WILLIAM LE QUEUX: 15 Dystopian Novels & Espionage Thrillers (Illustrated Edition). William Le Queux
Excited over their work of revenge, my guns' crews worked on with a contemptuous disregard for the withering fire being poured upon us from the land. They meant, they said, to teach the Frenchmen a lesson, and they certainly did. Around us shots from the batteries fell thickly, sending up huge columns of water. Suddenly a shell struck the Ramillies forward in front of the barbette, and burst like the rending of a thundercloud. The deck was torn up, a dozen men were maimed or killed, poor fellows! but the solid face of the barbette held its own, and the muzzles of our two great guns remained untouched.
"Several shots from the Nôtre Dame Fort and the Endoume Battery then struck us in quick succession. One was particularly disastrous, for, crashing into the battery on the port side, it burst, disabling one of the 6-inch guns, and killing the whole gun's crew in an instant. The effect was frightful, for the whole space around was wrecked, and not a man escaped.
"Such are the fortunes of war! A few moments later we turned our heavy guns upon the Endoume Battery, perched up upon the rocky headland, and together with the Empress of India and the Victorious thundered forth our great projectiles upon it in a manner which must have been terribly disconcerting. The battery replied vigorously at first, but the Nile, noticing the direction in which we had turned our attention, trained her guns upon the same fort, and let loose a perfect hail of devastating shell. Without ceasing for a second, we played upon it, and could distinguish even with the naked eye how completely we were destroying it, until half an hour later we found that the Frenchmen had ceased to reply. We had silenced their guns, and, in fact, totally wrecked the fort.
"Several of our vessels were, however, severely feeling the fire from the Nôtre Dame Fortress and that of St. Jean. Nearly one hundred men on board the Trafalgar had been killed; while two shots, entering one of the broadside batteries of the flagship, had caused frightful havoc, and had blown to atoms over forty men and three officers. A torpedo boat that had approached the French coast-defence ship just before she was captured had been sunk by a shot, but the crew were fortunately all rescued, after much difficulty, by the sloop Dolphin, which had severely suffered herself from the vigorous fire from the Batterie du Phare. The funnel of the Nile had been carried away by a shot from the Citadel, while among the more conspicuous British losses was a serious catastrophe which had occurred on board the Hood by the premature explosion of a torpedo, by which a sub-lieutenant and thirty-three men were launched into eternity, and sixteen men very severely wounded. The engines of the Arethusa were also broken.
"The smoke rising from the bombarded city increased every moment in density, and even in the daylight we could distinguish the flames. The centre of Marseilles was burning furiously, and the fire was now spreading unchecked. One of our objects had been to destroy the immense quantity of war stores, and in this we were entirely successful. We had turned our united efforts upon the Fort St. Jean down at the harbour entrance and that of Nôtre Dame high on the hill. Pounding away at these, time slipped by until the sun sank in a blaze of crimson and gold. Both forts made a gallant defence, but each of our shots went home, and through my glasses I watched the awful result. Suddenly a terrific report caused the whole city to tremble. One of our shots had apparently entered the powder magazine in the Fort St. Jean, and it had blown up, producing an appalling catastrophe from which the fortress could never recover.
"By this time the whole of the shipping in the docks was burning furiously, and the congested part of the city lying between the port and the Lyons Railway Station was like a huge furnace. The sight was one of terrible grandeur.
"Presently, just as the sun sank behind the grey night clouds, we ceased fire, and then gazed with calm satisfaction upon the result of our bombardment. We had treated a French city in the same manner as the French and Russians had treated our own homes, and we could look upon this scene of destruction and death without a pang of remorse. But that was not all. When our guns were silent we could distinctly hear vigorous rifle firing at the back of the city. Then we knew the truth.
"While we had been attacking Marseilles from the sea, the Italians, who a week before had crossed the frontier, and with the Germans occupied Lyons, had co-operated with us on land, and the terror-stricken Marseillais, hemmed in by fire and bullets on either side, had been swept away in thousands.
"The scenes in the streets were, we afterwards learnt, awful; and although the garrison offered a desperate resistance to the Italians along the valley near the Château des Fleurs, most of them were killed, and nearly three thousand of their number taken prisoners. But the Italians were unable to enter Marseilles themselves, as, long before they had succeeded in breaking up the land defences, we had set the place on fire, and now, as night fell, the great city was one mass of flames, the lurid light from which illuminated sky and sea with a bright red glare."
The blazing African sun was fading, flooding the calm sapphire Mediterranean with its blood-red afterglow. The air was oppressive, the wind blew hot from the desert, and shoals of tiny green birds were chattering before roosting in the oasis of tall date palms that cast long shadows over the sun-baked stones of the Place du Gouvernement at Algiers. Everything was of a dazzling whiteness, relieved only by the blue sky and sea. The broad, handsome Square was almost deserted, the jalousies of the European houses were still closed, and although a few people were sipping absinthe at the cafés, the siesta was not yet over.
At one corner of the Square the Mosque of Djama-el-Djedid, with its dome and minarets, stood out intensely white against the bright, cloudless sky, its spotless cleanliness causing the white-washed houses of Europeans to appear yellow and dingy; and as the mueddin stood on one of the minarets with arms uplifted, calling the Faithful to prayer, idle Moors and Arabs, who had been lying asleep in the shadow during the afternoon, rose quickly, rearranged their burnouses, and entered the Mosque in order to render thanks to Allah.
Darkness crept on after a brief twilight. Moorish women, wrapped in their white haicks, wearing their ugly baggy trousers, and veiled to the eyes, waddled along slowly and noiselessly among the palms, and gradually a gay cosmopolitan crowd assembled in the Place to enjoy the bel fresco after the terrible heat of the day, and to listen to the fine band of the 1st Zouaves, which had already taken up its stand in the centre of the Square, and was now playing one of Strauss's dreamy waltzes.
The night was bright and starlit, one of those calm, mystic evenings peculiar to North Africa. All was peaceful, but no moon had yet risen. The city wore its gay air of carelessness. White-robed Moors and red-fezzed Arabs, negroes from the Soudan, and Biskris in their blue burnouses, lounged, chattered, and promenaded, while the cafés and bazaars around were full of life, and the warm, balmy air was laden with the scent of flowers.
Suddenly, without warning, the whole place was illuminated by a brilliant light from the sea. Slowly it swept the town, and a few seconds later other bright beams shot forth, lighting up the quays, the terraces of white, flat-roofed houses, and the Moorish city on the hill. Then, before the promenaders could realise the cause, a loud booming was heard at sea, and almost at the same moment a shell fell, and, exploding in the midst of them, blew a dozen Moors and Arabs into atoms.
In a few seconds the cannonade increased, and the battery in the centre of the harbour replied. Then firing seemed to proceed from all quarters, and a storm of shell suddenly crashed upon the town with the most appalling effect.
British war-vessels had crept up within range, and were pouring the vials of Britain's wrath upon the ancient city of the Deys!
The detachment of vessels which, led by the new battleship Jupiter, went south from St. Tropez, had received instructions to destroy Algiers and return with all speed to Cagliari, in Sardinia, to await further instructions. The bombardment of the two cities simultaneously was in order to draw off the French Squadron from the position it had taken up near Gibraltar, so that the British could fight and then run past them into the Atlantic.
How far the manœuvre succeeded is shown in the few interesting details of the bombardment given in the course of an interview which a reporter of the Daily Telegraph had with