chapter I will describe the great struggle which took place round Ypres.

When the retreating Belgians were driven out of the Forest of Houthulst on 16th October, they retired to the eastern bank of the Yser. All that was now left to them of their native land was but one-tenth of its surface; they were battle-worn and weary; their surviving countrymen were in bondage; their wrongs cried aloud to Heaven, but their spirit was still unsubdued. No longer were they fighting alone. Britons and Bretons, Indians and Canadians, stockmen from the Antipodes, and tribesmen from the Atlas had come to their succour, and with a new heart they prepared to defend the last few miles of territory which they could call their own.

On the morning of the 17th the Belgians were strung out along the east bank of the Yser from Nieuport to Dixmude. In the ditches by the village were 5,000 Belgians and 7,000 of Ronarc'h's Marines. The total force numbered some 40,000, and against them von Beseler was now advancing with 60,000 men, while the Würtembergers were rapidly moving from the south. Early on the 17th two Belgian divisions in the centre were driven across the river, but they managed to regain the right bank in the course of the night. Early on the morning of the 18th von Beseler, with his right resting on the sand dunes, began a fierce attack that was full of danger. Everybody, from general to private, knew that the critical hour had come. If von Beseler could push back the Belgians beyond the railway embankment on the west side of the Yser, he would be in Dunkirk in two days, and in Calais the day after; the last narrow strip of Belgian soil would be lost, the Allied army at Ypres would be surrounded or forced to retire, and all the bloodshed farther south would have been in vain. The prospect was enough to make the stoutest heart quail.

Fiercely the Belgians strove to hold their line in the unequal combat, but they were forced back step by step, and disaster seemed to await them, when suddenly succour came--from the sea! The guns of British warships began to rake the German trenches, and in their roar was the stern warning, "No road this way."

History was repeating itself, as it has so often done during this war. More than two and a half centuries ago, when the French and English beat the Spaniards at the Battle of the Dunes,[61] which was fought on this very coast, Cromwell's fleet shelled the enemy's wing, and greatly helped to bring about the victory.

As soon as the danger showed itself at Nieuport, King Albert begged our Admiralty for naval assistance. It was, of course, impossible to send ordinary warships to operate on this coast, because the sea is shallow, and cumbered with many a sandbank--"a very dangerous flat, and fatal, where the carcasses of many a tall ship lie buried." The Germans knew this well; they had examined the charts, and they had no fear of molestation from the sea. They believed that no warship could come sufficiently near to the coast to get within range of their trenches.

Now it happened that when the war broke out there lay at Barrow three ships of light draught but very strong gun power which had been built for the Brazilian Government. Such ships are known as monitors, after the name of the first of the type, which was built in 1862, during the American Civil War. Really, a monitor is little more than a low, moving gun platform, carrying a little fort, in which one or two heavy weapons are mounted. Each of the three monitors at Barrow displaced 1,200 tons, and carried two 6-inch guns mounted forward in an armoured barbette, two 4.7-inch howitzers aft, and four 3-pounder guns amidships. They were protected by stout armour, and as they drew only four feet seven inches of water, they could move in the shallows where ordinary ships would run aground. These ships were taken over by the British Government at the beginning of the war, and were called the _Humber_, the _Mersey_, and the _Severn_.

On the evening of 17th October the three monitors left Dover under the command of Admiral Hood, and arrived off the Flemish coast just as the German attack began. An old cruiser, a battleship, a gunboat, and several destroyers, aided by French warships, also bombarded the coast from outside the shoals. Von Beseler endeavoured to bring his big guns to bear on them, but his artillery was completely outranged, and several of his batteries were destroyed. Every attempt to beat off the monitors failed. The German submarines were ineffective because they could not manoeuvre in shallow water, and their torpedoes, being set to a greater depth than the draught of the monitors, passed harmlessly beneath their hulls.

The guns of the monitors swept the coast for six miles inland, their fire, which proved very accurate and deadly, being directed by naval balloons, aeroplanes, and signals from the shore. The Germans could not retaliate; nor could their troops easily protect themselves in trenches, for if they faced the sea they could be enfiladed from the canal, and if they faced the canal they could be enfiladed from the sea. For ten days the big guns of the monitors blazed across the sandhills. One vessel fired a thousand shells in a single day. Heavy batteries were established by the Germans at Ostend on the 24th, but they were at once bombarded, much to the discomfort of the German officers who had taken up their quarters in the big hotels on the sea front. By the end of the month the shore batteries ceased to fire, but before that time the Germans had been forced to give up their attempt to reach Calais by a march along the shore.

During this land and sea warfare the Belgians and French struggled desperately to hold the line of the river Yser. Over and over again they beat back massed attacks of the enemy. There were frenzied hand-to-hand combats and thousands of men wrestled and died on the bridges, or were drowned in the waters beneath. On Friday, 23rd October, a body of Germans succeeded in crossing the river close to Nieuport, and in forcing their way to the railway line near Ramscappelle. The Belgians, however, drove them back to their old position on the eastern bank, and the carnage was terrible. Next day some five thousand Germans managed to push across the river at the point where the road from Bruges to Pervyse is carried over the stream. On Sunday, the 25th, more Germans crossed, and the line of the Yser seemed to have been won. But as they tried to deploy from their bridgeheads the French and Belgians, entrenched in the miry fields, which are crossed and recrossed by water courses, met them with such stubborn courage that they could make but little headway. Every yard was fiercely contested, and the German loss was terribly heavy. By the 28th the Allies had been beaten back almost to the railway embankment. Then, under the eye of the Emperor himself, the Würtembergers launched a terrific attack.

From the higher ground near Nieuport the Germans advanced in dense masses, singing patriotic songs. The defenders fell back, and at three in the afternoon, when the Kaiser saw victory almost within his grasp, they played their last card. Under cover of British naval guns, the Belgians at high tide had been hard at work near Nieuport damming the lower reaches of the canal. The brimming waters of the Yser, swollen by the recent heavy rains, now almost overtopped its banks. At the critical moment some of the sluices were opened, and the Belgian guns broke down the banks at several places. Slowly the water spread over the flat meadows on the left bank of the canal in great shallow lagoons. The culverts and bridges beneath the railway embankment had been dammed up so as to prevent the flood from extending westwards.

Soon the Germans between the embankment and the canal found themselves a foot deep in water; their guns sank in the mud, and whole battalions were bogged. Only on a few patches of higher ground could they maintain a dry foothold. Nevertheless they pushed on through the rising waters, in the hope of capturing Ramscappelle and seizing the railway embankment before the waters could stay them. The Emperor himself called for volunteers, and two Würtemberg brigades, composed of some of the best fighting men in the German Empire, were chosen to carry the village and win undying glory.

On the 30th the great attempt was made. The Würtembergers, carrying roughly-hewn platforms, floundered through the water, and flung the "table tops" across the wider channels, thus forming bridges. While so doing, they were shot down by hundreds, but still they pressed on. Numbers told; Ramscappelle was partly occupied, and the railway line was seized. Next day French, Senegalese, and Belgians fell upon them furiously. The dismounted Bengal Lancers, who had been sent to the help of the Belgians, now exhausted by fourteen hours' continuous fighting, charged with their lances and took house after house, smashing in doors and windows to get at the German marines, who had been called up from Hamburg to take part in the struggle. In vain did the German officers, with threats and blows and pistol shots, try to prevent their men from retreating and surrendering. It is said that some twelve guns and over a thousand prisoners were taken in this furious counter-attack. Before long the Allies were over the railway embankment, and the German host was hurled back into the lagoons. The "seventy-fives" came up at a gallop, rifles and machine guns cracked incessantly, and soon the waters were dotted with fallen Germans.

The flood through which the Würtembergers had waded was but the advance guard of a mighty deluge that was now about to overwhelm the whole district. Every sluice in this region of stream and canal was opened, and the brown flood spread over the land like the "bore" in a narrow estuary. Men and horses were swept from their feet and swallowed up in the seething waters; others sank to rise no more in the deep mud; field guns disappeared in the ooze, and all the while the pitiless guns of the Allies poured shot and shell on the drowning invaders. Thousands fell, but some escaped, while others struggled to dry ground, only to be taken prisoners. The attack had hopelessly failed, and the Emperor, who had been watching the struggle through his field glasses, shut them up and turned away. Once more he had been foiled at the very moment when victory seemed to be beckoning him.

On 7th November a frenzied attack was begun on Dixmude, which, as you know, was held by Ronarc'h's Bretons. From the 16th of October to the 10th of November they were fiercely but unsuccessfully assailed by three corps of the Duke of Würtemberg's army. "You have to sacrifice yourselves," said Ronarc'h to his men, "to save our left wing. Try to hold out four days." They held out for a fortnight.

On the night of the 23rd and in the early morning of the 24th no fewer than fourteen separate attacks were made upon them, but every one failed. For most of the time the marines fought in trenches up to their waists in water, and, as General Joffre told them, they were in their own element. One night the Germans, driving some captured marines before them, crept silently towards the French lines. One of the prisoners shouted a warning, but immediately paid for his loyalty with his life. The wearied defenders, hearing the shout, sprang to arms and beat off the attack.

On 10th November the Germans succeeded in capturing the broken walls and torn streets of what had once been the prosperous village of Dixmude. This success, however, had come too late. Around Ypres, as we shall learn in later pages, the flower of the German armies had everywhere been driven back from the Allied lines. All the doors to the coast were now locked, bolted, and barred. Nevertheless, fierce but futile struggles continued on the Yser until early in December, when their fury abated.

[Footnote 55: German rifleman or sharpshooter.]

[Footnote 56: Meadows reclaimed from the sea.]

[Footnote 57: See p. 36.]

[Footnote 58: See map on p. 93.]

[Footnote 59: _Pair-veez´._]

[Footnote 60: _Rams-ka-pel´._]

[Footnote 61: Fought in 1658. Dunkirk was afterwards handed over to the English, and remained in their possession until 1662, when Charles II. sold it to France.]