WILLIAM LE QUEUX: 15 Dystopian Novels & Espionage Thrillers (Illustrated Edition). William Le Queux
heavily; yet the cause of the British reverse was due solely to a defective administration. Hurriedly massed in the town from Aldershot by way of Guildford, they had, owing to the short-sighted policy of the War Office, arrived without a sufficient supply of either transport or ammunition. Night was falling as they detrained, and in the hopeless confusion battalion commanders could not find their brigade headquarters, and brigadiers could not find their staff.
This extraordinary muddle resulted in the fresh troops, instead of being sent forward to reinforce the outposts, being kept in town, while the jaded, ill-fed men, who had already been on the alert many hours, were utterly unable to resist the organised attack which was made before daybreak.
Though they made a gallant stand and fought on with desperate determination, yet at last the whole of them were driven back in confusion, and with appalling loss, upon their supports, and the latter, who held out bravely, were at last also compelled to fall back upon their reserves. The latter, which included half a battery of artillery stationed at Wood's Farm and Toll Bar, held the enemy in temporary check; but when the heavy French artillery was at length brought up, the invaders were enabled to cut the railway, destroy the half battery at Wood's Farm, turn the British right flank, and compel them to retreat hastily from Horsham and fly to defensive positions at Guildford and Dorking.
By this adroit manœuvre the enemy succeeded in taking over two hundred prisoners, capturing the guns of the 12-pounder field battery, — which had not been brought into play for the simple reason that only ammunition for 9-pounders had been collected in the town, — and seizing a large quantity of stores and ammunition of various kinds.
This success gave the enemy the key to the situation.
As on sea, so on land, our blundering defensive policy had resulted in awful disaster. Sufficient attention had never been paid to detail, and the firm-rooted idea that Britain could never be invaded had caused careless indifference to minor matters of vital importance to the stability of our Empire.
The contrast between the combined tactics of the enemy and those of our forces was especially noticeable when the cavalry patrol of the British flying column was captured on the Cowfield road and the column defeated. The commander of the column, a well-known officer, unfortunately, like many others, had had very little experience of combined tactics, and looked upon cavalry not merely as "the eyes and ears of an army," but as the army itself. It was this defect that was disastrous. For many years past it had never appeared quite clear whether British cavalry were intended to act en masse in warfare, or simply as scouts or mounted infantry, therefore their training had been uncertain. The Home establishment of our cavalry was supposed to be about 12,000 men, but owing to a parsimonious administration only about half that number had horses, and in some corps less than a half. Another glaring defect was the division of many regiments into detachments stationed in various towns, the inevitable result of this being that many such detachments were without regimental practice for months, and there were many who had not manœuvred with a force of all arms for years!
Army organisation proved a miserable failure.
The supply of ammunition was totally inadequate, and a disgrace to a nation which held its head above all others. It was true that depôts had been established at various centres, yet with strange oversight no provision had been made for the work of ammunition trains.
Originally it had been intended that men for this most important duty should be found by the Reserves, and that the horses should be those privately registered; nevertheless it was found necessary at the very last moment to weaken our artillery by detailing experienced men for duty with the ammunition column. Many of the horses which were registered for service were found to be totally unfit, and very few of the remainder had been previously trained. In the case of those which were required for the cavalry regiments — nearly six thousand — the best men in the regiments had to be told off at the very beginning of the invasion to hurriedly train and prepare these animals for service, when they should have been available to proceed to any part of the kingdom at twenty-four hours' notice. By such defects mobilisation was foredoomed to failure.
The scheme, instead of being so arranged as to be carried out without confusion, resulted in muddle and farcical humiliation.
Again, the infantry, owing to the recent departure of the Indian drafts, had been considerably weakened, many battalions being found on mobilisation very disorganised and inefficient. As an instance, out of one battalion at Aldershot, which was on paper 1000 strong, 200 had been sent away to India, while of the remainder more than half had only seen twelve months' service, and a large percentage were either under eighteen years of age or were "special enlistments," namely, below the minimum standard of height.
Such a battalion compared very unfavourably with the majority of Volunteer regiments, — those of the Stafford Brigade, for instance, — the average service of the men in those regiments being over five years, and the average age twenty-seven years. British officers had long ago foreseen all these defects, and many others, yet they had preserved an enforced silence. They themselves were very inefficiently trained in manœuvring, for, with one or two exceptions, there were no stations in the kingdom where forces were sufficiently numerous to give the majority of the superior officers practice in handling combined bodies of troops.
Thus in practical experience in the field they were far behind both French and Russians, and it was this very serious deficiency that now became everywhere apparent.
British troops, fighting valiantly, struggled to protect their native land, which they determined should never fall under the thrall of the invader. But alas! their resistance, though stubborn and formidable, was nevertheless futile. Time after time the lines of defence were broken.
The Russian Eagle spread his black wings to the sun, and with joyous shouts the dense grey white masses of the enemy marched on over the dusty Sussex roads northward towards the Thames.
After the battle of Horsham, the gigantic right column of the invaders, consisting mostly of French troops, followed up the defenders to Guildford and Dorking, preparatory to an attack upon London; while the left column, numbering 150,000 French and Russians of all arms, pushed on through Alfold to Haslemere, then through Farnham and Odiham to Swallowfield, all of which towns they sacked and burned, the terrified inhabitants being treated with scant mercy. As the majority of the defenders were massed in Kent, South Surrey, and Sussex, the enemy advanced practically unmolested, and at sunrise one morning a terrible panic was created in Reading by the sudden descent upon the town of a great advance guard of 10,000 Russians.
The people were appalled. They could offer no resistance against the cavalry, who, tearing along the straight high road from Swallowfield, swept down upon them. Along this road the whole gigantic force was moving, and the Cossack skirmishers, spurring on across the town, passed away through the Railway Works, and halted at the bridge that spans the Thames at Caversham. They occupied it at once, in order to prevent it being blown up before the main body arrived, and a brisk fight ensued with the small body of defenders that had still remained at the Brigade depôt on the Purley Road.
Meanwhile, as the French and Russian advance guard came along, they devastated the land with fire and sword. The farms along the road were searched, and afterwards set on fire, while not a house at Three Mile Cross escaped. Entering the town from Whitley Hill, the great mass of troops, working in extended order, came slowly on, and, followed by 140,000 of the main body and 1000 guns, carried everything before them.
No power could stem the advancing tide of the Muscovite legions, and as they poured into the town in dense compact bodies, hundreds of townspeople were shot down ruthlessly, merely because they attempted to defend their homes. From the Avenue Works away to the Cemetery, and from the Railway Station to Leighton Park, the streets swarmed with soldiers of the Tsar, who entered almost every house in search of plunder, and fired out of sheer delight in bloodshed upon hundreds who were flying for their lives.
Men, women, even children, were slaughtered. The massacre was frightful. Neither life nor property was respected; in every thoroughfare brutal outrages and murders were committed, and English homes were rendered desolate.
Almost the first buildings attacked were the great factories of Messrs. Huntley & Palmer,