLIAM LE QUEUX: 15 Dystopian Novels & Espionage Thrillers (Illustrated Edition). William Le Queux
base, and made such a hole in the huge pile of masonry that it was soon seen to have been rendered unsafe, though it did not fall.
Shot after shot struck other portions of the Houses of Parliament, breaking the windows and carrying away pinnacles.
One of the twin towers of Westminster Abbey fell a few moments later, and another shell, crashing into the choir, completely wrecked Edward the Confessor’s shrine, the Coronation chair, and all the objects of antiquity in the vicinity.
The old Horse Guards escaped injury, but one of the cupolas of the new War Office opposite was blown away, while shortly afterwards a fire broke out in the new Local Government Board and Education Offices. Number 10 Downing Street, the chief centre of the Government, had its windows all blown in — a grim accident, no doubt — the same explosion shattering several windows in the Foreign Office.
Many shells fell in St. James’s and Hyde Parks, exploding harmlessly, but others, passing across St. James’s Park, crashed into that high building, Queen Anne’s Mansions, causing fearful havoc. Somerset House, Covent Garden Market, Drury Lane Theatre, and the Gaiety Theatre and Restaurant all suffered more or less, and two of the bronze footguards guarding the Wellington Statue at Hyde Park Corner were blown many yards away. Around Holborn Circus immense damage was being caused, and several shells bursting on the Viaduct itself blew great holes in the bridge.
So widespread, indeed, was the havoc, that it is impossible to give a detailed account of the day’s terrors. If the public buildings suffered, the damage to property of householders and the ruthless wrecking of quiet English homes may well be imagined. The people had been driven out from the zone of fire, and had left their possessions to the mercy of the invaders.
South of the Thames very little damage was done. The German howitzers and long-range guns could not reach so far. One or two shots fell in York Road, Lambeth, and in the Waterloo and Westminster Bridge Roads, but they did little damage beyond the breaking of all the windows in the vicinity.
When would it end? Where would it end?
Half the population of London had fled across the bridges, and from Denmark Hill, Champion Hill, Norwood, and the Crystal Palace they could see the smoke issuing from the hundred fires.
London was cowed. Those northern barricades, still held by bodies of valiant men, were making a last desperate stand, though the streets ran with blood. Every man fought well and bravely for his country, though he went to his death. A thousand acts of gallant heroism on the part of Englishmen were done that day, but, alas! all to no purpose. The Germans were at our gates, and were not to be denied.
As daylight commenced to fade the dust and smoke became suffocating. And yet the guns pounded away with a monotonous regularity that appalled the helpless populace. Overhead there was a quick whizzing in the air, a deafening explosion, and as masonry came crashing down the atmosphere was filled with poisonous fumes that half asphyxiated all those in the vicinity.
Hitherto the enemy had treated us, on the whole, humanely, but finding that desperate resistance in the northern suburbs, Von Kronhelm was carrying out the Emperor’s parting injunction. He was breaking the pride of our own dear London, even at the sacrifice of thousands of innocent lives.
The scenes in the streets within that zone of awful fire baffled description. They were too sudden, too dramatic, too appalling. Death and destruction were everywhere, and the people of London now realised for the first time what the horrors of war really meant.
Dusk was falling. Above the pall of smoke from the burning buildings the sun was setting with a blood-red light. From the London streets, however, this evening sky was darkened by the clouds of smoke and dust. Yet the cannonade continued, each shell that came hurtling through the air exploding with deadly effect and spreading destruction on all hands.
Meanwhile the barricades at the north had not escaped Von Kronhelm’s attention. About four o’clock he gave orders by field telegraph for certain batteries to move down and attack them.
This was done soon after five o’clock, and when the German guns began to pour their deadly rain of shell into those hastily improvised defences there commenced a slaughter of the gallant defenders that was horrible. At each of the barricades shell after shell was directed, and very quickly breaches were made. Then upon the defenders themselves the fire was directed — a withering, awful fire from quick-firing guns which none could withstand. The streets, with their barricades swept away, were strewn with mutilated corpses. Hundreds upon hundreds had attempted to make a last stand, rallied by the Union Jack they waved above, but a shell exploding in their midst had sent them to instant eternity.
Many a gallant deed was done that day by patriotic Londoners in defence of their homes and loved ones — many a deed that should have earned the V.C. — but in nearly all cases the patriot who had stood up and faced the foe had gone to straight and certain death.
Till seven o’clock the dull roar of the guns in the north continued, and people across the Thames knew that London was still being destroyed, nay pulverised. Then with one accord came a silence — the first silence since the hot noon.
Von Kronhelm’s field telegraph at Jack Straw’s Castle had ticked the order to cease firing.
All the barricades had been broken.
London lay burning — at the mercy of the German eagle.
And as the darkness fell the German Commander-in-Chief looked again through his glasses, and saw the red flames leaping up in dozens of places, where whole blocks of shops and buildings, public institutions, whole streets in some cases, were being consumed.
London — the proud capital of the world, the “home” of the Englishman — was at last ground beneath the iron heel of Germany!
And all, alas! due to one cause alone — the careless insular apathy of the Englishman himself!
CHAPTER VI
FALL OF LONDON
Outside London the September night had settled down on the blood-stained field of battle. With a pale light the moon had risen, partly hidden by chasing clouds, her white rays mingling with the lurid glare of the fires down in the great terrified metropolis below. Northward, from Hampstead across to Barnet — indeed, over that wide district where the final battle had been so hotly fought — the moonbeams shone upon the pallid faces of the fallen.
Along the German line of investment there had now followed upon the roar of battle an uncanny silence.
Away to the west, however, there was still heard the growling of distant conflict, now mounting into a low crackling of musketry fire, and again dying away in muffled sounds. The last remnant of the British Army was being hotly pursued in the direction of Staines.
London was invested and bombarded, but not yet taken.
For a long time the German Field-Marshal had stood alone upon Hampstead Heath apart from his staff, watching the great tongues of flame leaping up here and there in the distant darkness. His grey, shaggy brows were contracted, his thin aquiline face thoughtful, his hard mouth twitching nervously, unable to fully conceal the strain of his own feelings as conqueror of the English. Von Kronhelm’s taciturnity had long ago been proverbial. The Kaiser had likened him to Moltke, and declared that “he could be silent in seven languages.” His gaze was one of musing, and yet he was the most active of men, and perhaps the cleverest strategist in all Europe. Often during the campaign he had astonished his aides-de-camp by his untiring energy, for sometimes he would even visit the outposts in person. On many occasions he had actually crept up to the most advanced posts at great personal risk to himself, so anxious had he been to see with his own eyes. Such visits from the Field-Marshal himself were not always exactly welcome to the German outposts, who, as soon as they showed the least sign of commotion consequent upon the visit, were at once swept by a withering English fire.
Yet he now stood there — the conqueror. And