War of the Worlds Read online

  “For Alison, Thomas and Matt, who were kind enough to believe in Martians.”

  –MB

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

  CHAPTER 2: FORCES AT WAR

  CHAPTER 3: 15 DAYS IN AUGUST

  CHAPTER 4: SEPTEMBER 1895 AND AFTER

  CHAPTER 5: LAST WORDS

  APPENDIX 1: THE HUNTER

  APPENDIX 2: WINSTON CHURCHILL’S MARTIAN WAR

  CHAPTER 1

  INTRODUCTION

  In 1895 the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland was, as far as its ruling classes were concerned, experiencing a golden age of prosperity and peace. Lawn tennis, an afternoon of cricket on the village green, and the prospect of a peaceful, British century ahead were the only things that concerned people in August 1895. It was clear to everyone who mattered (and quite a few foreigners) that God was definitely an Englishman, and that was that. The business of running the world, and remaining a gentleman while doing so, was quite enough for Queen-Empress Victoria’s loyal subjects.

  Englishmen – using the term loosely, as the Victorians did, to mean ‘Britons’ and include Scots and Welshmen – had won life’s lottery. Many felt they had a mission to bring the benefits of Christian order and civilization, which was to say British order and civilization, to all corners of the world. One-fifth of the world’s population lived within the Empire; more would surely welcome the prospect. The Royal Navy furthered this aim by acting as the world’s policeman, maintaining the Pax Britannica, a peace at once benign and in Britain’s interests. The British Army served across the Empire to fight rebels and malcontents at the margins. Steady, stately progress towards a better tomorrow was guaranteed.

  Herbert George Wells, 1866–1946, was the most evocative of the war correspondents but not the most accurate. The plight of the common man inspired his work, and he was later criticized as unpatriotic and even ‘pro-Martian’ for his view that the Martians were unbeatable.

  This rosy, slightly smug picture was illusory. Britain’s industries had been overtaken by both America and Germany; many of the colonies actually drained resources from Britain rather than provided wealth; serious resentments simmered below the surface in places like South Africa; and international tensions with other Powers were growing, as other nations built their own empires. But the crisis of August 1895 was not one of Britain’s making, or a result of foreign machinations.

  The ‘War of the Worlds’, the ‘Martian Invasion’ or the ‘First Anglo-Martian War’ (this last name giving rise to a dread that there would be a second war) was different to all other wars fought by the British. The attack came out of nowhere: there were no dark clouds on the political horizon to act as a warning to Victoria’s ministers. The Martians fell, literally, out of a clear blue sky. And in the space of 15 days they made the Home Counties and London a battleground more deadly than any British soldiers had ever faced. It was an unexpectedly short war for the existence of Britain, the Empire and, ultimately, humanity itself. That it ended as it did, in the defeat of the Martians, owed more to whimsical chance than grand strategy and bravery on the battlefield, although there was courage aplenty.

  This is a history of that short, cruel and genocidal war, reconstructed from the perspective of the surviving human defenders. Like all such histories, it has inaccuracies and omissions. Some incidents can only be reconstructed from partial and incomplete accounts: among the British there were few survivors of battles against the Martians, and even fewer who had any wish to remember and recount their experiences. Other accounts were suppressed (destroyed in all probability) by the government in the interests of public morale and Imperial security. The physical evidence and documentation vanished into government archives, protected by the civil service’s love of secrecy.

  There are no Martian accounts or documents of any kind about the Invasion. Not a single recognizable account or record was ever recovered from the Cylinders or the Martians’ remarkable machines. Their true motives, thoughts and intentions remain as much a mystery today as they were when they fell from the heavens. It has been possible to reconstruct a plausible explanation (to a human, at any rate) for what occurred, but much is speculative. Until human explorers penetrate the caverns of Mars, and read whatever Martian records might be found there, no account will ever be wholly accurate.

  This, then, is an account of Britain’s first, and so far only, interplanetary war. It was unlike any war fought before, the two sides so mismatched that the outcome should never have been in doubt. For once, the tide of history ran in a different direction, which is why this book is not written in the Martian tongue. It is a history written by the vanquished, not the victors.

  CHAPTER 2

  FORCES AT WAR

  THE BRITISH

  If we are to maintain our position as a first-rate Power we must, with our Indian empire and large Colonies, be Prepared for attacks and wars, somewhere or other, CONTINUALLY.

  Queen Victoria, letter to Gladstone (quirky emphases in the original).

  In the summer of 1895, as the Martian Cylinders fell, a British general election had just ended. Lord Salisbury’s Conservatives had returned to power in alliance with the Liberal Unionists (those Liberals who did not favour Home Rule for Ireland). With 411 seats Salisbury’s men handily defeated Lord Roseberry’s Liberals and were, as might be expected, broadly isolationist, socially conservative, believers in the Empire, and vehemently opposed to Irish Home Rule. The Tories had managed to bring down Roseberry’s government by claiming that the Liberals were failing to ensure enough cordite for ammunition for both the army and navy. The new administration was to be a steady hand on the national tiller, and highly unlikely to do anything radical. They would need every ounce of cordite they could get…

  Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, Third Marquess of Salisbury, was a direct descendant of William Cecil, Lord Burleigh, a minister of no small ability for Elizabeth I. Politics were the marrow of Salisbury’s bones, and he was deeply hostile to any form of ‘state socialism’, which to him meant doing anything to improve the lot of common folk, or any change in the established political order. It was his job to maintain Britain and the ordered life of its honest folk, as well as preserve the position and privileges of the aristocracy. He would have no truck with anything that smacked of change, fundamental or otherwise. As the prime minister, he found a threat to his beloved country greater than the Spanish Armada in the days of his illustrious ancestor Lord Burleigh.

  Once the first Cylinders landed, Salisbury’s government faced problems almost beyond their ken. They were suddenly thrust into the situation of a spear-armed African native facing European machine guns for the first time. That this was pointed out to them by experienced officers was not welcome. It was a deeply uncomfortable thought and one that Salisbury could not accept.

  If Salisbury felt overwhelmed by the Martians he gave no outward sign but, aged 65, he was profoundly shocked. To see England’s ‘Splendid Isolation’ cruelly violated was almost more than he could bear. Yet bear it he did, rallied himself and took three swift decisions: to remove all the Royal Family to Balmoral Castle in Aberdeenshire, there to be guarded by an infantry battalion and whatever artillery batteries were nearby; to place London and the Home Counties under martial law with Sussex, Hampshire and possibly Kent alerted to expect the same; and to evacuate the government from London when practicable and without too much fanfare. He also decided that the Prince of Wales, who was enjoying one of his many holidays, would be separately kept out of harm’s way; he would be allowed to go grouse shooting on 12 August as planned, but only if he went to a Scottish estate. The Cabinet then argued about the troops to guard Her Majesty: the sensible solution would have been to assign men from a Scottish garrison. Inc
redibly, ministers were worried about offending Her Majesty’s dignity (as if Martians tramping around Surrey were not offence enough!) by using a line battalion. In the end the 1st Battalion, Grenadier Guards were sent to Scotland by chartered express.

  An air of unreality hung over many government meetings during the crisis. Time was spent agreeing that ‘un-English behaviour’ in the face of the Martians would not be tolerated, and texts warning of the ‘serious consequences of collaborating’ with the invaders were drafted and approved. The consequences were never clearly spelled out, even within government circles, and this allowed legal justification for the later excesses of the military and the police. Newspaper space was booked so that announcements could be printed. Of course, no-one in government knew that collaboration would lead, inevitably, to death by exsanguination in the Martian camps. However, this emergency order served as the basis for actions against looters and malcontents in the East End of London. Meanwhile Salisbury’s ministers made no evacuation arrangements for the ordinary people of London: that would have been ‘state socialism’. Fortunately, better-off Londoners escaped by using the railways, but otherwise they were on their own. The emergency warnings and decrees appeared in the morning newspapers on Monday 12 August 1895. As they read the morning papers, Britons began to worry.

  Lord Salisbury, the new Tory prime minister in summer 1895. He wisely left the detailed direction of the war to his generals, but he also left many Britons to look after themselves during the crisis. It was not, in his view, the job of government to help people who would not help themselves.

  THE BRITISH ARMY

  Victoria’s army was not a typical European force except for its rather smart uniforms and slightly archaic weaponry. It was not ready, or large enough, to fight a European war. It was there to protect and police the Empire against native threats as it was a matter of geography that Britain’s defence was a naval matter; the army would defend its home only in direst need.

  The British Army was an all-volunteer force, not conscripted, although undoubtedly some volunteers joined up as an alternative to prison or penury. It was, like British society itself, sometimes damaged by distinctions of class, resistant to many new ideas and, on occasion, horribly misused by politicians. It was also the poor relation: the Royal Navy took the lion’s share of defence spending, and generated the lion’s share of national pride to match. Generals had good reason to feel slightly resentful at their place in the queue for resources. Despite these issues it was a fairly good army at the battalion and regimental levels. Small wars across the Empire had produced an effective fighting force, but not a large one.

  The British Army, at heart a conservative institution, was still coming to terms with reforms brought in after the Indian Mutiny and Crimean War. The Crimea in particular had been a shock, because the British public finally got timely reports on the war, the mistakes made, and the generals in command. Shortly afterwards, the Indian Mutiny had brought the East India Company’s European regiments under government control. Both of these events, and the needs of the Empire, meant that soldiering was no longer all about perfect turnout for parade, but also about fighting skills. Over the following decades, the need to keep large numbers of British troops in India made the whole army more ‘Indian’ in terms of experience and outlook. Even the language and slang used by soldiers were changed.

  Edward Cardwell, the Secretary of State for War under Gladstone in the early 1870s, brought major changes to the way the British Army was manned and organized. Cardwell was impressed by Prussian achievements during the Franco-Prussian War, and wanted the same professional rigour for the British Army. Service conditions improved, with flogging and similarly harsh punishments ended. He did away with 21-year terms of service and introduced a shorter term, but added time in the reserves after active duty; this was to build up a large number of men with military experience. Cardwell couldn’t create a conscript army like the Prussians, so he did the next best thing.

  The other big change in Cardwell’s reorganization was to link regiments to specific locales. Before Cardwell, the whole country had been one big recruiting area for every regiment; after him, units recruited in their assigned areas. This made sense for the reserve system too, as men could be expected to return to their home counties and live in the vicinity of their old, local regiments. Local recruiting didn’t happen immediately, but this kind of territorial connection was a good idea.

  Ending the sale of commissions was the worst of all Cardwell’s reforms for officers, because it hit them hard in monetary terms. Officers had always been able to buy their way into a regimental rank, or sell out if their regiment was posted to some unfashionable, inhospitable or disease-ridden spot. Wellington benefited from the purchase system: he bought his colonelcy, and that allowed him to become a relatively young field marshal by the time he won at Waterloo. The system was open to abuse, and always had been: men with money trumped men with military talent in getting commands. The best thing about commission purchase was that it gave an officer a lump sum on his retirement. If he had been lucky and not bought every promotion, or was in a reasonably fashionable regiment, an officer might make a tidy sum by selling on his commission at retirement.

  Prince George, Duke of Cambridge, the military head of the British Army, depicted in a typically patriotic pose of the period. Cambridge was an able administrator, but not a man comfortable with radical ideas. To his credit, he appointed an able man as field commander and gave his troops all the support he could. The strain of the Invasion contributed to his decision to retire shortly after the Martians’ defeat.

  As might be expected, many senior officers opposed Cardwell at every turn. Change was bad enough, but change on this scale was awful. Wasn’t the old army good enough for Wellington and Marlborough? Although Cardwell left office in 1874, the anti-reformers did not manage to turn back the clock, and further reforms were introduced by Hugh Childers in 1881. Childers further reorganized infantry into multi-battalion regiments, complete with associated militia and volunteer battalions tied to particular depots and counties. This simple change did away with regimental seniority numbers (much to the annoyance of the senior, low-numbered regiments), and substituted district names.

  While 20 years might seem like a long time, the senior officers in 1895 had grown up under the old system and then had the new foisted on them. The professional head of the army was a man who did not like reform or, in military matters at least, the unconventional. Prince George, the Duke of Cambridge and a cousin of Queen Victoria, had become commander-in-chief (the title changed over the decades he held it) in 1856, shortly after the Crimean War. He had been a cavalryman, and creditably led the 1st Division in the Crimea; he was a safe, conservative pair of hands to run the army. He became a fixture in Horse Guards, thanks to his close ties to Victoria. She had a proprietorial interest in her army, and was decidedly snobbish about its officer class. Cambridge suited the Queen perfectly: social status counted more than talent for command in his view. The Duke wanted ‘reliable’ officers drawn from the best and wealthiest families, people who could be relied on to maintain order at home and in the Empire. The aristocracy and landed gentry could be as brave as lions or as dangerously stupid as overbred spaniels, and were not always blessed with tactical or strategic genius. That Cambridge loved soldiering was never in doubt. To his credit, he had been responsible for establishing a staff college at Camberley, a good start towards improving professional standards and skills. And his personal life was anything but conservative: he had married his mistress for love, so falling foul of the 1772 Royal Marriages Act, which meant that his children could not inherit his titles or be in line to the throne.

  The question of command on the ground could have been problematic. The Duke of Cambridge was not energetic enough to be a commander in the field. He, however, showed his true worth in suggesting another officer. General Lord Frederick Roberts was an extremely able man who would have risen to prominence in any army of the perio
d. Roberts, recently returned from India and about to go to Ireland as commander-in-chief, was quickly given the job of driving out the Martians. He was under few illusions that this was going to be an easy task, but he was experienced, tough-minded and personally brave (as a lieutenant, he had been awarded a Victoria Cross for his gallantry during the Indian Mutiny). He was not a man to use dash and bravado instead of thought. He was an artilleryman, and had an appreciation of the power of machinery, something that was to serve him well against the Martians. By Monday morning of the first week, Roberts was hard at work, studying maps and reports of the Martians. He was explicitly ordered not to get himself killed, and to leave acts of conspicuous gallantry to younger men.

  At regimental level professionalism was often seen as unsporting and, even worse, slightly un-British. A good polo player was more likely to be prized by his colonel than a supply or musketry expert. Officers who were ‘too keen’ or not quite ‘one of us’ could find their careers going nowhere through no real fault of their own. The system prized ‘being a sound chap’ and used quiet words in the right ears to promote the right kind of fellows. A sound chap from a good family who didn’t funk under fire was assured of his place; the same was not true for the professional (which usually meant someone without the income a good family could supply).

  Despite potential problems with officers, the rank and file of the British Army were usually tough and competent. ‘Thomas Atkins’, the average soldier, was well trained, and had equipment no worse than his fellows in other European armies. He had also seen action in every corner of the world. Tommy’s weapons skills were very good, thanks to battlefield experience and the attention given to ‘musketry’ as it was archaically called. Equal time was given to bayonet drill because the bayonet was known to be the decisive weapon in the hands of steady, reliable troops. Reliability came from regimental tradition: every regiment taught every soldier to believe in its myths of dogged determination, courage and inevitable victory. Tommy Atkins did not ever cut and run in action: he would stand and fight, and as often as not win, against ridiculous odds, in almost impossible circumstances, in the most hostile of climates. It was, of course, these beliefs that allowed gentleman-amateur officers to throw away lives by careless leadership and still gain victory.