Page:The Siege of London - Posteritas - 1885.djvu/73

Rh they might be, but they knew it not, and throughout the despairing hours and days the famine-stricken population did their best to aid the gallant army in expelling the hated foe. From every quarter of the City hordes of starving men sallied forth to smite and harass the ruthless enemy. But, alas! it was all in vain. The ring could not be broken. Oh! if there had only been a Drake, a Collingwood, or a Nelson to strew the sea with the wreckage of the hostile fleet, these dauntless men, weakened though they were with famine and suffering, would with a mighty effort of supreme despair have turned like the dying lion in its agony and scattered their torturers. Then, with a mighty shout for freedom that would have rent the heavens and shaken the very stars, they would have shivered the shackles that had already been riveted upon them; for it was from the sea that help ought to have come, but England’s maritime power had been allowed to decline by place-seekers and plausible but incompetent officemongers. First Lords of the Admiralty, who gained their position by wealth and influence, but whose incompetency was glaring, had thrown dust into the eyes of the people, and deluded them into false security, and so the naval power of England had been broken by a wiser State, whose navy had been infinitely better sustained; and the English people displayed in vain a valour and a heroism which form one of the most tragic stories in the annals of the world.

The siege now entered upon the second month; and the relative positions of the armies were little changed. The weather had been extraordinarily severe, and the French suffered greatly, although they were infinitely better fed than the besieged, whose stock of provisions was being rapidly exhausted.

The railway bridge over the Thames from Victoria to Battersea had been destroyed by the English, and nearly all the houses in the neighbourhood of the station, as well as whole streets in Pimlico and Chelsea, had been demolished to make room for powerful batteries. From these a tremendous and incessant fire was kept up on the French positions in Battersea Park. This fire, however, was vigorously returned, and the Houses of Parliament and the magnificent pile of Westminster Abbey were almost totally