THE FOREST OF SWORDS
BOOKS BY JOSEPH A. ALTSHELER
THE FRENCH AND INDIAN WAR SERIES
THE YOUNG TRAILERS SERIES
THE TEXAN SERIES
THE CIVIL WAR SERIES
THE GREAT WEST SERIES
THE WORLD WAR SERIES
BOOKS NOT IN SERIES
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
"He heard a shock near him and, ... saw a huddled mass of wreckage."
WORLD WAR SERIES
THE FOREST OF SWORDS
A STORY OF PARIS AND THE MARNE
BY
JOSEPH A. ALTSHELER
AUTHOR OF "THE GUNS OF EUROPE," "THE STAR OF GETTYSBURG," ETC.
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY NEW YORK AND LONDON 1928
COPYRIGHT, 1915, BY D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
Printed in the United States of America
FOREWORD
"The Forest of Swords," while an independent story, based upon the World War, continues the fortunes of John Scott, Philip Lannes, and their friends who have appeared already in "The Guns of Europe." As was stated in the first volume, the author was in Austria and Germany for a month after the war began, and then went to England. He saw the arrival of the Emperor, Francis Joseph, in Vienna, the first striking event in the gigantic struggle, and witnessed the mobilization of their armies by three great nations.
CONTENTS
THE FOREST OF SWORDS
CHAPTER I
IN PARIS
John Scott and Philip Lannes walked together down a great boulevard of Paris. The young American's heart was filled with grief and anger. The Frenchman felt the same grief, but mingled with it was a fierce, burning passion, so deep and bitter that it took a much stronger word than anger to describe it.
Both had heard that morning the mutter of cannon on the horizon, and they knew the German conquerors were advancing. They were always advancing. Nothing had stopped them. The metal and masonry of the defenses at Liège had crumbled before their huge guns like china breaking under stone. The giant shells had scooped out the forts at Maubeuge, Maubeuge the untakable, as if they had been mere eggshells, and the mighty Teutonic host came on, almost without a check.
John had read of the German march on Paris, nearly a half-century before, how everything had been made complete by the genius of Bismarck and von Moltke, how the ready had sprung upon and crushed the unready, but the present swoop of the imperial eagle seemed far more vast and terrible than the earlier rush could have been.
A month and the legions were already before the City of Light. Men with glasses could see from the top of the Eiffel Tower the gray ranks that were to hem in devoted Paris once more, and the government had fled already to Bordeaux. It seemed that everything was lost before the war was fairly begun. The coming of the English army, far too small in numbers, had availed nothing. It had been swept up with the others, escaping from capture or destruction only by a hair, and was now driven back with the French on the capital.