THE PATH OF CONQUEST.
This narrative does not in any sense pretend to be a detailed history
of the war, but only of such phases of it as more immediately concern
the working out of those deep-laid and marvellously-contrived plans
designed by their author to culminate in nothing less than the
collapse of the existing fabric of Society, and the upheaval of the
whole basis of civilisation.
It will therefore be impossible to follow the troops of the Alliance
and the League through the different campaigns which were being
simultaneously carried out in different parts of Europe. The most
that can be done will be to present an outline of the leading events
which, operating throughout a period of nearly three months, prepared
the way for the final catastrophe in which the tremendous issues of
the world-war were summed up.
The fall of Berlin was the first decisive blow that had been struck
during the war. Under it the federation of kingdoms and states which
had formed the German Empire fell asunder almost instantly, and the
whole fabric collapsed like a broken bubble. The shock was felt
throughout the length and breadth of Europe, and it was immediately
seen that nothing but a miracle could save the whole of Central
Europe from falling into the hands of the League.
Its immediate results were the surrender of Magdeburg, Brunswick,
Hanover, and Bremen. Hamburg, strongly garrisoned by British and
German troops, supported by a powerful squadron in the Elbe, and
defended by immense fortifications on the landward side, alone
returned a flat defiance to the summons of the Tsar. The road to the
westward, therefore, lay entirely open to his victorious troops. As
for Hamburg, it was left for the present under the observation of a
corps of reconnaissance to be dealt with when its time came.
When Berlin fell the position of affairs in Europe may be briefly
described as follows:--The French army had taken the field nearly
five millions strong, and this immense force had been divided into an
Army of the North and an Army of the East. The former, consisting of
about two millions of men, had been devoted to the attack on the
British and German forces holding an almost impregnable position
behind the chain of huge fortresses known at present as the Belgian
Quadrilateral.
This Army of the North, doubtless acting in accordance with the
preconceived schemes of operations arranged by the leaders of the
League, had so far contented itself with a series of harassing
attacks upon different points of the Allied position, and had made no
forward movement in force. The Army of the East, numbering nearly
three million men, and divided into fifteen army corps, had crossed
the German frontier immediately on the outbreak of the war, and at
the same moment that the Russian Armies of the North and South had
crossed the eastern Austro-German frontier, and the Italian army had
forced the passes of the Tyrol.
The whole of the French fleet of war-balloons had been attached to
the Army of the East with the intention, which had been realised
beyond the most sanguine expectations, of overrunning and subjugating
Central Europe in the shortest possible space of time. It had swept
like a destroying tempest through the Rhine Provinces, leaving
nothing in its track but the ruins of towns and fortresses, and wide
wastes of devastated fields and vineyards.
Before the walls of Munich it had effected a junction with the
Italian army, consisting of ten army corps, numbering two million
men. The ancient capital of Bavaria fell in three days under the
assault of the aërial fleet and the overwhelming numbers of the
attacking force. Then the Franco-Italian armies advanced down the
valley of the Danube and invested Vienna, which, in spite of the
heroic efforts of what had been left of the Austrian army after the
disastrous conflicts on the Eastern frontier, was stormed and sacked
after three days and nights of almost continuous fighting, and the
most appalling scenes of bloodshed and destruction, four days after
the surrender of the German Emperor to the Tsar had announced the
collapse of what had once been the Triple Alliance.
From Vienna the Franco-Italian armies continued their way down the
valley of the Danube, and at Budapest was joined by the northern
division of the Russian Army of the South, and from there the mighty
flood of destruction rolled south-eastward until it overflowed the
Balkan peninsula, sweeping everything before it as it went, until it
joined the force investing Constantinople.
The Turkish army, which had retreated before it, had concentrated
upon Gallipoli, where, in conjunction with the allied British and
Turkish Squadrons holding the Dardanelles, it prepared to advance to
the relief of Constantinople.
The final attack upon the Turkish capital had been purposely delayed
until the arrival of the French war-balloons, and as soon as these
appeared upon the scene the work of destruction instantly
recommenced. After four days of bombardment by sea and land, and from
the air, and a rapid series of what can only be described as
wholesale butcheries, the ancient capital of the Sultan shared the
fate of Berlin and Vienna, and after four centuries and a half the
Turkish dominion in Europe died in its first stronghold.
Meanwhile one of the wings of the Franco-Italian army had made a
descent upon Gallipoli, and after forty-eight hours' incessant
fighting had compelled the remnant of the Turkish army, which it thus
cut off from Constantinople, to take refuge on the Turkish and
British men-of-war under the protection of the guns of the fleet. In
view of the overwhelming numbers of the enemy, and the terrible
effectiveness of the war-balloons, it was decided that any attempt to
retake Constantinople, or even to continue to hold the Dardanelles,
could only result in further disaster.
The forts of the Dardanelles were therefore evacuated and blown up,
and the British and Turkish fleet, with the remains of the Turkish
army on board, steamed southward to Alexandria to join forces with
the British Squadron that was holding the northern approaches to the
Suez Canal. There the Turkish troops were landed, and the Allied
fleets prepared for the naval battle which the release of the Russian
Black Sea Squadron, through the opening of the Dardanelles, was
considered to have rendered inevitable.
Five days later was fought a second battle of the Nile, a battle
compared with which the former conflict, momentous as it had been,
would have seemed but child's play. On the one side Admiral
Beresford, in command of the Mediterranean Squadron, had collected
every available ship and torpedo-boat to do battle for the defence of
the all-important Suez Canal, and opposed to him was an immense
armament formed by the junction of the Russian Black Sea Squadron
with the Franco-Italian fleet, or rather those portions of it which
had survived the attacks, or eluded the vigilance of the British
Admiral.
The battle, fought almost on the ancient battle-ground of Nelson and
Collingwood, was incomparably the greatest sea-fight in the history
of war.
The fleet under Admiral Beresford's command consisted of fifty-five
battleships of the first and second class, forty-six armoured and
seventy-two unarmoured cruisers, fifty-four gunboats, and two hundred
and seventy torpedo-boats; while the Franco-Italian Allied fleets
mustered between them forty-six battleships, seventy-five armoured
and sixty-three unarmoured cruisers, forty gunboats, and two hundred
and fifty torpedo-boats.
The battle began soon after sundown on the 24th of August, and raged
continuously for over sixty hours. The whole issue of the fight was
the question of the command of the Mediterranean, and the British
line of communication with India and the East _viâ_ the Suez Canal.
The prize was well worthy of the tremendous struggle that the two
contending forces waged for it; and from the two Admirals in command
to the boys employed on the most insignificant duties about the
ships, every one of the combatants seemed equally impressed with the
magnitude of the momentous issues at stake.
To the League, victory meant a deadly blow inflicted upon the only
enemy now seriously to be reckoned with. It meant the severing of the
British Empire into two portions, and the cutting of the one
remaining channel of supply upon which the heart of the Empire now
depended for its nutrition. To destroy Admiral Beresford's fleet
would be to achieve as great a triumph on the sea as the armies of
the League had achieved on land by the taking of Berlin, Vienna, and
Constantinople. On the other hand, the defeat of the Franco-Italian
fleets meant complete command of the Mediterranean, and the ability
to destroy in detail all the important sea-board fortresses and
arsenals of the League that were situated on its shores.
It meant the keeping open of the Suez Canal, the maintenance of
communication with India and Australia by the shortest route, and,
what was by no means the least important consideration, the
vindication of British prestige in Egypt, the Soudan, and India. It
was with these enormous gains and losses before their eyes that the
two forces engaged and fought as perhaps men had never fought with
each other in the world before. Everything that science and
experience could suggest was done by the leaders of both sides. Human
life was counted as nothing in the balance, and deeds of the most
reckless heroism were performed in countless instances as the mighty
struggle progressed.
With such inflexible determination was the battle waged on either
side, and so appalling was the destruction accomplished by the
weapons brought into play, that by sunrise on the morning of the
27th, more than half the opposing fleets had been destroyed, and of
the remainder the majority were so crippled that a continuance of the
fight had become a matter of physical impossibility.
What advantage remained appeared to be on the side of the remains of
the Franco-Italian fleet; but this was speedily negatived an hour
after sunrise by the appearance of a fresh British Squadron,
consisting of the five battleships, fifteen cruisers, and a large
flotilla of gunboats and torpedo-boats which had passed through the
Canal during the night from Aden and Suakim, and appeared on the
scene just in time to turn the tide of battle decisively in favour of
the British Admiral.
As soon as this new force got into action it went to work with
terrible effectiveness, and in three hours there was not a single
vessel that was still flying the French or Italian flag. The victory
had, it is true, been bought at a tremendous price, but it was
complete and decisive, and at the moment that the last of the ships
of the League struck her flag, Admiral Beresford stood in the same
glorious position as Sir George Rodney had done a hundred and
twenty-two years before, when he saved the British Empire in the
ever-memorable victory of the 12th of April 1782.
The triumph in the Mediterranean was, however, only a set-off to a
disaster which had occurred more than five weeks previously in the
Atlantic. The Russian fleet, which had broken the blockade of the
Sound, with the assistance of the _Lucifer_, had, after coaling at
Aberdeen, made its way into the Atlantic, and there, in conjunction
with the Franco-Italian fleets operating along the Atlantic steamer
route, had, after a series of desperate engagements, succeeded in
breaking up the line of British communication with America and
Canada.
This result had been achieved mainly in consequence of the contrast
between the necessary methods of attack and defence. On the one hand,
Britain had been compelled to maintain an extended line of ocean
defence more than three thousand miles in length, and her ships had
further been hampered by the absolute necessity of attending, first,
to the protection of the Atlantic liners, and, secondly, to warding
off isolated attacks which were directed upon different parts of the
line by squadrons which could not be attacked in turn without
breaking the line of convoy which it was all-essential to preserve
intact.
For two or three weeks there had been a series of running fights; but
at length the ocean chain had broken under the perpetual strain, and
a repulse inflicted on the Irish Squadron by a superior force of
French, Italian, and Spanish warships had settled the question of the
command of the Atlantic in favour of the League. The immediate result
of this was that food supplies from the West practically stopped.
Now and then a fleet Atlantic greyhound ran the blockade and brought
her priceless cargo into a British port; but as the weeks went by
these occurrences became fewer and further between, till the time
news was received in London of the investment of the fortresses of
the Quadrilateral by the innumerable hosts of the League, brought
together by the junction of the French and Russian Armies of the
North and the conquerors of Vienna and Constantinople, who had
returned on their tracks after garrisoning their conquests in the
East.
Food in Britain, already at war prices, now began to rise still
further, and soon touched famine prices. Wheat, which in the last
decade of the nineteenth century had averaged about £9 a ton, rose to
over £31 a ton, its price two years before the Battle of Waterloo.
Other imported food-stuffs, of course, rose in proportion with the
staple commodity, and the people of Britain saw, at first dimly, then
more and more clearly, the real issue that had been involved in the
depopulation of the rural districts to swell the populations of the
towns, and the consequent lapse of enormous areas of land either into
pasturage or unused wilderness.
In other words, Britain began to see approaching her doors an enemy
before whose assault all human strength is impotent and all valour
unavailing. Like Imperial Rome, she had depended for her food supply
upon external sources, and now these sources were one by one being
cut off.
The loss of the command of the Atlantic, the breaking of the Baltic
blockade, and the consequent closing of all the continental ports
save Hamburg, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, and Antwerp, had left her
entirely dependent upon her own miserably insufficient internal
resources and the Mediterranean route to India and the East.
More than this, too, only Hamburg, Antwerp, and the fortresses of the
Quadrilateral now stood between her and actual invasion,--that
supreme calamity which, until the raid upon Aberdeen, had been for
centuries believed to be impossible.
Once let the League triumph in the Netherlands, as it had done in
Central and South-Eastern Europe, and its legions would descend like
an avalanche upon the shores of England, and the Lion of the Seas
would find himself driven to bay in the stronghold which he had held
inviolate for nearly a thousand years.