WILLIAM LE QUEUX: 15 Dystopian Novels & Espionage Thrillers (Illustrated Edition). William Le Queux
lost advantages. The metropolis was now seriously threatened; for soon after dawn on the following day two great French columns, one from Guildford and the other from Leatherhead, were advancing north towards the Thames! The enemy had established telegraphic communication between the two towns, and balloons that had been sent up from Guildford and Ashstead to reconnoitre had reported that the second line of the British defence had been formed from Kingston, through Wimbledon, Tooting, Streatham, and Upper Norwood, and thence across viâ Sydenham to Lewisham and Greenwich.
It was upon this second line of defence that the French, with their enormous force of artillery, now marched. The Leatherhead column, with their main body about one day's march behind, took the route through Epsom to Mitcham, while the troops from Guildford pushed on through Ripley, Cobham, and Esher.
This advance occupied a day, and when a halt was made for the night the enemy's front extended from Walton to Thames Ditton, thence across Kingston Common and Malden to Mitcham. Bivouacing, they faced the British second line of defence, and waited for the morrow to commence their onslaught. In London the alarming news of the enemy's success caused a panic such as had never before been experienced in the metropolis. During the long anxious weeks that the enemy had been held within bounds by our Volunteers, London had never fully realised what bombardment would mean. While the French were beyond the Surrey Hills, Londoners felt secure; and the intelligence received of the enemy's utter rout at Newcastle, Manchester, Edinburgh, and Glasgow added considerably to this sense of security.
London, alas! was starving. Business was suspended; trains no longer left the termini; omnibuses, trams, and cabs had ceased running, the horses having been pressed into military service, and those which had not had been killed and eaten. The outlook everywhere, even during those blazing sunny days and clear moonlit nights, was cheerless and dispiriting. The bright sun seemed strangely incongruous with the black war-clouds that overhung the gigantic city, with its helpless, starving, breathless millions.
In the sun-baked, dusty streets the roar of traffic no longer sounded, but up and down the principal thoroughfares of the City and the West End the people prowled, lean and hungry — emaciated victims of this awful struggle between nations — seeking vainly for food to satisfy the terrible pangs consuming them. The hollow cheek, the thin, sharp nose, the dark-ringed glassy eye of one and all, told too plainly of the widespread suffering, and little surprise was felt at the great mortality in every quarter.
In Kensington and Belgravia the distress was quite as keen as in Whitechapel and Hackney, and both rich and poor mingled in the gloomy, dismal streets, wandering aimlessly over the great Modern Babylon, which the enemy were now plotting to destroy.
The horrors of those intensely anxious days of terror were unspeakable. The whole machinery of life in the Great City had been disorganised, and now London lay like an octopus, with her long arms extended in every direction, north and south of the Thames, inert, helpless, trembling. Over the gigantic Capital of the World hung the dark Shadow of Death. By day and by night its ghastly presence could be felt; its hideous realities crushed the heart from those who would face the situation with smiling countenance. London's wealth availed her not in this critical hour.
Grim, spectral, unseen, the Destroying Angel held the sword over her, ready to strike!
CHAPTER XXXIV
LOOTING IN THE SUBURBS
While famished men crept into Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens and there expired under the trees of absolute hunger, and starving women with babes at their breasts sank upon doorsteps and died, the more robust Londoners had, on hearing of the enemy's march on the metropolis, gone south to augment the second line of defence. For several weeks huge barricades had been thrown up in the principal roads approaching London from the south. The strongest of these were opposite the Convalescent Home on Kingston Hill, in Coombe Lane close to Raynes Park Station, in the Morden Road at Merton Abbey, opposite Lynwood in the Tooting Road; while nearer London, on the same road, there was a strong one with machine guns on the crest of Balham Hill, and another in Clapham Road. At Streatham Hill, about one hundred yards from the hospital, earthworks had been thrown up, and several guns brought into position; while at Beulah Hill, Norwood, opposite the Post Office at Upper Sydenham, at the Half Moon at Herne Hill, and in many of the roads between Honor Oak and Denmark Hill, barricades had been constructed and banked up with bags and baskets filled with earth.
Though these defences were held by enthusiastic civilians of all classes, — professional men, artisans, and tradesmen, — yet our second line of defence, distinct, of course, from the local barricades, was a very weak one. We had relied upon our magnificent strategic positions on the Surrey Hills, and had not made sufficient provision in case of a sudden reverse. Our second line, stretching from Croydon up to South Norwood, thence to Streatham and along the railway line to Wimbledon and Kingston, was composed of a few battalions of Volunteers, detachments of Metropolitan police, Berks and Bucks constabulary, London firemen and postmen, the Corps of Commissionaires — in fact, every body of drilled men who could be requisitioned to handle revolver or rifle. These were backed by great bodies of civilians, and behind stood the barricades with their insignificant-looking but terribly deadly machine guns.
The railways had, on the first news of the enemy's success at Leatherhead and Guildford, all been cut up, and in each of the many bridges spanning the Thames between Kingston and the Tower great charges of gun-cotton had been placed, so that they might be blown up at any instant, and thus prevent the enemy from investing the city.
Day dawned again at last — dull and grey. It had rained during the night, and the roads, wet and muddy, were unutterably gloomy as our civilian defenders looked out upon them, well knowing that ere long a fierce attack would be made. In the night the enemy had been busy laying a field telegraph from Mitcham to Kingston, through which messages were now being continually flashed.
Suddenly, just as the British outposts were being relieved, the French commenced a vigorous attack, and in a quarter of an hour fighting extended along the whole line. Volunteers, firemen, policemen, Commissionaires, and civilians all fought bravely, trusting to one hope, namely, that before they were defeated the enemy would be outflanked and attacked in their rear by a British force from the Surrey Hills. They well knew that to effectually bar the advance of this great body of French was out of all question, yet they fought on with creditable tact, and in many instances inflicted serious loss upon the enemy's infantry.
Soon, however, French field guns were trained upon them, and amid the roar of artillery line after line of heroic Britons fell shattered to earth. Amid the rattle of musketry, the crackling of the machine guns, and the booming of 16-pounders, brave Londoners struggled valiantly against the masses of wildly excited Frenchmen; yet every moment the line became slowly weakened, and the defenders were gradually forced back upon their barricades. The resistance which the French met with was much more determined than they had anticipated; in fact, a small force of Volunteers holding the Mitcham Road, at Streatham, fought with such splendid bravery, that they succeeded alone and unaided in completely wiping out a battalion of French infantry, and capturing two field guns and a quantity of ammunition. For this success, however, they, alas! paid dearly, for a quarter of an hour later a large body of cavalry and infantry coming over from Woodlands descended upon them and totally annihilated them, with the result that Streatham fell into the hands of the French, and a few guns placed in the high road soon made short work of the earthworks near the hospital. Under the thick hail of bursting shells the brave band who manned the guns were at last compelled to abandon them, and the enemy were soon marching unchecked into Stockwell and Brixton, extending their right, with the majority of their artillery, across Herne Hill, Dulwich, and Honor Oak.
In the meantime a desperate battle was being fought around Kingston. The barricade on Kingston Hill held out for nearly three hours, but was at last captured by the invaders, and of those who had manned it not a man survived. Mitcham and Tooting had fallen in the first hour of the engagement, the barricade at Lynwood had been taken, and hundreds of the houses in Balham had been looted by the enemy in their advance into Clapham.
Nearly