Page:The Invasion of 1910.djvu/469

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SITUATION SOUTH OF THE THAMES
445

and in the vicinity of the South-Western terminus; notwithstanding their desperate defence, they were exterminated to a man, until the gutters beneath the railway bridges ran with blood. Meanwhile the breach in the barricade was repaired, and two guns and ammunition captured from the enemy mounted in defence. There was a similar incident on Vauxhall Bridge, the populace being victorious, and now the Germans were offering no further opposition, as they had quite sufficient to occupy them on the Middlesex side.

The division of Lord Byfield's army which had gone south to Horsham had moved north, and on the 24th were holding the country across from Epsom to Kingston-on-Thames, while patrols and motorists were out from Ewell, through Cheam, Sutton, Carshalton, Croydon, and Upper Norwood, to the high ground at the Crystal Palace. From Kingston to the Tower Bridge all approaches across the Thames were barricaded and held by desperate mobs, aided by artillerymen.

In those early days after the occupation, military order had apparently disappeared in London, as far as the British were concerned. General Sir Francis Bamford had, on the proclamation of martial law in London, been appointed military governor, and had, on the advance of the Germans, retired to the Crystal Palace, where he had now established his headquarters in the palace itself, with a wireless telegraph apparatus placed upon the top of the left-hand tower, by means of which he was in constant communication with Lord Byfield at Windsor, where the apparatus had been hoisted upon the flagstaff of the Round Tower.

The military tribunals established by the Proclamation of the 14th still existed in the police courts of South London, but those north of the Thames had already been replaced by German officers, and the British officers went across the bridges into the British lines. Von Kronhelm's clever tactics, by which he had established an advisory board of British officials to assist in the government of London, seemed to have had the desired