But at first the British advance was checked. In March and April 1917 two battles were fought at Gaza—two frontal attacks which failed. During the summer Sir Edmund Allenby was appointed to the chief command, and slowly and patiently he perfected his plans. He saw that a direct attack on Gaza was likely to fail, but far to the east he observed a weak point in the enemy front where the town of Beersheba constituted a detached and separate defensive system. If Beersheba could be taken, the whole Gaza position could be turned on the flank.
Beersheba was duly taken at the end of October 1917, and on the 7th November Gaza followed. The enemy suffered severely, and was in full retreat, almost in flight. Sir Edmund Allenby's objective was now Jerusalem, and his problem was less one of manoeuvres than of supply. His troops would advance just as fast as water and food could be brought up behind them.
FIELD-MARSHAL SIR EDMUND ALLENBY
(VISCOUNT ALLENBY OF MEGIDDO).
The advance was made in two main directions—one from Hebron due north towards Bethlehem; the other by the coastal plain, aiming at the junction where the Jerusalem railway joined the main line to Damascus. The Turkish army was split into two parts, retreating in different directions. Though Enver came from Constantinople and Falkenhayn from Aleppo it was difficult for them to devise a defence. Allenby seized Jaffa, and then swung eastward into the Judæan highlands. Now the progress became slow, while squalid little villages, whose names are famous throughout the whole Christian world, fell to the British troops. On the 30th November the British line had the shape of a sickle, with the centre of the curve flung far forward towards Jerusalem, and it was necessary to bring up the handle, which consisted of the cavalry and infantry which were at Hebron. By the 7th these had taken Bethlehem, and by the 8th British troops were before Jerusalem on the south and west, and within a mile and a half of its walls.
The Turkish garrison did not await the attack. In the night preceding Sunday, the 9th December, the day of the festival of the Hanookah, which commemorates the recapture of the Temple by Judas Maccabæus, detachments of broken Turkish soldiers poured in at the western or Jaffa Gate, while an outgoing stream flowed eastward across the valley of Jehoshaphat. Early in the morning the enemy sent out a white flag of surrender, and before noon British patrols were in the city.
Two days later Sir Edmund Allenby entered by the Jaffa Gate. Close by was the breach made in the walls to admit the German Emperor when he made his foolish pilgrimage in 1898. Far different was the entry of the British general. It was a clear, bright day, and the streets and housetops were thronged with black-coated, tarbushed Syrians and Levantines, picturesquely-clad peasants from the near villages, and Arabs from the fringes of the desert. There was no display of bunting and no bell-ringing or firing of salutes. On foot, accompanied only by his Staff, the commanders of the French and Italian detachments, and the military attachés of France, Italy, and the United States, he was received by the newly appointed Military Governor of the city, and a guard representing all the nationalities engaged in the campaign. He turned to the right into the Mount Zion quarter, and at the Citadel, at the base of the ancient Tower of David, his proclamation was read to the people.
Then he quietly left the city. Yet no conqueror had ever entered it with more prestige. For centuries there had been current an Arab prophecy that a deliverer should come from the West, and in 1898 the people of Palestine had asked if the Kaiser was indeed the man. But the prophecy foretold that such would not be the manner of his coming, for the true saviour would bear the name of a Prophet of God, and would enter Jerusalem on foot, and that he would not appear till the Nile flowed into Palestine. To the peasants of Judæa the prophecy now seemed to be fulfilled, for the name of the English general was in Arabic "the Prophet," and his men had come into the land bringing with them the waters of Egypt.
CHAPTER XX.
ALLENBY'S GREAT DRIVE.