Thus, when the _Ithuriel_ passed over London on the morning of the
7th the position of affairs was as follows: The two armies which had
been detached by the Tsar and General le Gallifet to stop the advance
of the Federationists had been destroyed almost to a man. Of the two
fleets of war-balloons there remained twenty-two aerostats in the
hands of the Terrorists, while the twenty-five sent by the Tsar
against the air-ships had retired at nightfall to the depot at
Muswell Hill to replenish their stock of fuel and explosives. Their
ammunition-tenders, slow and unwieldy machines, adapted only for
carrying large cargoes of shells, had been rammed and destroyed with
ease by the air-ships during the running, or rather flying, fight of
the previous afternoon.

At sunset on the 6th the whole available forces of the League which
could be spared from the defence of the positions, numbering more
than three million men, had descended to the assault on London at
nearly fifty different points.

No human words could convey any adequate conception of that night of
carnage and terror. The assailants were allowed to advance far into
the mighty maze of streets and byways with so little resistance, that
they began to think that the great city would fall an easy prey to
them after all. But as they approached the main arteries of central
London they came suddenly upon barricades so skilfully disposed that
it was impossible to advance without storming them, and from which,
as they approached them, burst out tempests of rifle and machine
gunfire, under which the heads of their columns melted away faster
than they advanced.

Light, quick-firing guns, posted on the roofs of lofty buildings,
rained death and mutilation upon them. The air-ships, flying hither
and thither a few hundred feet above the house-tops, like spirits of
destruction, sent their shells into their crowded masses and wrought
the most awful havoc of all with their frightful explosives, blowing
hundreds of men to indistinguishable fragments at every shot, while
from the windows of every house that was not in ruins came a
ceaseless hail of missiles from every kind of firearm, from a
magazine rifle to a shot-gun.

When morning came the Great Eastern Railway and the Thames had been
cleared and opened, and the hearts of the starving citizens were
gladdened by the welcome spectacle of train after train pouring in
laden with provisions from Harwich, and of a fleet of steamers,
fl