CHAPTER XI.
THE MASSACRE AT EASTBOURNE

Hourly the most alarming reports were being received at the War Office, and at newspaper offices throughout the country, of the rapidly-increasing forces of the invaders, who were still landing in enormous numbers. Vague rumours were also afloat of desperate encounters at sea between our Coastguard Squadron that had returned and the French and Russian ironclads.

Nothing definite, however, was known. News travelled slowly, and was always unreliable.

Mobilisation was being hurried forward with all possible speed. Nevertheless, so sudden had been the descent of the enemy, that Eastbourne, Newhaven, and Seaford had already fallen into their hands. Into the half-wrecked town of Eastbourne regiment after regiment of Russian infantry had been poured by the transports Samojed and Artelscik, while two regiments of dragoons, one of Cossacks, and many machine-gun sections had also been landed, in addition to a quantity of French infantry from the other vessels. The streets of the usually clean, well-ordered town were strewn with the débris of fallen houses and shops that had been wrecked by Russian shells. The Queen's Hotel at Splash Point, with its tiers of verandahs and central spire, stood out a great gaunt blackened ruin.

Along Terminus Road the grey-coated hordes of the Great White Tsar looted the shops, and showed no quarter to those who fell into their hands. The Grand Hotel, the Burlington, the Cavendish, and others, were quickly transformed into barracks, as well as the half-ruined Town Hall, and the Floral Hall at Devonshire Park.

Robbery, outrage, and murder ran riot in the town, which only a few days before had been a fashionable health resort, crowded by aristocratic idlers. Hundreds of unoffending persons had been killed by the merciless fire from the enemy's battleships, and hundreds more were being shot down in the streets for attempting a feeble resistance. The inhabitants, surrounded on all sides by the enemy, were powerless.

The huge guns of the Pamyat Azova, the Imperator Nicolai I., the Pjotr Velikij, the Krejser, the Najezdnik, and others, had belched forth their death-dealing missiles with an effect that was appalling.

The thunder of cannon had ceased, but was now succeeded by the sharp cracking of Russian rifles, as those who, desperately guarding their homes and their loved ones, and making a stand against the invaders, were shot down like dogs. A crowd of townspeople collected in the open space outside the railway station, prepared to bar the advance of the Russians towards the Old Town and Upperton. Alas! it was a forlorn hope for an unarmed mob to attempt any such resistance.

A Russian officer suddenly shouted a word of command that brought a company of infantry to the halt, facing the crowd. Another word and a hundred rifles were discharged. Again and again they flashed, and the volley was repeated until the streets were covered with dead and dying, and the few who were not struck turned and fled, leaving the invaders to advance unopposed.

Horrible were the deeds committed that night. English homes were desecrated, ruined, and burned. Babes were murdered before the eyes of their parents, many being impaled by gleaming Russian bayonets; fathers were shot down in the presence of their wives and children, and sons were treated in a similar manner.

The massacre was frightful. Ruin and desolation were on every hand.

The soldiers of the Tsar, savage and inhuman, showed no mercy to the weak and unprotected. They jeered and laughed at piteous appeal, and with fiendish brutality enjoyed the destruction which everywhere they wrought.

Many a cold-blooded murder was committed, many a brave Englishman fell beneath the heavy whirling sabres of Circassian Cossacks, the bayonets of French infantry, or the deadly hail of machine guns. Battalion after battalion of the enemy, fierce and ruthless, clambered on over the débris in Terminus Road, enthusiastic at finding their feet upon English soil. The flames of the burning buildings in various parts of the town illuminated the place with a bright red glare that fell upon dark bearded faces, in every line of which was marked determination and fierce hostility. Landing near Langney Point, many of the battalions entered the town from the east, destroying all the property they came across on their line of advance, and, turning into Terminus Road, then continued through Upperton and out upon the road leading to Willingdon.

The French forces, who came ashore close to Holywell, on the other side of the town, advanced direct over Warren Hill, and struck due north towards Sheep Lands.

At about a mile from the point where the road from Eastdean crosses that to Jevington, the force encamped in a most advantageous position upon Willingdon Hill, while the Russians who advanced direct over St. Anthony's Hill, and those who marched through Eastbourne, united at a point on the Lewes Road near Park Farm, and after occupying Willingdon village, took up a position on the high ground that lies between it and Jevington.

From a strategic point of view the positions of both forces were carefully chosen. The commanding officers were evidently well acquainted with the district, for while the French commanded Eastbourne and a wide stretch of the Downs, the Russians also had before them an extensive tract of country extending in the north to Polegate, in the west to the Fore Down and Lillington, and in the east beyond Willingdon over Pevensey Levels to the sea.

During the night powerful search-lights from the French and Russian ships swept the coast continually, illuminating the surrounding hills and lending additional light to the ruined and burning town. Before the sun rose, however, the majority of the invading vessels had rounded Beachy Head, and had steamed away at full speed down Channel.

Daylight revealed the grim realities of war. It showed Eastbourne with its handsome buildings scorched and ruined, its streets blocked by fallen walls, and trees which had once formed shady boulevards torn up and broken, its shops looted, its tall church steeples blown away, its railway station wrecked, and its people massacred. Alas! their life-blood was wet upon the pavements.

The French and Russian legions, ever increasing, covered the hills. The heavy guns of the French artillery and the lighter but more deadly machine guns of the Russians had already been placed in position, and were awaiting the order to move north and commence the assault on London.

It was too late! Nothing could now be done to improve the rotten state of our defences. The invasion had begun, and Britain, handicapped alike on land and on sea, must arm and fight to the death.

By Tuesday night, three days after the Declaration of War, two French and half a Russian army corps, amounting to 90,000 officers and men, with 10,000 horses and 1500 guns and waggons, had landed, in addition to which reinforcements constantly arrived from the French Channel and Russian Baltic ports, until the number of the enemy on English soil was estimated at over 300,000.

The overwhelming descent on our shores had been secretly planned by the enemy with great forethought, every detail having been most carefully arranged. The steam tonnage in the French harbours was ample and to spare, for many of the vessels, being British, had been at once seized on the outbreak of hostilities. The sudden interruption of the mail and telegraphic services between the two countries left us in total ignorance of the true state of affairs. Nevertheless, for weeks an army of carpenters and engineers had been at work preparing the necessary fittings, which were afterwards placed in position on board the ships destined to convey horses and men to England.

In order to deceive the other Powers, a large number of military transport vessels had been fitted out at Brest for a bogus expedition to Dahomey. These ships actually put to sea on the day previous to the Declaration of War, and on Saturday night, at the hour when the news reached Britain, they had already embarked guns, horses, and waggons at the Channel ports. Immediately after the Tsar's manifesto had been issued the Russian Volunteer Fleet was mobilised, and transports which had long been held in readiness in the Baltic harbours embarked men and guns, and, one after another, steamed away for England without the slightest confusion or any undue haste.

CHAPTER XII.
IN THE EAGLE'S TALONS

Many British military and naval writers had ridiculed the idea of a surprise invasion without any attempt on the part of the enemy to gain more than a partial and temporary control of the Channel. Although an attack on territory without having previously command of the sea had generally been foredoomed to failure, it had been long ago suggested by certain military officers in the course of lectures at the United Service Institution, that under certain conditions such invasion was possible, and that France might ere long be ruled by some ambitious soldier who might be tempted to try a sudden dash on le perfide Albion. They pointed out that at worst it would entail on France the loss of three or four army corps, a loss no greater than she would suffer in one short land campaign. But alas! at that time very little notice was taken of such criticisms and illustrations, for Britons had always been prone to cast doubts upon the power of other nations to convey troops by sea, to embark them, or to land them. Thus the many suggestions directed towards increasing the mobility and efficiency of the Army were, like other warnings, cast aside, the prevailing opinion in the country being that sudden invasion was an absolute impossibility.

Predictions of prophets that had so long been scorned, derided, and disregarded by an apathetic British public were rapidly being fulfilled. Coming events had cast dark shadows that had been unheeded, and now the unexpected bursting of the war cloud produced panic through our land.

General Sir Archibald Alison struck an alarming note of warning when he wrote in Blackwood in December 1893: "No one can look carefully into the present state of Europe without feeling convinced that it cannot continue long in its present condition. Every country is maintaining an armed force out of all proportion to its resources and population, and the consequent strain upon its monetary system and its industrial population is ever increasing, and must sooner or later become unbearable."

It had never been sufficiently impressed upon the British public, that when mobilised for war, and with all the Reserves called out, Russia had at her command 2,722,000 officers and men, while France could put 2,715,000 into the field, making a total force of the Franco-Russian Armies of 5,437,000 men, with 9920 field guns and 1,480,000 horses.

This well-equipped force was almost equal to the combined Armies of the Triple Alliance, Germany possessing 2,441,000, Austria 1,590,000, and Italy 1,909,000, a total of 5,940,000 officers and men, with 8184 field guns and 813,996 horses.

Beside these enormous totals, how ridiculously small appeared the British Army, with its Regular forces at home and abroad amounting to only 211,600 of all ranks, 225,400 Volunteers, and 74,000 Reserves, or 511,000 fighting men! Of these, only 63,000 Regulars remained in England and Wales, therefore our Reserves and Volunteers were the chief defenders of our homes.

What a mere handful they appeared side by side with these huge European Armies!

Was it not surprising that in such circumstances the constant warnings regarding the weakness of our Navy – the force upon which the very life of our Empire depended – should have been unheeded by the too confident public?

When we were told plainly by a well-known authority that the number of our war vessels was miserably inadequate, that we were 10,000 men and 1000 officers short, and, among other things, that a French cruiser had, for all practical purposes, three times the fighting efficiency of an English cruiser, no one troubled. Nor was any one aroused from his foolishly apathetic confidence in British supremacy at sea. True, our Navy was strengthened to a certain extent in 1894, but hard facts, solemn warnings, gloomy forebodings, all were, alas! cast aside among the "scares" which crop up periodically in the press during a Parliamentary recess, and which, on the hearing of a murder trial, or a Society scandal, at once fizzle out and are dismissed for ever.

On this rude awakening to the seriousness of the situation, Service men now remembered distinctly the prophetic words of the few students of probable invasion. Once they had regarded them as based on wild improbabilities, but now they admitted that the facts were as represented, and that critics had foreseen catastrophe.

Already active steps had been taken towards the defence of London.

Notwithstanding the serious defects in the mobilisation scheme, the 1st Army Corps, formed at Aldershot under Sir Evelyn Wood, and three cavalry brigades, were now in the field, while the other army corps were being rapidly conveyed southwards.

Independently of the Field Army, the Volunteers had mobilised, and were occupying the lines north and south of the metropolis. This force of Volunteer infantry consisted of 108,300 officers and men, of whom 73,000, with 212 guns, were placed on the line south of the Thames.

It stretched along the hills from Guildford in Surrey to Halstead in Kent, with intermediate concentration points at Box Hill and Caterham. At the latter place an efficient garrison had been established, consisting of 4603 of all ranks of the North London Brigade, 4521 of the West London, 5965 of the South London, 5439 of the Surrey, and 6132 of the Lancashire and Cheshire. This force was backed by eleven 16-pounder batteries of the 1st Norfolk from Yarmouth, the 1st Sussex from Brighton, the 1st Newcastle and the 2nd Durham from Seaham, and ten 40-pounder batteries of the 3rd and 6th Lancashire from Liverpool, the 9th Lancashire from Bolton, the 1st Cheshire from Chester, the 1st Cinque Ports from Dover, and the 2nd Cinque Ports from St. Leonards. At Halstead, on the left flank, there were massed about 20,470 Volunteer infantry, these being made up of the South Wales Brigade 4182, Welsh Border 5192, the North Midland 5225, and the South Midland 5970. The eleven 16-pounder batteries came from the Woolwich Arsenal, Monmouth, Shropshire, and Stafford Corps, and five 40-pounder batteries from the Preston Corps.

To Guildford 4471 infantry in the Home Counties Brigade and 4097 in the Western Counties were assigned, while the guns consisted of four 40-pounder batteries from the York and Leeds Corps, the 16-pounder batteries of the Fife, Highland, and Midlothian Corps being unable, as yet, to get south on account of the congested state of all the northern railways.

For this same reason, too, the force at Box Hill, the remaining post in the south line of defence, was a very weak one. To this the Volunteers assigned were mostly Scottish.

Of the Glasgow Brigade 8000 of all ranks arrived, with 4000 from the South of Scotland Brigade; but the Highland Brigade of 4400 men, all enthusiastically patriotic, and the 16-pounder batteries from Ayr and Lanark, were compelled, to their chagrin, to wait at their headquarters for several days before the railways – every resource of which was strained to their utmost limits – could move them forward to the seat of war.

The five heavy batteries of the Aberdeen and North York Corps succeeded in getting down to their place of concentration early, as likewise did the 16-pounder battery from Galloway. Volunteers also undertook the defences north of the metropolis, and a strong line, consisting of a number of provincial brigades, stretched from Tilbury to Brentwood and Epping.

The British Volunteer holds no romantic notions of "death or glory," but is none the less prepared to do his duty, and is always ready "to do anything, and to go anywhere." Every officer and every man of this great force which had mounted guard north and south of the Thames was resolved to act his part bravely, and, if necessary, lay down his life for his country's honour.

At their posts on the Surrey Hills, ready at any moment to go into action, and firmly determined that no invader should enter the vast Capital of the World, they impatiently awaited the development of the situation, eager to face and annihilate their foreign foe.

Britannia had always been justly proud of her Volunteer forces, although their actual strength in time of invasion had never before been demonstrated. Now, however, the test which had been applied showed that, with an exception of rarest occurrence, every man had responded to this hasty call to arms, and that on active service they were as fearless and courageous as any body of Regulars ever put in the field.

Every man was alive to Britain's danger; every man knew well how terrible would be the combat – the struggle that must result in either victory or death.

The double-headed Eagle had set his talons in British soil!