FROM LILLE TO NIEUPORT.
By far the most important place between the Aisne and the coast of
Belgium is Lille, which is less than eight miles from Armentières. In
Lille we find ourselves in a city of more than 200,000 inhabitants,
which was formerly the capital of French Flanders. It stands in the
well-watered and very fertile plain of the Deule,[11] a navigable
tributary of the Lys, and is connected with all the rivers of the
district by a bewildering network of canals. Formerly it was considered
to be a fortress of the first class, and its citadel was said to be the
masterpiece of Vauban,[12] the great military engineer. He was a soldier
of the Spanish army, who was taken prisoner by the French, and was
induced by them to join the French service. His life was chiefly spent
in making and besieging fortresses. He conducted no less than forty
sieges, took part in more than three hundred combats, and built or
helped to build one hundred and sixty fortresses.
For ages Lille has been a storm-centre of war. It has been so frequently
mishandled by besiegers that the Church of St. Maurice is the only
building of importance which has survived from the Middle Ages. Lille is
the greatest industrial centre of North France, and its linen, woollen,
and cotton factories, its oil and sugar refineries, its chemical works
and great engineering and motor shops are of the utmost importance. It
is a handsome place, with many fine public buildings, and its picture
gallery is famous all over Europe because it contains some of the best
work of the Flemish and Dutch schools.
You can now understand why Lille is a great prize of war. We shall read
later that it was captured by the Germans. Its loss was a great blow to
the Allies, because it not only controls seven railway lines and a great
network of roads, but contains engineering and motor shops, which
enabled the enemy to carry out important repairs and to manufacture many
necessary implements of war within a mile or two of his front. Further,
when Lille was lost, the proceeds of its manufacturing activity went to
the Germans, and this rich, busy city thenceforth contributed nothing to
the war expenses of France.
A little to the north-east of Lille are two other large manufacturing
towns in the midst of one of the busiest industrial districts of France.
Roubaix[13] is the first of these, and Tourcoing[14] is the second. In
Belgium, a few miles north-west of Tourcoing, is the much smaller
industrial town of Menin,[15] which stands on the Lys where the main
road from Bruges crosses the river on the way to Lille.
North of the Lys we are in another world. We have left behind us the
ugly pit mounds, the grimy towns, and the smoke of factories. We are now
in West Flanders, in a countryside of market gardens, where every inch
of ground is closely tilled, and the fields are laid out like a
chessboard. There are many patches of woodland, some of them, such as
the Forest of Houthulst, six or seven miles north of Ypres, being fairly
large. West Flanders is not naturally fertile, but its dairy farmers and
market gardeners, by dint of the greatest industry, have turned it into
a rich and productive land. Six or seven hundred years ago its wealth
came from a different source. Its cities were then bustling hives, in
which most of the woollen cloth used in Europe was spun and woven.
[Illustration: The Cloth Hall at Ypres before Bombardment.]
The busiest and wealthiest of these cities was Ypres, which stands about
twelve miles north of Armentières. In the thirteenth and fourteenth
centuries there were some four hundred guilds of cloth manufacturers in
the place, and its people numbered more than 200,000. So famous was its
cloth that we find the English poet Chaucer[16] referring to it in his
_Canterbury Tales_. His Wife of Bath, who was one of the pilgrims, was a
cloth manufacturer, and Chaucer tells us that her wares "passed them of
Ypres and of Gaunt" (Ghent). Before the war broke out Ypres was a little
town of less than 18,000 people, and its industries were represented by
its butter market and its small manufactures of lace and linen. But
within it, as in the other ancient cities of Belgium, were some of the
most glorious old buildings in all the world--the houses of the rich old
burghers, the halls in which they met to transact their business, and
the churches in which they thanked God for their prosperity. They spent
their money lavishly on these buildings and filled them with treasures
of art.
The glory of Ypres, prior to the war, was the Cloth Hall, the largest
and finest edifice of its kind in Belgium. It was begun in 1200, and was
more than a hundred years a-building. The front was 433 feet in length,
and the building consisted of three stories, with a high-pitched roof
broken by dormer windows. The niches of the top story were filled with
statues of Flemish counts and celebrated inhabitants of the city. On the
south side rose a massive belfry, with pinnacles at the angles. The east
side of the hall was formed by the so-called Nieuwerk, one of the most
beautiful buildings of its kind. I am obliged to describe the Cloth Hall
of Ypres in the past tense, for unhappily it is now in ruins. Ypres had
also a very fine cathedral, a meat hall, and a large number of old
houses with carved wooden fronts. They, too, have been destroyed, more
or less, by shot and shell.
In the days of its greatness Ypres, like Manchester of to-day, needed a
waterway to the sea, so that it could rapidly and cheaply import wool
from abroad, and export its finished cloth to distant markets. Ypres
stands on a little river which is a tributary of the river Yser, a
stream almost unknown to Britons before the war began, but now inscribed
on the pages of history. The Yser rises to the west of Cassel, and flows
in a curving course to enter the sea near Nieuport. A canal was cut from
Ypres to the Yser, which was itself canalized, and thus the city
provided itself with a waterway to the sea.
On the canal, twelve or thirteen miles north of Ypres, is the village of
Dixmude,[17] which is also one of the "dead cities" of Belgium. Its
fine Grand' Place, its noble Church of St. Nicholas, its Gothic town
hall, and its heavily shuttered stone houses, show us that it was
formerly a place of wealth and importance. Now, says a recent writer,
"its eleven hundred inhabitants might easily stand in a corner of the
Grand' Place. The passer-by--there is rarely more than one--disturbs the
silence, and one hears scarcely any sounds save the chimes in the tower
or the cooing of doves on the cornices." Alas! since the tide of war
rolled into this part of Belgium, those inhabitants who remain have
continuously been deafened by the roar of great guns, and the towers
from which the chimes rang out and the cornices on which the doves cooed
have been levelled with the ground.
Nieuport, the outport of Ypres, is the last of the towns in this region
to which I shall call your attention. It stands about two miles from the
mouth of the Yser, and, like Ypres and Dixmude, is only a relic of what
it once was. About 4,000 people were dwelling in it before the war broke
out, but its long, silent streets, with their massive houses, showed
plainly that it was formerly a populous and busy place. In the
thirteenth and fourteenth centuries its quays were thronged with ships
discharging wool from England for the looms of Ypres, or filling their
holds with the fine cloth made in the old city. Before the war, Nieuport
still retained its cloth hall, town hall, and venerable Gothic church as
memorials of this busy and prosperous time. When the trade of Ypres
departed, Nieuport fell into decline. Prior to the war it was a small,
quiet place, visited by a few ships and by occasional tourists.
Everybody knows it now as the scene of battles which will change the
destiny of the world. Beyond Nieuport are the great sand dunes which
line the coast of Belgium, and extend as far west as Calais. From the
top of the dunes we look out on the restless and shallow waters of the
North Sea.
We have now traversed the region over which warfare was to rage for many
months to come.
* * * * *
Before I close this chapter, let me remind you that the whole region
between Arras and the North Sea is filled with historical memories of
former warfare. This is by no means the first time that the British have
fought in West Flanders and Artois. Marlborough,[18] for example, fought
the greatest of his campaigns in this region, during the long struggle
between Louis XIV. of France and the allied forces of England, Holland,
and Austria. I am going to tell you about these campaigns in some
detail, because they have features greatly resembling those of the
present struggle.
Marlborough's great aim, was to recapture the valleys of the Lys and the
Scheldt, which in the year 1708 were in the possession of the French.
These rivers were then all-important, because they were the great lines
of communication for armies fighting in Flanders and North France. It
was by means of the rivers that food and munitions were brought to the
soldiers and the heavy guns were moved from place to place. What
railways are to modern commanders, navigable rivers were to generals in
the long ages before steam.
All the fortresses on the Scheldt were in the hands of the French,
except Oudenarde,[19] which you will find on the accompanying map,
thirty miles to the east of Ypres. At the time when our story opens,
Oudenarde was about to be attacked by the French. Marlborough made a
wonderful forced march, and fell upon them as they were advancing
towards the fortress. By nightfall on July 11, 1708, he had won a great
victory, and the remnants of the French army had fallen back in disorder
to Ghent. While Marlborough was waiting for reinforcements to come up,
some of his troops seized a French position near Ypres, and his main
army encamped near Menin.
Marlborough now proposed to besiege Lille, the greatest fortress on the
road to Paris. He could not bring his siege train by way of the river,
so it had to lumber slowly along the roads, and while doing so was in
great danger of being captured by the enemy. Thanks, however, to his
skilful arrangements, his heavy guns arrived safely, and then the siege
began in real earnest. Lille was very strongly fortified, and was
garrisoned by 15,000 men. While the siege was in progress a French army
of more than 100,000 men marched to its succour; but so strongly was
Marlborough posted that it did not dare to attack him. Instead of doing
so it fell back behind the Scheldt, so as to cut off Marlborough's
forces from Brussels. As, however, he still held Ostend, he was able to
get supplies from England.
The French now tried to seize Ostend, so that Marlborough might be cut
off from the sea and bottled up. He sent forces against them; but the
French fell back before him and opened the sluices of the canals, thus
flooding much of the country between him and the sea. A little later
they succeeded in capturing Nieuport, and Marlborough was cut off from
Ostend.
On 9th December Lille surrendered after the garrison had lost 8,000 men,
and the besiegers not less than 14,000. Marlborough also captured Ghent,
and at the end of December 1708 the French left Flanders altogether, and
retired into their own territory. Thus the valleys of the Lys and
Scheldt were recovered.
[Illustration: Map illustrating Marlborough's Campaigns in Artois and
West Flanders.]
Before I proceed with the story of Marlborough's campaigns, let me point
out that during the race to the sea there was a similar struggle between
the Allies and the Germans for the possession of the same valleys. The
Allies were hastening north in order to push across the Lys and Scheldt
and cut the German communications. Unhappily the Germans moved
northwards so rapidly that this was impossible. Further, when Antwerp
fell, a German army was released which made a great effort to outflank
the Allies by way of the coast. Each side foiled the other, and the
result was the long trench war which will be described in future pages.
Now let us return to our muttons. In the spring of 1709 Marlborough, who
was now in possession of Lille proposed to march on Paris. The French
knew that if he could seize Arras he would possess the gate to the
capital. They therefore prepared to block his way by strongly
entrenching themselves on a line extending from Douai,[20] which lies on
the Scarpe about fourteen miles north-east of Arras, to Béthune. These
trenches passed through La Bassée, where, as you know, the French and
the British joined hands during the race to the sea in October 1914.
Marlborough found these lines too strong to be carried by direct
assault, so he turned aside and besieged Tournai, the town in which
French Territorials, assisted by a British battery, made a very gallant
stand on August 24, 1914.[21] Tournai surrendered after a siege of about
thirty-seven days, and then Marlborough marched on Mons, the place where
von Kluck, on August 23, 1914, vainly endeavoured to overwhelm the
British.[22]
[Illustration: The Battle of Malplaquet (September 11, 1709).
(_From the picture by Jan van Huchtenburgh_).]
While Marlborough was besieging Mons, the French, fearing that the
fortress would suffer the fate of Lille and Tournai, marched an army
against him. They entrenched themselves in a strong position on the edge
of the broken and wooded country which fills the angle between two small
rivers which unite at Mons, and were there attacked by Marlborough on
September 11, 1709. After what he calls "a very murderous battle" the
French were outflanked and their centre was broken through. The British
encamped the following night on the French position, but they had lost
so many men that they were unable to advance any further that year. You
will find this victory referred to in your history books as the Battle
of Malplaquet.[23]
[Illustration: John Churchill, first Duke of Marlborough.
(_Photo by Walker and Cockerell, from the painting in the National
Portrait Gallery._)]
In April 1710 the campaign was resumed. Douai was captured, but Arras
and the road to France were found to be protected by a line of trenches
which foiled even Marlborough. Béthune and other places fell into his
hands; but during the winter the French extended their trenches from
Namur on the east right to the coast, and the barrier seemed
impregnable. In 1711, however, Marlborough carried out a series of
movements which are said to be the most wonderful in the whole history
of tactics. Early in August he approached the French lines as if about
to attack Arras. The French massed their forces to meet him, and in
order to do so had to weaken their hold on the trenches farther east.
Suddenly, on the same night, Marlborough made a forced march of thirteen
leagues to the left. Many of his men dropped from fatigue, but with the
remainder he seized a portion of the trenches, and was behind the French
lines while the French army was still awaiting his attack on Arras. He
had completely outwitted the French general, though, for various
reasons, he was unable to take further advantage of his success.
The French trenches of which you have just read ran, roughly, east and
west, and were meant to stop an advance on Paris from the north. During
the race to the sea the rival armies were moving from the south to the
north. Each was trying to outflank the other. The Allies wished to
strike eastwards, and the Germans westwards, and the result was that the
lines of trenches in which they opposed each other ran from north to
south.
[Footnote 11: _Dool._]
[Footnote 12: _Vō-bān´_, born 1633, died 1707.]
[Footnote 13: _Roo-bay´._]
[Footnote 14: _Toor-kwan´_ (_n_ nasal).]
[Footnote 15: _Meh-nan´_ (_n_ nasal).]
[Footnote 16: Chaucer, "the morning star of English song," born 1340,
died 1400.]
[Footnote 17: _Diks-müd´._]
[Footnote 18: The most brilliant, and perhaps the greatest, of all
English generals, specially famous for his genius in tactics; born 1650,
died 1722. (See _Highroads of History_, Book VI., Chaps. VII. and
VIII.). Mr. Winston Churchill (First Lord of the Admiralty from October
1911 to May 1915) is a direct descendant of the great general.]
[Footnote 19: _Ow-den-ar´deh._]
[Footnote 20: _Doo-ay´._]
[Footnote 21: See Vol. II., p. 107.]
[Footnote 22: See Vol. II., pp. 26 ff.]
[Footnote 23: _Mal-Pla-kay´._]