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Transcriber’s Notes:

Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_).

Additional Transcriber’s Notes are at the end.

       *       *       *       *       *

[Illustration: THE INVADED COUNTRY]

       *       *       *       *       *




THE GERMAN TERROR IN BELGIUM


  _An Historical Record_

  BY
  ARNOLD J. TOYNBEE
  LATE FELLOW OF BALLIOL COLLEGE,
  OXFORD

  NEW YORK
  GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
  MCMXVII

       *       *       *       *       *

  COPYRIGHT, 1917,
  BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

  PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA




PREFACE


The subject of this book is the treatment of the civil population in
the countries overrun by the German Armies during the first three
months of the European War. The form of it is a connected narrative,
based on the published documents[1] and reproducing them by direct
quotation or (for the sake of brevity) by reference.

With the documents now published on both sides it is at last
possible to present a clear narrative of what actually happened. The
co-ordination of this mass of evidence, which has gradually accumulated
since the first days of invasion, is the principal purpose for which
the book has been written. The evidence consists of first-hand
statements--some delivered on oath before a court, others taken down
from the witnesses without oath by competent legal examiners, others
written and published on the witnesses’ own initiative as books or
pamphlets. Most of them originally appeared in print in a controversial
setting, as proofs or disproofs of disputed fact, or as justifications
or condemnations of fact that was admitted. In the present work,
however, this argumentative aspect of them has been avoided as far
as possible. For it has either been treated exhaustively in official
publications--the case of Louvain, for instance, in the German White
Book and the Belgian Reply to it--or will not be capable of such
treatment till after the conclusion of the War. The ultimate inquiry
and verdict, if it is to have finality, must proceed either from a
mixed commission of representatives of all the States concerned,
or from a neutral commission like that appointed by the Carnegie
Foundation to inquire into the atrocities committed during the Balkan
War. But the German Government has repeatedly refused proposals,
made both unofficially and officially, that it should allow such
an investigation to be conducted in the territory at present under
German military occupation,[2] and the final critical assessment will
therefore necessarily be postponed till the German Armies have retired
again within their own frontiers.

Meanwhile, an ordered and documented narrative of the attested facts
seems the best preparation for that judicial appraisement for which
the time is not yet ripe. The facts have been drawn from statements
made by witnesses on opposite sides with different intentions and
beliefs, but as far as possible they have been disengaged from this
subjective setting and have been set out, without comment, to speak
for themselves. It has been impossible, however, to confine the
exposition to pure narration at every point, for in the original
evidence the facts observed and the inferred explanation of them
are seldom distinguished, and when the same observed fact is made a
ground for diametrically opposite inferences by different witnesses,
the difficulty becomes acute. A German soldier, say, in Louvain on
the night of August 25th, 1914, hears the sound of machine-gun firing
apparently coming from a certain spot in the town, and infers that at
this spot Belgian civilians are using a machine gun against German
troops; a Belgian inhabitant hears the same sound, and infers that
German troops are firing on civilians. In such cases the narrative
must be interpreted by a judgment as to which of the inferences is
the truth, and this judgment involves discussion. What is remarkable,
however, is the rarity of these contradictions. Usually the different
testimonies fit together into a presentation of fact which is not open
to argument.

The narrative has been arranged so as to follow separately the tracks
of the different German Armies or groups of Armies which traversed
different sectors of French and Belgian territory. Within each sector
the chronological order has been followed, which is generally identical
with the geographical order in which the places affected lie along the
route of march. The present volume describes the invasion of Belgium up
to the sack of Louvain.

  ARNOLD J. TOYNBEE.

  _March, 1917._

FOOTNOTES:

[1] A schedule of the more important documents will be found in the
“List of Abbreviations” pp. xi-xiii.

[2] Belgian Reply pp. vii. and 97-8.




CONTENTS


  FRONTISPIECE      _The Invaded Country (Map)_

                                            PAGE

  PREFACE                                      v

  TABLE OF CONTENTS                           ix

  LIST OF MAPS                                ix

  LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS                        x

  LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS                       xi

  CHAPTER I.: THE TRACK OF THE ARMIES         15

  CHAPTER II.: FROM THE FRONTIER TO LIÉGE     23

       (i) ON THE VISÉ ROAD                   23

      (ii) ON THE BARCHON ROAD                27

     (iii) ON THE FLÉRON ROAD                 31

      (iv) ON THE VERVIERS ROAD               37

       (v) ON THE MALMÉDY ROAD                38

      (vi) BETWEEN THE VESDRE AND THE OURTHE  42

     (vii) ACROSS THE MEUSE                   44

    (viii) THE CITY OF LIÉGE                  46

  CHAPTER III.: FROM LIÉGE TO MALINES         52

      (i) THROUGH LIMBURG TO AERSCHOT         52

     (ii) AERSCHOT                            57

    (iii) THE AERSCHOT DISTRICT               74

     (iv) THE RETREAT FROM MALINES            77

      (v) LOUVAIN                             89




MAPS


  THE INVADED COUNTRY                   _Frontispiece_

  THE TRACK OF THE ARMIES: FROM THE
    FRONTIER TO MALINES[3]             _End of Volume_

  LOUVAIN, FROM THE GERMAN WHITE BOOK  _End of Volume_

FOOTNOTE:

[3] _This map shows practically all the roads and places referred to in
the text._




ILLUSTRATIONS


                                                         PAGE

   1. MOULAND                               _To face page_ 16

   2. BATTICE                                              17

   3. LIÉGE FORTS: A DESTROYED CUPOLA                      32

   4. ANS: AN INTERIOR                                     33

   5. ANS: THE CHURCH                                      48

   6. LIÉGE: A FARM HOUSE                                  49

   7. LIÉGE UNDER GERMAN OCCUPATION                        52

   8. LIÉGE UNDER THE GERMANS: RUINS AND PLACARDS          53

   9. LIÉGE IN RUINS                                       60

  10. “WE LIVE LIKE GOD IN BELGIUM”                        61

  11. HAELEN                                               64

  12. AERSCHOT                                             65

  13. BRUSSELS: A BOOKING-OFFICE                           80

  14. MALINES AFTER BOMBARDMENT                            81

  15. MALINES: RUINS                                       84

  16. MALINES: RUINS                                       85

  17. MALINES: CARDINAL MERCIER’S STATE-ROOM AS A RED
      CROSS HOSPITAL                                       92

  18. MALINES: THE CARDINAL’S THRONE-ROOM                  93

  19. CAPELLE-AU-BOIS                                      96

  20. CAPELLE-AU-BOIS                                      97

  21. CAPELLE-AU-BOIS: THE CHURCH                         112

  22. LOUVAIN: NEAR THE CHURCH OF ST. PIERRE              113

  23. LOUVAIN: THE CHURCH OF ST. PIERRE                   116

  24. LOUVAIN: THE CHURCH OF ST. PIERRE ACROSS THE RUINS  117

  25. LOUVAIN: THE CHURCH OF ST. PIERRE--INTERIOR         124

  26. LOUVAIN: STATION SQUARE                             125




ABBREVIATIONS


  ALPHABET, LETTERS OF THE:--

    CAPITALS Appendices to the German White Book entitled: “_The
      Violation of International Law in the Conduct of the Belgian
      People’s-War_” (dated Berlin, 10th May, 1915); Arabic numerals
      after the capital letter refer to the depositions contained in
      each Appendix.

    LOWER CASE Sections of the “_Appendix to the Report of the
      Committee on Alleged German Outrages, Appointed by His Britannic
      Majesty’s Government and Presided Over by the Right Hon. Viscount
      Bryce, O.M._” (Cd. 7895); Arabic numerals after the lower case
      letter refer to the depositions contained in each Section.

  ANN(EX) Annexes (numbered 1 to 9) to the _Reports of the Belgian
    Commission (vide infra)_.

  BELG. _Reports (numbered i to xxii) of the Official Commission of the
    Belgian Government on the Violation of the Rights of Nations and
    of the Laws and Customs of War._ (English translation, published,
    on behalf of the Belgian Legation, by H.M. Stationery Office, two
    volumes.)

  BLAND “_Germany’s Violations of the Laws of War, 1914-5_”; compiled
    under the Auspices of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and
    translated into English with an Introduction by J. O. P. Bland.
    (London: Heinemann. 1915.)

  BRYCE _Appendix to the Report of the Committee on Alleged German
    Outrages appointed by His Britannic Majesty’s Government._

  CHAMBRY “_The Truth about Louvain_,” by Réné Chambry. (Hodder and
    Stoughton. 1915.)

  DAVIGNON “_Belgium and Germany_,” Texts and Documents, preceded by a
    Foreword by Henri Davignon. (Thomas Nelson and Sons.)

  “EYE-WITNESS” “_An Eye-Witness at Louvain_” (London: Eyre and
    Spottiswoode. 1914.)

  “GERMANS” “_The Germans at Louvain_,” by a volunteer worker in the
    _Hôpital St.-Thomas_. (Hodder and Stoughton. 1916.)

  GRONDIJS “_The Germans in Belgium: Experiences of a Neutral_,” by L.
    H. Grondijs, Ph.D., formerly Professor of Physics at the Technical
    Institute of Dordrecht. (London: Heinemann. 1915.)

  HÖCKER “_An der Spitze Meiner Kompagnie, Three Months of
    Campaigning_,” by Paul Oskar Höcker. (Ullstein and Co., Berlin and
    Vienna. 1914.)

  “HORRORS” “_The Horrors of Louvain_,” by an Eye-witness, with an
    Introduction by Lord Halifax. (Published by the London _Sunday
    Times_.)

  MASSART “_Belgians under the German Eagle_,” by Jean Massart,
    Vice-Director of the Class of Sciences in the Royal Academy of
    Belgium. (English translation by Bernard Miall. London: Fisher
    Unwin. 1916.)

  MERCIER _Pastoral Letter_, dated Xmas, 1914, of His Eminence Cardinal
    Mercier, Archbishop of Malines.

  MORGAN “_German Atrocities: An Official Investigation_,” by J. H.
    Morgan, M.A., Professor of Constitutional Law in the University of
    London. (London: Fisher Unwin. 1916.)

  NUMERALS, ROMAN LOWER CASE _Reports (numbered i to xxii) of the
    Belgian Commission (vide supra)._

  R(EPLY) “_Reply to the German White Book of May 10, 1915._”
    (Published, for the Belgian Ministry of Justice and Ministry of
    Foreign Affairs, by Berger-Levrault, Paris, 1916.)

    Arabic numerals after the R refer to the depositions contained
    in the particular section of the _Reply_ that is being cited
    at the moment: _e.g._, R15 denotes the fifteenth deposition
    in the section on Louvain in the _Reply_ when cited in the
    section on Louvain in the present work; but it denotes the
    fifteenth deposition in the section on Aerschot when cited in the
    corresponding section here.

    The _Reply_ is also referred to by pages, and in these cases the
    Arabic numeral denotes the page and is preceded by “p.”

  S(OMVILLE) “_The Road to Liége_,” by Gustave Somville. (English
    translation by Bernard Miall. Hodder and Stoughton. 1916.)

  STRUYKEN “_The German White Book on the War in Belgium: A
    Commentary_,” by Professor A. A. H. Struyken. (English Translation
    of Articles in the Journal _Van Onzen Tijd_, of Amsterdam, July
    31st, August 7th, 14th, 21st, 1915. Thomas Nelson and Sons.)

N.B.--Statistics, where no reference is given, are taken from the first
and second Annexes to the Reports of the Belgian Commission. They are
based on official investigations.

       *       *       *       *       *

THE GERMAN TERROR IN BELGIUM




I. THE TRACK OF THE ARMIES.


When Germany declared war upon Russia, Belgium, and France in the
first days of August, 1914, German armies immediately invaded Russian,
Belgian, and French territory, and as soon as the frontiers were
crossed, these armies began to wage war, not merely against the troops
and fortifications of the invaded states, but against the lives and
property of the civil population.

Outrages of this kind were committed during the whole advance and
retreat of the Germans through Belgium and France, and only abated when
open manœuvring gave place to trench warfare along all the line from
Switzerland to the sea. Similar outrages accompanied the simultaneous
advance into the western salient of Russian Poland, and the autumn
incursion of the Austro-Hungarians into Serbia, which was turned back
at Valievo. There was a remarkable uniformity in the crimes committed
in these widely separated theatres of war, and an equally remarkable
limit to the dates within which they fell. They all occurred during
the first three months of the war, while, since that period, though
outrages have continued, they have not been of the same character or on
the same scale. This has not been due to the immobility of the fronts,
for although it is certainly true that the Germans have been unable to
overrun fresh territories on the west, they have carried out greater
invasions than ever in Russia and the Balkans, which have not been
marked by outrages of the same specific kind. This seems to show that
the systematic warfare against the civil population in the campaigns
of 1914 was the result of policy, deliberately tried and afterwards
deliberately given up. The hypothesis would account for the peculiar
features in the German Army’s conduct, but before we can understand
these features we must survey the sum of what the Germans did. The
catalogue of crimes against civilians extends through every phase and
theatre of the military operations in the first three months of the
war, and an outline of these is a necessary introduction to it.

In August, 1914, the Central Empires threw their main strength against
Belgium and France, and penetrated far further on this front than on
the east and south-east. The line on which they advanced extended from
the northern end of the Vosges to the Dutch frontier on the Meuse, and
here again their strength was unevenly distributed. The chief striking
force was concentrated in the extreme north, and advanced in an
immense arc across the Meuse, the Scheldt, the Somme, and the Oise to
the outskirts of Paris. As this right wing pressed forward, one army
after another took up the movement toward the left or south-eastern
flank, but each made less progress than its right-hand neighbour. While
the first three armies from the right all crossed the Marne before
they were compelled to retreat, the fourth (the Crown Prince’s) never
reached it, and the army of Lorraine was stopped a few miles within
French territory, before ever it crossed the Meuse. We shall set down
very briefly the broad movements of these armies and the dates on which
they took place.

[Illustration: 1. MOULAND]

[Illustration: 2. BATTICE]

Germany sent her ultimatum to Belgium on the evening of Aug. 2nd. It
announced that Germany would violate Belgian neutrality within twelve
hours, unless Belgium betrayed it herself, and it was rejected by
Belgium the following morning. That day Germany declared war on France,
and the next day, Aug. 4th, the advance guard of the German right wing
crossed the Belgian frontier and attacked the _forts of Liége_. On Aug.
7th the town of _Liége_ was entered, and the crossings of the Meuse,
from Liége to the Dutch frontier, were in German hands.

Beyond Liége the invading forces spread out like a fan. On the extreme
right a force advanced north-west to outflank the Belgian army covering
Brussels and to mask the fortress of Antwerp, and this right wing,
again, was the first to move. Its van was defeated by the Belgians at
_Haelen_ on Aug. 12th, but the main column entered _Hasselt_ on the
same day, and took _Aerschot_ and _Louvain_ on Aug. 19th. During the
next few days it pushed on to _Malines_, was driven out again by a
Belgian sortie from Antwerp on Aug. 25th, but retook Malines before the
end of the month, and contained the Antwerp garrison along the line of
the Dyle and the Démer.

This was all that the German right flank column was intended to do,
for it was only a subsidiary part of the two armies concentrated at
Liége. As soon as Antwerp was covered, the mass of these armies was
launched westward from Liége into the gap between the fortresses of
Antwerp and Namur--von Kluck’s army on the right and von Bülow’s on
the left. By Aug. 21st von Bülow was west of Namur, and attacking the
French on the _Sambre_. On Aug. 20th an army corps of von Kluck’s had
paraded through _Brussels_, and on the 23rd his main body, wheeling
south-west, attacked the British at _Mons_. On the 24th von Kluck’s
extreme right reached the Scheldt at _Tournai_ and, under this threat
to their left flank, the British and French abandoned their positions
on the Mons-Charleroi line and retreated to the south. Von Kluck and
von Bülow hastened in pursuit. They passed _Cambrai_ on Aug. 26th and
_St. Quentin_ on the 29th; on the 31st von Kluck was crossing the
Oise at _Compiègne_, and on the 6th Sept. he reached his furthest
point at _Courchamp_, south-east of Paris and nearly thirty miles
beyond the _Marne_. His repulse, like his advance, was brought about
by an outflanking manœuvre, only this time the Anglo-French had the
initiative, and it was von Kluck who was outflanked. His retirement
compelled von Bülow to fall back on his left, after a bloody defeat in
the marshes of _St. Gond_, and the retreat was taken up, successively,
by the other armies which had come into line on the left of von Bülow.

These armies had all crossed the Meuse south of the fortress of Namur,
and, to retain connexion with them, von Bülow had had to detach a force
on his left to seize the line of the Meuse from Liége to Namur and to
capture Namur itself. The best German heavy artillery was assigned to
this force for the purpose, and _Namur_ fell, after an unexpectedly
short bombardment, on Aug. 23rd, while von Bülow’s main army at
Charleroi was still engaged in its struggle with the French.

The fall of Namur opened the way for German armies to cross the Meuse
along the whole line from Namur to Verdun. The first crossing was made
at _Dinant_ on Aug. 23rd, the very day on which Namur fell, by a Saxon
army, which marched thither by cross routes through Luxembourg; the
second by the Duke of Würtemberg’s army between _Mezières_ and _Sedan_;
and the third by the Crown Prince of Prussia’s army immediately
north of _Verdun_. West of the Meuse the Saxons and Würtembergers
amalgamated, and got into touch with von Bülow on their right.
Advancing parallel with him, they reached _Charleville_ on Aug. 25th,
crossed the Aisne at _Rethel_ on the 30th and the Marne at _Châlons_ on
the 4th, and were stopped on the 7th at _Vitry en Perthois_. The Crown
Prince, on their left, did not penetrate so far. Instead of the plains
of Champagne he had to traverse the hill country of the _Argonne_. He
turned back at _Sermaize_, which he had reached on Sept. 6th, and never
saw the Marne.

On the left of the Crown Prince a Bavarian army crossed the frontier
between Metz and the Vosges. Its task was to join hands with the
Crown Prince round the southern flank of Verdun, as the Duke of
Würtemberg had joined hands with von Bülow round the flank of Namur.
But Verdun never fell, and the Bavarian advance was the weakest of any.
_Lunéville_ fell on Aug. 22nd, and _Baccarat_ was entered on the 24th;
but _Nancy_ was never reached, and on Sept. 12th the general German
retreat extended to this south-easternmost sector, and the Bavarians
fell back.

Thus the German invading armies were everywhere checked and driven back
between the 6th and the 12th September, 1914. The operations which came
to this issue bear the general name of the _Battle of the Marne_. The
_Marne_ was followed immediately by the _Aisne_, and the issue of the
Aisne was a change from open to trench warfare along a line extending
from the Vosges to the Oise. This change was complete before September
closed, and the line formed then has remained practically unaltered to
the present time. But there was another month of open fighting between
the Oise and the sea.

When the Germans’ strategy was defeated at the Marne, they transferred
their efforts to the north-west, and took the initiative there. On
Sept. 9th the Belgian Army had made a second sortie from Antwerp, to
coincide with the counter-offensive of Joffre, and this time they
had even reoccupied _Aerschot_. The Germans retaliated by taking
the offensive on the Scheldt. The retaining army before Antwerp was
strongly reinforced. Its left flank was secured, in the latter half
of September, by the occupation of _Termonde_ and _Alost_. The attack
on _Antwerp_ itself began on Sept. 27th. On the 2nd the outer ring
of forts was forced, and on the 9th the Germans entered the city.
The towns of Flanders fell in rapid succession--_Ghent_ on the 12th,
_Bruges_ on the 14th, _Ostend_ on the 15th--and the Germans hoped to
break through to the Channel ports on the front between Ostend and the
Oise. Meanwhile, each side had been feverishly extending its lines from
the Oise towards the north and pushing forward cavalry to turn the
exposed flank of the opponent. These two simultaneous movements--the
extension of the trench lines from the Oise to the sea, and the German
thrust across Flanders to the Channel--intersected one another at
_Ypres_, and the _Battle of Ypres and the Yser_, in the latter part of
October, was the crisis of this north-western struggle. On Oct. 31st
the German effort to break through reached, and passed, its climax, and
trench warfare established itself as decisively from the Oise to the
sea as it had done a month earlier between the Vosges and the Oise.

Thus, three months after the German armies crossed the frontier, the
German invasion of Belgium and France gave place to a permanent German
occupation of French and Belgian territories behind a practically
stationary front, and with this change of character in the fighting a
change came over the outrages upon the civil population which remained
in Germany’s power. The crimes of the invasion and the crimes of the
occupation are of a different order from one another, and must be dealt
with apart.




II. FROM THE FRONTIER TO LIÉGE.


(i) _On the Visé Road._

The Germans invaded Belgium on Aug. 4th, 1914. Their immediate
objective was the fortress of Liége and the passage of the Meuse,
but first they had to cross a zone of Belgian territory from twenty
to twenty-five miles wide. They came over the frontier along four
principal roads, which led through this territory to the fortress and
the river, and this is what they did in the towns and villages they
passed.

The first road led from Aix-la-Chapelle, in Germany, to the bridge
over the Meuse at Visé, skirting the Dutch frontier, and _Warsage_[4]
was the first Belgian village on this road to which the Germans came.
Their advance-guards distributed a proclamation by General von Emmich:
“_I give formal pledges to the Belgian population that they will not
have to suffer from the horrors of war.... If you wish to avoid the
horrors of war, you must act wisely and with a true appreciation of
your duty to your country._” This was on the morning of Aug. 4th, and
the Mayor of Warsage, M. Fléchet, had already posted a notice on the
town-hall warning the inhabitants to keep calm. All that day and
the next the Germans passed through; on the afternoon of the 6th the
village was clear of them, when suddenly they swarmed back, shooting in
at the windows and setting houses on fire. Several people were killed;
one old man was burnt alive. Then the Mayor was ordered to assemble
the population in the square. A German officer had been shot on the
road. No inquiry was held; no post-mortem examination made (the German
soldiers were nervous and marched with finger on trigger); the village
was condemned. The houses were systematically plundered, and then
systematically burnt. A dozen inhabitants, including the Burgomaster,
were carried off as hostages to the German camp at Mouland. Three were
shot at once; the rest were kept all night in the open; one of them was
tied to a cart-wheel and beaten with rifle-butts; in the morning six
were hanged, the rest set free. Eighteen people in all were killed at
Warsage and 25 houses destroyed.

At _Fouron-St. Martin_[5] five people were killed and 20 houses burnt.
Nineteen houses were burnt at _Fouron-le-Compte_.[5] At _Berneau_,[6]
a few miles further down the road, 67 houses (out of 116) were burnt
on Aug. 5th, and 7 people killed. “The people of Berneau,” writes a
German in his diary on Aug. 5th, “have fired on those who went to get
water. The village has been partly destroyed.” On the day of this entry
the Germans had commandeered wine at Berneau, and were drunk when they
took reprisals for shots their victims were never proved to have fired.
Among these victims was the Burgomaster, M. Bruyère, a man of 83. He
was taken, like the Burgomaster of Warsage, to the camp at Mouland, and
was never seen again after the night of the 6th. At _Mouland_[7] itself
4 people were killed and 73 houses destroyed (out of 132).

The road from Aix-la-Chapelle reaches the Meuse at _Visé_.[8] It was
a town of 900 houses and 4,000 souls, and, as a German describes it,
“It vanished from the map.”[9] The inhabitants were killed, scattered
or deported, the houses levelled to the ground, and this was done
systematically, stage by stage.

The Germans who marched through Warsage reached Visé on the afternoon
of Aug. 4th. The Belgians had blown up the bridges at Visé and
Argenteau, and were waiting for the Germans on the opposite bank. As
they entered Visé, the Germans came for the first time under fire,
and they wreaked their vengeance on the town. “The first house they
came to as they entered Visé they burned” (a 16), and they began to
fire at random in the streets. At least eight civilians were shot in
this way before night, and when night fell the population was driven
out of the houses and compelled to bivouac in the square. More houses
were burnt on the 6th; on the 10th they burned the church; on the 11th
they seized the Dean, the Burgomaster, and the Mother Superior of the
Convent as hostages; on the 15th a regiment of East Prussians arrived
and was billeted in the town, and that night Visé was destroyed. “I saw
commissioned officers directing and supervising the burning,” says an
inhabitant (a 16). “It was done systematically with the use of benzine,
spread on the floors and then lighted. In my own and another house I
saw officers come in before the burning with revolvers in their hands,
and have china, valuable antique furniture, and other such things
removed. This being done, the houses were, by their orders, set on
fire....”

The East Prussians were drunk, there was firing in the streets, and,
once more, people were killed. Next morning the population was rounded
up in the station square and sorted out--men this side, women that. The
women might go to Holland, the men, in two gangs of about 300 each,
were deported to Germany as franc-tireurs. “During the night of Aug.
15-16,” as another German diarist[10] describes the scene, “Pioneer
Grimbow gave the alarm in the town of Visé. Everyone was shot or taken
prisoner, and the houses were burnt. The prisoners were made to march
and keep up with the troops.” About 30 people in all were killed
at Visé, and 575 out of 876 houses destroyed. On the final day of
destruction the Germans had been in peaceable occupation of the place
for ten days, and the Belgian troops had retired about forty miles out
of range.

That is what the Germans did on the road from Aix-la-Chapelle; but,
before reaching Warsage, the road sends out a branch through Aubel
to the left, which passes under the guns of _Fort Barchon_ and leads
straight to Liége. The Germans took this road also, and Barchon was the
first of the Liége forts to fall. The civil population was not spared.


(ii) _On the Barchon Road._

At _St. André_[11] 4 civilians were killed and 14 houses burnt.
_Julémont_,[12] the next village, was completely plundered and burnt.
Only 2 houses remained standing, and 12 people were killed. Advancing
along this road, the Germans arrived at _Blégny_[13] on Aug. 5th.
Several inhabitants of Blégny were murdered that afternoon, among
them M. Smets, a professor of gunsmithry (the villagers worked for
the small-arms manufacturers of Liége). M. Smets was killed in his
house, where his wife was in child-bed. The corpse was thrown into
the street, the mother and new-born baby were dragged out after it.
That night the population of Blégny was herded together in the village
institute; their houses were set on fire. Next morning--the 6th--the
women were released and the men driven forward by the German infantry
towards Barchon fort. The Curé of Blégny, the Abbé Labeye, was among
the number, and there were 296 of them in all. In front of Barchon
they were placed in rows of four, but the fort would not fire upon
this living screen, and they were marched away across country towards
Battice, where five were shot before the eyes of the rest, and the curé
kicked, spat upon, and pricked with bayonets. They were again driven
forward as a screen against a Belgian patrol, and were kept in the open
all night. Next morning 4 more were shot--two who had been wounded by
the Belgian fire, and one who had heart disease and was too feeble to
go on. The fourth was an old man of 78. The Germans tortured these
victims by placing lighted cigarettes in their nostrils and ears. After
this second execution on the 7th, the remainder were set free....

On the 10th Aug. the curé writes in his diary:

  “There are now 38 houses burnt, and 23 damaged.

  “Thursday the 13th: a few houses pillaged, two young men taken away.

  “Friday, the 14th: a few houses pillaged.

  “Friday night: the village of Barchon is burnt and the curé taken
  prisoner....”

The curé’s last notes for a sermon have survived: “My brothers, perhaps
we shall again see happy days....” But on the 16th, before the sermon
was delivered, the curé was shot. He was shot against the church
wall, with M. Ruwet, the Burgomaster, and two brothers, one of them
a revolver manufacturer who had handed over his stock to the German
authorities (from whom he received two passes) and had been working
for the Red Cross. After the execution the church was burnt down. The
nuns of Blégny were shot at by Germans in a motor-car when they came
out that day to bury the bodies. From the 5th to the 16th Aug., about
30 people were killed in the commune of Blégny-Trembleur, and 45 houses
burnt in all.

The village of _Barchon_,[14] as the curé of Blégny records, was
destroyed on the 14th--in cold blood, five days after the surrender
of the fort. There was a battue by two German regiments through the
village. The houses were plundered and burnt (110 burnt in all out
of 146); the inhabitants were rounded up. Twenty-two were shot in
one batch, including two little girls of two and an old woman of
ninety-four. Thirty-two perished altogether, and a dozen hostages were
carried off, some of whom were tied to field guns and compelled to keep
up with the horses. On the 16th the Germans evicted the inhabitants of
_Chefneux_,[15] and shot 4 men. On the 17th they burned all the 22
houses in the hamlet. At _Saives_[16] they burned 12 houses, and shot a
man and a girl.

We have the diary of a German soldier who marched down this branch
road from Aubel when all the villages had been destroyed except
_Wandre_,[17] which stood where the road debouched upon the Meuse.

“15th Aug.--11.50 a.m. Crossed the Belgian frontier and kept steadily
along the high road until we got into Belgium. We were hardly into it
before we met a horrible sight. Houses were burnt down, the inhabitants
driven out and some of them shot. Of the hundreds of houses not a
single one had been spared--every one was plundered and burnt down.
Hardly were we through this big village when the next was already set
on fire, and so it went on....

“16th Aug. The big village of Barchon set on fire. The same day, about
11.50 a.m., we came to the town of Wandre. Here the houses were spared
but all searched. At last we had got out of the town when once more
everything was sent to ruins. In one house a whole arsenal had been
discovered. The inhabitants were one and all dragged out and shot, but
this shooting was absolutely heart-rending, for they all knelt and
prayed. But this got them no mercy. A few shots rang out, and they
fell backwards into the green grass and went to their eternal sleep.

“And still the brigands would not leave off shooting us from
behind--that, and never from in front--but now we could stand it no
longer, and raging and roaring we went on and on, and everything that
got in our way was smashed or burnt or shot. At last we had to go
into bivouac. Half tired out and done up we laid ourselves down, and
we didn’t wait long before quenching some of our thirst. But we only
drank wine; the water has been half poisoned and half left alone by the
beasts. Well, we have much too much here to eat and drink. When a pig
shows itself anywhere or a hen or a duck or pigeons, they are all shot
down and slaughtered, so that at any rate we have something to eat. It
is a real adventure....”

This was the temper of the Germans who destroyed Wandre. They burned 33
houses altogether and shot 32 people--16 of them in one batch.


(iii) _On the Fléron Road._

There is another road from Aix-la-Chapelle to Liége, which passes
through Battice and is commanded by _Fort Fléron_ (Fort Fléron offered
the most determined resistance of all the forts of Liége, and cost
the Germans the greatest loss). The Germans marched through _Battice_
on August 4th, and came under fire of the fort that afternoon. In the
evening they arrested three men in the streets of Battice, and shot
them without charge or investigation.

The check to their arms was avenged on the civil population. “On the
arrival of the German troops in the village of _Micheroux_,” states a
Belgian witness (a 12), “during the time when Fort Fléron was holding
out, they came to a block of four cottages, and having turned out the
inhabitants, set the cottages on fire and burned them. From one of the
cottages a woman (mentioned by name) came out with a baby in her arms,
and a German soldier snatched it from her and dashed it to the ground,
killing it then and there.”[18]

“The position was dangerous,” writes a German in his diary[19] on
August 5th, from a picket in front of Fort Fléron. “As suspicious
civilians were hovering round, houses 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 were cleared, the
owners arrested (and shot the next day).... I shoot a civilian with my
rifle, at 400 metres, slap through the head....”

[Illustration: 3. LIÉGE FORTS: A DESTROYED CUPOLA]

[Illustration: 4. ANS: AN INTERIOR]

That day the curé of Battice[20]: (who had been kept under arrest in
the open since the evening of the 4th) was driven, with the Mayor and
one of the communal councillors, under the Belgian fire. On the 6th the
German troops again retired on Battice in confusion, and the village
was destroyed that afternoon. Shots were fired indiscriminately and
the houses set on fire. The first victim was a young man sitting in a
café with his _fiancée_--he fell dead by her side. Three people were
taken to the field to which the men of Blégny had been brought, and
were shot with the five victims there. On the 7th they shot a workman
who had been given a safe-conduct by a German officer to buy bread in a
neighbouring village, and was on his way home with his wife. On the 8th
they set the fire going again, to burn what still remained. They burned
146 houses and killed 36 people in Battice from first to last.

The town of _Herve_[21] lies a mile or so beyond Battice on the Fléron
road, and was also traversed by the Germans on August 4th. The first
to pass were officers in a motor car, and as they crossed the bridge
they shot down two young men standing by the roadside--one was badly
wounded, the other killed outright. In the evening they sent for the
Mayor, accused the inhabitants of having fired on German troops, and
threatened to shoot the inhabitants and burn the town to the ground.
The Mayor and the curé spent the night going from house to house and
warning the people to avoid all grounds of offence--before they had
finished there were more shots fired indiscriminately (by the Germans),
and more (civilian) wounded and dead. The Mayor and curé were then
retained as hostages for the civilians’ good behaviour. On the 6th the
first house was burnt; on the 7th five men were shot in cold blood;
on the 8th a fresh column of troops arrived from Aix-la-Chapelle, and
these were the destroyers of Herve. “They fired indiscriminately in
all quarters of the town,” says an eye-witness (a 2), “and in the Rue
de la Station they shot Madame Hendrickx, hitting her at close range,
although she had a crucifix in her hand--begging for mercy.” All
through the 8th the shooting and burning went on, and on the 9th the
fires were kindled again. “The Germans gave themselves up to pillage
and loaded motor cars with everything of value they could find.” They
burned and pillaged consecutively for ten days, and on the 19th and
20th fresh regiments arrived and carried on the work. Two hundred
and seventy-nine houses were destroyed at Herve altogether, and 44
people killed. “On the road to Herve everything is burnt,” writes a
German soldier (Reply p. 127) who passed when all was over. “At Herve,
the same. Everything is burnt except a convent--everywhere corpses
carbonised into an indistinguishable mass. (There are about a hundred,
all civilians, and children among the number.) I only saw three people
alive in the village--an old man, a sister of charity, and a girl.”
The Belgian witness quoted above (a 2) records that “the German staff
officers staying in his hotel told his wife that the reason why they
had so treated Herve was because the inhabitants of the town would not
petition for a passage for the Germans at Fléron.”

In the villages between Herve and Fort Fléron the slaughter and
devastation were, if possible, more complete. At _la Bouxhe-Melen_[22]
there were two massacres--one on Aug. 5th and another on the 8th. In
the second the people were shot down in a field _en masse_, and 129
were murdered altogether, as well as about 40 people herded in from the
farms and hamlets of the neighbourhood. Sixty houses in la Bouxhe-Melen
were destroyed. In the commune of _Soumagne_,[23] on a branch road to
the south, the Germans killed 165 civilians and burned 104 houses down.
When they entered Soumagne on Aug. 5th, they killed indiscriminately
in the streets. “They broke the windows and broke the door,” writes a
witness (a 5) who had taken refuge in a cellar. “My mother went out of
the cellar door.... Then I heard a shot and my mother fell back into
the cellar. She was killed.” This indiscriminate killing was followed
up the same afternoon by the massacre of 69 civilians in a field called
the Fonds Leroy. “The soldiers fired a volley and killed many, and
then fired twice more. Then they went through the ranks and bayonetted
everyone still living. I saw many bayonetted in this way” (a 4). One
boy was shot and bayonetted in four places, and lay several days among
the dead, keeping himself alive on weeds and grass. This boy survived.
In another field 18 were massacred in one batch, in another 19. “I saw
about 20 dead bodies lying here and there along the road,” writes one
of the witnesses (a 4). “One of them was that of a little girl aged 13.
The rest were men, and most of them had had their heads bashed in.”--“I
saw 56 corpses of civilians in a meadow,” deposes another. “Some had
been killed by bayonet thrusts and others by rifle shots. In the heaps
of corpses above mentioned was that of the son of the Burgomaster. His
throat had been cut from ear to ear and his tongue had been pulled out
and cut off.”

In the hamlet of _Fécher_ the whole population--about 1,000 women,
children and men--was penned into the church on Aug. 5th, and next
morning the men (412 of them) were herded off as a living screen for
the German troops advancing between the forts (the first man to come
out of the church being wantonly shot down as an example to the rest).
The 411 were driven by bye-roads to the Chartreuse Monastery, above
the Meuse, overlooking the bridge into the city of Liége, and on the
7th they were planted as hostages on the bridge while the Germans
marched across. They were held there without food or shelter or relief
for a hundred hours. At _Micheroux_[24] 9 people were killed and 17
houses destroyed. These villages were all outside the eastern line of
forts, but the places inside the line, between the forts and Liége,
were devastated to an equal degree. At Fléron[25] 15 civilians were
killed and 152 houses destroyed.[26] At _Retinnes_[27] 41 civilians
were killed and 118 houses destroyed.[26] At _Queue du Bois_[28]
11 civilians were killed and 35 houses destroyed. At _Evegnée_ 2
civilians were killed and 5 houses destroyed. At _Cerexhe_[29] 4 women
and children were burnt alive in a house, and 2 houses destroyed.
At _Bellaire_[30] 4 people were killed and 15 houses destroyed. At
_Jupille_[31] 8 people were killed and 1 house destroyed. These
villages were saved none of the horrors of war by the surrender of the
forts.


(iv) _On the Verviers Road._

The Germans converged on the forts by more southerly roads as well.
At _Dolhain_,[32] on the road from Eupen to Verviers, 28 houses were
burnt on Aug. 8th and several civilians killed. At _Metten_,[33] near
Verviers, a German soldier confesses that he and his comrades “were
ordered to search a house from which shots had been fired, but found
nothing in the house but two women and a child.... I did not see the
women fire. The women were told that nothing would be done to them,
because they were crying so bitterly. We brought the women out and took
them to the major, and then we were ordered to shoot the women.... When
the mother was dead, the major gave the order to shoot the child, so
that the child should not be left alone in the world. The child’s eyes
were bandaged. I took part in this because we were ordered to do it by
Major Kastendick and Captain Dultingen....”

But Verviers and the Verviers road remained comparatively unscathed.
Far worse was done by the Germans who descended on the Vesdre from
Malmédy, south-eastward, over the hills.


(v) _On the Malmédy Road._

_Francorchamps_,[34] the first Belgian village on the Malmédy road, was
sacked on Aug. 8th, four days after the first German troops had passed
through it unopposed, and again on Aug. 14th by later detachments. At
_Hockay_,[35] near Francorchamps, the curé was shot. In Hockay and
Francorchamps 13 people were killed altogether, and 25 houses burnt.
“M. Darchambeau, who was wounded (in the cellar of a burning house),
asked a young officer for mercy. This young officer of barely 22, in
front of the women and children, aimed his revolver at M. Darchambeau’s
head and killed him.”

The fate of _Pepinster_[36] is recorded in a German diary: “Aug.
12th, Pepinster, Burgomaster, priest, and schoolmaster shot; houses
reduced to ashes. March on.” As a matter of fact, the three hostages
were not shot, but reprieved. The Burgomaster of _Cornesse_[37] was
shot in their stead (a 33, 34)--“an old man and quite deaf. (He was
only hit in the leg, and a German officer came up and shot him through
the heart with his revolver.)” Five houses in Cornesse were burnt.
At _Soiron_,[38] on Aug. 4th, the Germans bivouacking there fired on
one another, and eight German soldiers were wounded or killed. “But
the officers,” deposes a German private[39] who was present at the
scene, “in their anxiety to prevent the fact of this blunder from
being reported, hastened to pretend that it was really the civilians
who had fired, and gave orders for a general massacre. This order was
carried out, and there was terrible butchery. I must mention that we
only killed the males, but we burned all the houses.” At _Olnes_[40]
the curé and the communal secretary were shot on Aug. 5th, and the
schoolmaster the same evening, in front of his burning house, with
his daughter and his two sons. Only two members of the schoolmaster’s
family were spared. In the hamlet of _St. Hadelin_,[41] which came
within the radius of Fort Fléron’s guns, there was a wholesale massacre
on the same date. Early in the day the Germans “requisitioned” 300
bottles of wine; later they drove a crowd of people from St. Hadelin,
_Riessonsart_, and _Ayeneux_, to a place called the Faveu, and shot
down 33. The remainder were forced to haul German artillery towards the
forts, but these were partly released next day, and partly massacred
at the Heids d’Olne. Twenty inhabitants of Ayeneux were massacred in a
batch elsewhere. Sixty-two civilians were murdered altogether in the
commune of Olne, and 78 houses destroyed--40 in St. Hadelin and 38 in
Olne itself.

At _Forêt_[42] the Germans burned a farm and killed two of the farmer’s
sons on Aug. 5th as they entered the place. They drove the farmer and
his two surviving sons in front of them as a screen. The schoolmaster
and two others were shot outside the village. “At Forêt,” states the
German soldier quoted above,[43] “we found prisoners--a priest and
five civilians, including a boy of 17. Pillage began ... but we were
shelled ... and moved off to the next village. The house doors were at
once broken in with the butt-ends of muskets. We pillaged everything.
We made piles of the curtains and everything inflammable, and set
them alight. All the houses were burnt. It was in the middle of this
that the civilian prisoners of whom I have spoken were shot, with the
exception of the curé.” (The curé, too, was shot that night.)[44] “A
little further on, under the pretext that civilians had fired from a
house (though for my own part I cannot say whether they were soldiers
or civilians who fired), orders were given to burn the house. A woman
asleep there was dragged from her bed, thrown into the flames, and
burnt alive....”

Thirteen people in all were killed at Forêt, and 6 houses destroyed.
At _Magnée_[45] 18 houses were destroyed and 21 people killed. The
German troops in Magnée were caught by the fire from the Fléron and
Chaudfontaine forts, and they revenged themselves, as elsewhere, on
the civilians, shooting people in batches and burning houses and
farms. This was on Aug. 6th, and at _Romsée_,[46] on the same day,
34 houses were burnt and 31 civilians murdered--some of them being
driven as a screen in front of the German troops under the fire of Fort
Chaudfontaine.


(vi) _Between the Vesdre and the Ourthe._

The same outrages were committed between the Vesdre and the Ourthe. At
_Louveigné_,[47] on Aug. 7th, the Germans, retreating from their attack
on the southern forts, looted the drink-shops, fired in the streets,
and accused the civilians of having shot. A dozen men (two of them over
70 years old) were imprisoned as hostages in a forge, and were shot
down, when released, like game in the open. That evening Louveigné was
systematically set on fire with the same incendiary apparatus that was
used at Visé, and the curé was dragged round on the foot-board of a
military motor-car to watch the work. There were more murders next day.
The total number of civilians murdered at Louveigné was 29, and there
were 77 houses burnt. The devastation impressed the German soldiers who
passed through Louveigné on the following days. “Louveigné has been
completely burnt out. All the inhabitants are dead,” writes a German
diarist on Aug. 9th. “March to Louveigné,” another records on Aug.
16th. “Several citizens and the curé shot according to martial law,
some not yet buried--still lying where they were executed, for everyone
to see. Stench of corpses everywhere. Curé said to have incited the
inhabitants to ambush and kill the Germans.”--“Bivouac! Rain! Burnt
villages! Louveigné!” another exclaims on Aug. 17th. “We marched and
bivouacked in the rain, in an orchard with a high hedge round it, full
of fruit-trees. There was an abandoned house in front of it. The door,
which was locked, was broken in with an axe. The traces of war--burnt
houses, weeping women and children, executions of franc-tireurs--showed
us the ruthlessness of the times. We could not have done otherwise....
But how many have to suffer with others, how many innocent people are
shot by martial law, because there is no detailed enquiry first....”

At _Lincé_,[48] in the commune of Sprimont, a German officer was
wounded when the troops returned in confusion from before the southern
forts of Liége. The Germans forbade an autopsy to discover by what
bullet the wound had been caused, and condemned two civilians with a
proven alibi to be shot. All the next morning the destruction went
on. Houses were burnt, the curé was mishandled, a farmer and his son
were shot down at their farm gate, a girl of twelve received four
bullets in her body. The execution of the hostages took place in the
afternoon. Sixteen men were shot, of whom 7 were more than 60 years
old. At _Chanxhe_,[49] on Aug. 6th, hostages from _Poulseur_ were
bound in ranks to the parapet of the bridge over the Ourthe, and kept
there several days while the Germans filed across. “We were tortured
by hunger and thirst,” writes one of them. “We shivered at night. And
then, of necessity, there was the filth.... At the end of the bridge
the women were pleading with the Germans in vain, and the children were
crying.” On the 5th two civilian captives were shot on the bridge, and
their bodies thrown into the river, and two more (one aged 70) were
shot on the 7th. In the commune of Poulseur, from which these hostages
came, 7 civilians were killed and 25 houses destroyed. In the commune
of Sprimont 67 houses were destroyed and 48 civilians killed. At
_Esneux_ 26 houses were destroyed and 7 civilians killed.


(vii) _Across the Meuse._

Meanwhile, the Germans had crossed the Meuse at Visé, and were
descending on Liége from the north. At _Hallembaye_, in the commune
of _Haccourt_,[50] 18 people were killed. There were women, children
and old men among them, and also the curé,[51] who was bayonetted on
his church threshold as he was removing the sacrament. In the commune
of Haccourt 80 houses were destroyed, and 112 hostages were carried
away into Germany. _Hermalle-sous-Argenteau_[52] was plundered on Aug.
15th, and 9 houses destroyed. There was a mock execution of hostages
in the presence of women and children, and 368 men of the place were
imprisoned in the church for 17 days. At _Vivegnis_[53] 6 civilians
were shot on Aug. 13th, and 45 houses destroyed the day after. The
Germans fired on the inhabitants through the windows and doors, and two
men were thus killed in a single household. At _Heure-le-Romain_[54]
the population was confined in the church on Aug. 16th (it was Sunday)
and compelled to stand there, hands raised, under the muzzle of a
machine-gun. Seven civilians were shot at Heure-le-Romain that day,
including the Burgomaster’s brother and the curé,[55] who were roped
together and shot against the church wall. All through the 16th and
17th the sack continued; on the 18th fresh troops arrived and completed
the work by systematic arson and the slaughter of 19 people more.
Twenty-seven civilians were killed at Heure-le-Romain altogether and
84 houses destroyed. At _Hermée_,[56] on Aug. 6th, the Germans, caught
by the fire of _Fort Pontisse_, revenged themselves by shooting 11
civilians, including old men of 76 and 82 years. On the 14th, the day
after the surrender of the fort, the inhabitants of Hermée were driven
from their homes and the village systematically burnt, 146 houses
out of 308 being destroyed. In the village itself, as apart from
the outlying hamlets of the commune, only two or three houses were
left standing. At _Fexhe-Slins_, near Hermée, 3 people were killed.
Twenty-three were killed, and 13 houses destroyed, in the hamlet of
_Rhées_ in the commune of _Herstal_.[57]

Thus the Germans plundered private property, burned down houses, and
shot civilians of both sexes and all ages, on every road by which they
marched upon Liége--from the north-east, the south-east, and the north.
One thousand and thirty-two civilians[58] were shot by the Germans in
the whole _Province of Liége_, and 3,173 houses were destroyed in two
arrondissements (those of Liége and Verviers) alone out of the four of
which the Province is made up.


(viii) _The City of Liége._

Twenty-nine of these civilians were killed and 55[59] of the houses
destroyed in the _city of Liége_ itself--on August 20th, a fortnight
after it had fallen into the German Army’s possession. The Germans
entered Liége on August 7th. Their entry was not opposed by Belgian
troops, and arms in private hands had already been called in by
the Belgian police.[60] The Germans found themselves in peaceful
occupation of a great industrial city, caught in the full tide of
its normal life. There was nothing to suggest outrage, still less to
excuse it, in their surroundings there; their conduct on August 20th
was deliberate and cold-blooded. The Higher Command was faced with the
problem of holding a conquered country, and wanted an example. The
troops in garrison were demoralised by the sudden change to idleness
from fatigue and danger, and were ready for excitement and pillage.

“Aug. 16th, Liége,” writes a German soldier in his diary.[61] “The
villages we passed through had been destroyed.

“Aug. 19th. Quartered in University. Gone on the loose and boozed
through the streets of Liége. Lie on straw; enough booze; too little to
eat, or we must steal.

“Aug. 20th. In the night the inhabitants of Liége became mutinous.
Forty persons were shot and 15 houses demolished. Ten soldiers were
shot. The sights here make you cry.”

There are proofs of German premeditation--warnings from German soldiers
to civilians on whom they were billeted,[62] and an ammunition waggon
which drew up at 8.0 a.m. in the Rue des Pitteurs, and twelve hours
later disgorged the benzine with which the houses in that street were
drenched before being burnt.[63]

“The city was perfectly quiet,” declares a Belgian witness,[64]
“until about 8.0 p.m. At about 9.15 p.m. I was in bed reading when I
heard the sound of rifle-fire.... The noise of the firing came nearer
and nearer.” The first shot was fired from a window of “Emulation
Building,” looking out on the Place de l’Université, in the heart of
the town.[65] The Place was immediately crowded with armed German
soldiers, firing in the air, breaking into houses, and dragging out
any civilians they could find. First nine men (5 of them Spanish
subjects) were shot in a batch, then 7 more.[66] “About 10.0 p.m. they
were shooting everywhere. About 10.30 p.m. several machine guns were
firing and artillery as well.” (The artillery was firing on private
houses from the opposite side of the Meuse.[67]) “About 11.0 p.m. I saw
between 45 and 50 houses burning. There were two seats of the fire--the
first at the Place de l’Université (8 houses--I was close by at the
time), the second across the Meuse on the Quai des Pecheurs, where
there were about 35 houses burning. I heard a whole series of orders
given in German, and also bugle calls, followed by the cries of the
victims, and I saw women with children running about in the street,
pursued by soldiers....” (a 28).

[Illustration: 5. ANS: THE CHURCH]

[Illustration: 6. LIÉGE: A FARM HOUSE]

The arson was elaborate. In the Rue des Pitteurs the waggon loaded with
benzine moved from door to door.[68] “About 20 men were going up to
each of the houses. One of them had a sort of syringe, with which he
squirted into the house, and another would throw a bucket of water in.
A handful of stuff was first put into the bucket, and when this was
thrown into the house there was an immediate explosion” (a 31). At the
Place de l’Université, when the Belgian fire-brigade arrived, they were
forbidden to extinguish the fire, and made to stand, hands up, against
a wall (a 28, 29). Later they were assigned another task. “About
midnight,” states a witness (a 30), “a whole heap of civilian corpses
were brought to the Hôtel de Ville on a fire-brigade cart. There were
17 of them. Bits were blown out of their heads....”

As the houses caught fire the inmates tried to escape. The few who
reached the street were shot down (a 24, 26). Most were driven back
into the flames. “At about 30 of the houses,” a witness states (a 31),
“I actually saw faces at the windows before the Germans entered, and
then saw the same faces at the cellar windows after the Germans had
driven the people into the cellars.” In this way a number of men and
women were burnt alive.[69] In some cases the Germans would not wait
for the fire to do their work for them, but bayonetted the people
themselves. In one house, near the Episcopal Palace,[70] two boys were
bayonetted before their mother’s eyes, and then the man--their father
and her husband. Another man in the house was wounded almost to death,
and the Germans were with difficulty prevented from “finishing him
off,” next morning, on the way to the hospital. An orphan girl, who
lodged in the same house, was violated.

Next morning, August 21st, the district round the University Buildings
on either side of the Meuse was cleared of its inhabitants--such
inhabitants as survived and such streets as still stood. The people
were evicted at a few hours’ notice, and not allowed to return for
a month.[71] The same day a proclamation was posted by the German
authorities: “Civilians have fired on the German soldiers. Repression
is the result.”[72] The indictment was not convincing, for “Emulation
Building,” from which the first shot was fired on the night of the
20th, had been cleared of its Belgian occupants some days before
and filled entirely with German soldiers. Later the German Governor
of Liége shifted his ground, and laid the blame on Russian students
“who had been a burden on the population of the city.”[73] A clearer
light is thrown on the outbreak of August 20th by what occurred on the
night of August 21st-22nd. “Aug. 22nd, 3 a.m., Liége,” writes a German
in his diary. “Two infantry regiments shot at each other. Nine dead
and 50 wounded--fault not yet ascertained.” But in the other diary,
quoted before, the incident is thus recorded under the same date:
“August 21st. In the night the soldiers were again fired on. We then
destroyed several houses more.” The soldiers fire, the civilians suffer
reprisals, but the Germans’ object is gained. The conquered population
is terrorised, the invaders feel secure. “On August 23rd everything
quiet,” the latter diarist continues. “The inhabitants have so far
given in.

“August 24th. Our occupation is bathing, and eating and drinking for
the rest of the day. We live like God in Belgium.”

FOOTNOTES:

[4] Belgian Report xvi (statements by the Mayor and another
inhabitant); Somville pp. 134-143.

[5] Belg. xvii.

[6] Somville pp. 143-6.

[7] Somville pp. 146-7.

[8] Belg. xvii; Somville pp. 177-184; Bland pp. 164-5; a 16.

[9] Höcker p. 46.

[10] Bland p. 165.

[11] Somville p. 148.

[12] Somville pp. 147-8.

[13] Somville pp. 157-168; a 7, 20.

[14] Somville pp. 152-7; xvii.

[15] Somville p. 156.

[16] S. p. 148; xvii.

[17] Bryce pp. 161-2; S. pp. 168-177.

[18] Same incident recorded in xvii, p. 50.

[19] Bryce pp. 168-9.

[20] S. pp. 46-55; xvii; Reply pp. 110-116 (Report of L’Abbé Voisin,
Curé of Battice, to the Belgian Government).

[21] S. pp. 55-72; xvii; Reply pp. 123-7; a 2.

[22] S. pp. 73-9; xvii.

[23] S. pp. 113-126; xvii; a 4, 5, 9.

[24] S. pp. 110-2; xvii; a 12.

[25] S. pp. 126-130.

[26] Partly by bombardment during the attack on the fort.

[27] S. pp. 105-110; Reply pp. 133-4.

[28] S. pp. 151-2.

[29] S. p. 148.

[30] S. p. 152.

[31] S. p. 149.

[32] xvii. p. 57.

[33] Bland pp. 105-9.

[34] S. pp. 16-18; xvii. p. 56.

[35] S. p. 18; Mercier.

[36] Bland p. 185.

[37] xvii; a 33, 34.

[38] xvii; Reply p. 126.

[39] Reply p. 126.

[40] xvii; Mercier; S. pp. 79-82.

[41] S. pp. 82-92.

[42] xvii; S. pp. 92-4.

[43] Reply p. 126.

[44] Mercier.

[45] S. pp. 94-100.

[46] S. pp. 100-5.

[47] S. pp. 40-5: Belg. Ann. 5, pp. 167-8; Morgan p. 100; Bryce p. 172.

[48] S. pp. 30-8.

[49] S. pp. 20-30.

[50] S. pp. 191-3; xvii.

[51] Mercier.

[52] S. pp. 190-1, a 15.

[53] S. pp. 187-8.

[54] S. pp. 200-5; xvii; a 17.

[55] Mercier.

[56] S. pp. 194-200; xvii; a 35.

[57] S. pp. 185-7; a 6, 10, 11, 13.

[58] Known by name. See Reply, p. 142.

[59] There were also thirty-seven houses destroyed in the suburb of
Grivegnée.

[60] a 24.

[61] Bryce pp. 172-3.

[62] a 28.

[63] a 24.

[64] a 28.

[65] S. p. 209.

[66] Names given by S. pp. 211-2; cp. a 27.

[67] S. p. 212.

[68] a 24, 27, 31.

[69] a 31; S. p. 213.

[70] S. pp. 219-224.

[71] S. pp. 217-8, 225.

[72] S. p. 218.

[73] S. p. 234; a 24.




III. FROM LIÉGE TO MALINES.


(i) _Through Limburg to Aerschot._

The first German force to push forward from Liége was the column
commissioned to mask the Belgian fortress of Antwerp on the extreme
right flank of the German advance. From the bridges of the Meuse this
column marched north-west across the _Province of Limburg_. Belgian
patrols met the advance-guard already at _Lanaeken_ on August 6th,
driving civilians in front of it as a screen.[74] The invaders were
obsessed with the terror of franc-tireurs. At _Hasselt_,[75] on August
17th, they made the Burgomaster post a proclamation advising his
fellow-citizens “to abstain from any kind of provocative demonstration
and from all acts of hostility, which might bring terrible reprisals
upon our town.

“Above all you must abstain from acts of violence against the German
troops, and especially from firing on them.

“In case the inhabitants fire upon the soldiers of the German Army, a
third of the male population will be shot.”

[Illustration: 7. LIÉGE UNDER GERMAN OCCUPATION]

[Illustration: 8. LIÉGE UNDER THE GERMANS: RUINS AND PLACARDS]

At _Tongres_,[76] on August 18th, the Germans carried threats into
action. The population was driven out bodily from the town, and the
town systematically plundered. At least 17 civilians were killed
(including a boy of 12), and a number of houses were burnt. “On August
18th,” writes a German in his diary, “we reach Tongres. Here, too, it
is a complete picture of destruction--something unique of its kind
for our profession.”[77]--“Tongres,” writes another on the 19th, “A
quantity of houses plundered by our cavalry.” A captured letter from
the hand of a German army-doctor reveals the pretext on which this was
done. “The Belgians have only themselves to thank that their country
has been devastated in this way. I have seen all the great towns
attacked and the villages besieged and set on fire. At Tongres we
were attacked by the population in the evening _when it was dark_. An
immense number of shots were exchanged, for we were exposed to fire on
four sides. _Happily we had only one man hit_--he died the following
day. We killed two women, and the men were shot the day after.” There
is no disproof here of the Belgian affirmation that the shots were
fired by the Germans themselves.

This outbreak at Tongres on August 18th was not an isolated occurrence.
On the same day the Germans shot down the Burgomaster’s wife and a
lawyer at _Cannes_,[78] and two men and a boy at _Lixht_,[79] a few
miles north-west of the Visé bridge. But Limburg suffered little
compared to Brabant, into which the Germans next advanced.

Haelen, where their advance-guard was severely handled by the Belgian
Army on August 12th, lies close to the boundary between the two
provinces, and they took vengeance on the civil population of _Brabant_
for this military reverse.

“The Germans came to _Schaffen_,”[80] the curé reports, “at 9.0 o’clock
on August 18th. They set fire to 170 houses. A thousand inhabitants
are homeless. The communal building and my own residence are among
the houses burnt. Twenty-two people at least were killed without
motive. Two men (mentioned by name) were buried alive head downwards,
in the presence of their wives. The Germans seized me in my garden,
and mishandled me in every kind of way.... The blacksmith, who was a
prisoner with me, had his arm broken and was then killed.... It went on
all day long. Towards evening they made me look at the church, saying
it was the last time I should see it. About 6.45 they let me go. I was
bleeding and unconscious. An officer made me get up and bade me be
off. At several metres distance they fired on me. I fell down and was
left for dead. It was my salvation....

“All the houses were drenched, before burning, with naphtha and petrol,
which the Germans carry with them....”

On the German side, there is the ordinary excuse. “Fifty civilians,”
writes a diarist, “had hidden in the church tower and had fired on our
men with a machine-gun.[81] All the civilians were shot.”

The curé mentions that the Germans found the church door locked, broke
it in, and then found no one there.

At _Molenstede_, another village in the _Canton of Diest_, 32 houses
were burnt and 11 civilians killed. In the whole Canton 226 houses were
burnt, and 47 people killed in all.

The Germans were also advancing by a more southerly road from Tongres
through St. Trond. At _St. Trond_,[82] the first Uhlans killed 2
civilians in the street and wounded others. At _Budirgen_ they killed
2 civilians and burned 58 houses, at _Neerlinter_ one and 73. In the
_Canton of Léau_ they killed 19 civilians altogether, and 174 houses
were destroyed.

At _Haekendover_, in the Canton of Tirlemont, they killed one
civilian, burned 32 houses and pillaged 150 (out of 220 in all). At
_Tirlemont_ itself, they killed three civilians and burned 60 houses.
At _Hougaerde_,[83] when they entered the village, they drove the
curé of Autgaerde before them as a screen, and he was killed by the
first bullet from the Belgian troops, who were defending the road from
behind a barricade. Four civilians were killed at Hougaerde, 100 houses
pillaged, and 50 destroyed. In the whole _Canton of Tirlemont_ the
Germans killed 18 civilians, and burned 212 houses down.

At _Bunsbeek_ they killed 4 people and burned 20 houses, at _Roosbeek_
3 and 42. “After Roosbeek,” a German diarist notes,[84] “we began to
have an idea of the war; houses burnt, walls pierced by bullets, the
face of the tower carried away by shells, and so on. A few isolated
crosses marked the graves of the victims.” At _Kieseghem_[85] the
Germans used civilians as a screen again, and killed two more when they
entered the village. At _Attenrode_ they killed 6 civilians and burned
17 houses, at _Lubbeck_ 15 and 46. In the _Canton of Glabbeek_ 35
civilians were killed from first to last, and 140 houses destroyed.


(ii) _Aerschot._

The Germans marched into _Aerschot_[86] on the morning of Aug. 19th,
driving before them two girls and four women with babies in their
arms as a screen.[87] One of the women was wounded by the fire of the
Belgian troops, who had posted machine guns to dispute the Germans’
entry, but now withheld their fire and retired from the town. The
Germans encountered no further resistance, but they began to kill
civilians and break into houses immediately they came in. They
bayonetted two women on their doorstep (c 27). They shot a deaf boy (c
1) who did not understand the order to raise his hands. They shot 5 men
they had requisitioned as guides (R. No. 3). They fired at the church
(c 18). They fired at people looking out of the windows of their houses
(R. No. 5). The Burgomaster’s son, a boy of fifteen, was standing at a
window with his mother and was wounded by a bullet in the leg (R. No.
11). They killed people in their houses. Six men, for instance, were
bayonetted in one house (R. No. 15). They dragged a railway employé
from his home and shot him in a field (R. No. 2). “I went back home,”
states a woman who had been seized by the Germans and had escaped (c
18), “and found my husband lying dead outside it. He had been shot
through the head from behind. His pockets had been rifled.”

Other civilians (the civil population was already accused of having
fired) were collected as hostages,[88] and driven, with their hands
raised above their heads, to an open space on the banks of the River
Démer. “There were about 200 prisoners, some of them invalids taken
from their beds” (c 1). There was a professor from the College among
them (R. No. 9), and an old man of 75 (c 15). After these hostages had
been searched, and had been kept standing by the river, with their arms
up, for two hours, the Burgomaster was brought to them under guard,[89]
and compelled to read out a proclamation, ordering all arms to be given
up, and warning that if a shot were fired by a civilian, the man who
fired it, and four others with him, would be put to death. It was a
gratuitous proceeding, for, several days before the Germans arrived,
the Burgomaster (like most of his colleagues throughout Belgium) had
sent the town crier round, calling on the population to deposit all
arms at the Hôtel-de-Ville, and he had posted placards on the walls to
the same effect (c 4, 7). A priest drew a German officer’s attention to
these placards (c 20), and the Burgomaster himself had already given a
translation of their contents to the German commandant (R. No. 11).
That officer[90] disingenuously represents this act of good faith
as a suspicious circumstance. “To my special surprise,” he states,
“thirty-six more rifles, professedly intended for public processions
and for the Garde Civique, were produced” (from the Hôtel-de-Ville).
“The constituents of ammunition for these rifles were also found packed
in a case.” But the only weapon still found in private hands on the
morning of Aug. 19th was a shot gun used for pigeon shooting (c 1), and
when the owner had fetched it from his home the hostages were released.
Yet at this point 4 more civilians were shot down, two of them father
and son--the son feeble-minded (c 15).

The Germans quartered in Aerschot were already getting out of hand.
“I saw the dead body of another man in the street,” continues the
witness (c 15) quoted above. “When I got to my house, I found that all
the furniture had been broken, and that the place had been thoroughly
ransacked, and everything of value stolen. When I came out into the
street again I saw the dead body of a man at the door of the next house
to mine. He was my neighbour, and wore a Red Cross brassard on his
arm....”

The Germans gave themselves up to drink and plunder. “They set about
breaking in the cellar doors, and soon most of them were drunk” (R.
No. 15).--“An officer came to me,” states another witness (c 7),
“and demanded a packet of coffee. He did not pay for it. He gave no
receipt.”--“They broke my shop window,” deposes another. “The shop
front was pillaged in a moment. Then they gutted the shop itself. They
fought each other for the bottles of cognac and rum. In the middle of
this an officer entered. He did not seem at all surprised, and demanded
three bottles of cognac and three of wine for himself. The soldiers,
N.C.O.’s and officers, went down to the cellar and emptied it....” Not
even the Red Cross was spared. The monastery of St. Damien, which had
been turned into an ambulance, was broken into by German soldiers,
who accused the monks of firing and tore the bandages off the wounded
Belgian soldiers to make sure that the wounds were real (R. No. 16).
“Whenever we referred to our membership of the Red Cross,” declares
one of the monks, “our words were received with scornful smiles and
comments, indicating clearly that they made no account of that.”

[Illustration: 9. LIÉGE IN RUINS]

[Illustration: 10. “WE LIVE LIKE GOD IN BELGIUM”]

About 5.0 p.m. Colonel Stenger, the commander of the 8th German
Infantry Brigade, arrived in Aerschot with his staff. They were
quartered in the Burgomaster’s house, in rooms overlooking the square.
Captain Karge, the commander of the divisional military police, was
billeted on the Burgomaster’s brother, also in the square but on
the opposite side. About 8.0 p.m. (German time) Colonel Stenger was
standing on the Burgomaster’s balcony; the Burgomaster, who had just
been allowed to return home, was at his front door, offering the German
sentries cigars, and his wife was close by him; the square was full of
troops, and a supply column was just filing through, when suddenly a
single loud shot was fired, followed immediately by a heavy fusillade.
“I very distinctly saw two columns of smoke,” writes the Burgomaster’s
wife (R. No. 11), “followed by a multitude of discharges.”--“I could
perceive a light cloud of smoke and dust,” states Captain Karge,[91]
who was at his window across the square, “coming from the eaves of
a red corner house.” In a moment the soldiers massed in the square
were in an uproar. “My yard,” continues the Burgomaster’s wife, “was
immediately invaded by horses and by soldiers firing in the air like
madmen.”--“The drivers and transport men,” observes Captain Karge, “had
left their horses and waggons and taken cover from the shots in the
entrances of the houses. Some of the waggons had interlocked, because
the horses, becoming restless, had taken their own course without
the drivers to guide them.” Another German officer[92] thought the
firing came from the north-west outskirts of the town, and was told by
fugitive German soldiers that there were Belgian troops advancing to
the attack. A machine-gun company went out to meet them, and marched
three kilometres before it discovered that there was no enemy, and
turned back. “About 350 yards from the square,” states the commander of
this unit,[93] “I met cavalry dashing backwards and transport waggons
trying to turn round.... I saw shots coming from the houses, whereupon
I ordered the machine guns to be unlimbered and the house fronts on the
left to be fired upon.”

Who fired the first shot? Who fired the answering volley? There is
abundant evidence, both Belgian and German, of German soldiers firing
in the square and the neighbouring streets; no single instance is
proved, or even alleged, in the German White Book, of a Belgian caught
in the act of firing. “The situation developed,” deposes Captain
Folz,[94] “into our men pressing their backs against the houses, and
firing on any marksman in the opposite house, as soon as he showed
himself.” But were they Belgians at the windows, or Germans taking
cover from the undoubted fire of their comrades, and replying from
these vantage points upon an imaginary foe? “Near the Hôtel-de-Ville,”
continues Captain Folz, “there stood an officer who had the signal
‘Cease Fire’ blown continuously.[95] Clearly this officer desired in
the first place to stop the shooting of our men, in order to set a
systematic action on foot.”

The German soldiers’ minds had been filled with lying rumours. “I
heard,” declares Captain Karge, “that the King of the Belgians had
decreed that every male Belgian was under obligation to do the German
Army as much harm as possible....

“An officer told me he had read on a church door that the Belgians were
forbidden to hold captured German officers on parole, but had to shoot
them....

“A seminary teacher assured me” (it was under the threat of death)
“definitely, as I now think that I can distinctly remember, that the
Garde Civique had been ordered to injure the German Army in every
possible way....”

Thus, when he heard the shots, Captain Karge leapt to his conclusions.
“The regularity of the volleys gave me the impression that the
affair was well organised and possibly under military command.” It
never occurred to him that they might be German volleys commanded by
German officers as apprehensive as himself. “Everywhere, apparently,”
he proceeds, “the firing came, _not from the windows_, but from
roof-openings or prepared loopholes in the attics of the houses.” But
if not from the windows, why not from the square, which was crowded
with German soldiers, when a moment afterwards (admittedly) these very
soldiers were firing furiously? “This” (assumed direction from which
the firing came) “is the explanation of the smallness of the damage
done by the shots to men and animals,” and, in fact, the only victim
the Germans claim is Colonel Stenger, the Brigadier. After the worst
firing was over and the troops were getting under control, Colonel
Stenger was found by his aide-de-camp (A 2), who had come up to his
room to make a report, lying wounded on the floor and on the point of
death. Captain Folz (A 5) records that “the Regimental Surgeon of the
Infantry Regiment No. 140, who made a post-mortem examination of the
body in his presence on the following day, found in the aperture of
the breast wound a deformed leaden bullet, which had been shattered by
contact with a hard object.” It remains to prove that the bullet was
not German. The German White Book does not include any report from the
examining surgeon himself.

Meanwhile, the town and people of Aerschot were given over to
destruction. “I now took some soldiers,” proceeds Captain Karge, “and
went with them towards the house from which the shooting”--in Captain
Karge’s belief--“had first come.... I ordered the doors and windows
of the ground floor, which were securely locked, to be broken in.
Thereupon I pushed into the house with the others, and using a fairly
large quantity of turpentine, which was found in a can of about 20
litres capacity, and which I had poured out partly on the first storey
and then down the stairs and on the ground floor, succeeded in setting
the house on fire in a very short time. Further, I had ordered the
men not taking part in this to guard the entrances of the house and
arrest all male persons escaping from it. When I left the burning house
several civilians, including a young priest, had been arrested from the
_adjoining_ houses. I had these brought to the square, where in the
meantime my company of military police had collected.

“I then ... took command of all prisoners, among whom I set free the
women, boys and girls. I was ordered by a staff officer to shoot the
prisoners. Then I ordered my police ... to escort the prisoners and
take them out of the town. Here, at the exit, a house was burning,
and by the light of it I had the culprits--88 in number, after I had
separated out three <DW36>s--shot....”

[Illustration: 11. HAELEN]

[Illustration: 12. AERSCHOT]

These 88 victims were only a preliminary batch. The whole population of
Aerschot was being hunted out of the houses by the German troops and
driven together into the square. They were driven along with brutal
violence. “One of the Germans thrust at me with his bayonet,” states
one woman (c 9), “which passed through my skirt and behind my knees.
I was too frightened to notice much.”--“When we got into the street,”
states another (c 10), “other German soldiers fired at us. I was
carrying a child in my arms, and a bullet passed through my left hand
and my child’s left arm. The child was also hit on the fundament.... In
the hospital, on Aug. 22nd, I saw three women die of wounds.”--“In the
ambulance at the Institut Damien,” reports the monk quoted above, “we
nursed four women, several civilians and some children. A one-year-old
child had received a bayonet wound in its thigh while its mother was
carrying it in her arms. Several civilians had burns on their bodies
and bullet wounds as well. They told us how the soldiers set fire to
the houses and fired on the suffocating inhabitants when they tried to
escape.”

As elsewhere, the incendiarism was systematic. “They used a special
apparatus, something like a big rifle, for throwing naphtha or some
similar inflammable substance” (c 19).--“I was taken to the officer in
command,” states a professor (c 14). “I found him personally assisting
in setting fire to a house. He and his men were lighting matches and
setting them to the curtains.”--“We saw a whole street burning, in
which I possessed two houses,” deposes a native of Aerschot, who was
being driven towards the square. “We heard children and beasts crying
in the flames” (c 2). A civilian went out into the street to see if
his mother was in a burning house. He was shot down by Germans at
a distance of 18 yards (c 5). Another householder (R. No. 5) threw
his child out of the first-floor window of his burning house, jumped
out himself, and broke both his legs. His wife was burnt alive. “The
Germans with their rifles prevented anyone going to help this man, and
he had to drag himself along with his legs broken as best he could” (c
19).--“The whole upper part of my house caught fire,” declares another
(R. No. 13), “when there were a dozen people in it. The Germans had
blocked the street door to prevent them coming out. They tried in vain
to reach the neighbouring roofs.... The Germans were firing on everyone
in the streets....”

By this time the Germans were mostly drunk (c9) and lost to all reason
or shame. Two men and a boy stepped out of the door of a public-house
in which they had taken refuge with others. “As soon as we got outside
we saw the flash of rifles and heard the report.... We came in as
quickly as we could and shut the door. The German soldiers entered. The
first man who entered said, ‘You have been shooting,’ and the others
kept repeating the same words. They pointed their revolvers at us, and
threatened to shoot us if we moved” (c 4).

In another building about 22 captured Belgian soldiers (some of them
wounded) and six civilian hostages were under guard. They were dragged
out to the banks of the Démer and shot down by two companies of German
troops. “I was hit,” explains one of the two survivors (a soldier
already wounded before being taken prisoner), “but an officer saw that
I was still breathing, and when a soldier wanted to shoot me again, he
ordered him to throw me into the Démer. I clung to a branch and set my
feet against the stones on the river-bottom. I stayed there till the
following morning, with only my head above water....” (R. No. 8).

The Burgomaster’s house was the first to be cleared. Colonel Stenger’s
aide-de-camp dragged the Burgomaster out of the cellar where he and his
family had taken refuge, and carried him off under guard. Half-an-hour
later the aide-de-camp returned for the Burgomaster’s wife and his
fifteen-year-old son. “My poor child,” writes the Burgomaster’s wife,
“could scarcely walk because of his wound. The aide-de-camp kicked him
along. I shut my eyes to see no more....” (R. No. 11).

“When we reached the square,” the same witness continues, “we found
there all our neighbours. A girl near me was fainting with grief. Her
father and two brothers had been shot, and they had torn her from her
dying mother’s bedside. (They found her, nine hours later, dead). All
the houses on the right side of the square were ablaze. One could
detect the perfect order and method with which they were proceeding.
There was none of the feverishness of men left to pillage by
themselves. I am positive they were acting with orderliness and under
orders.... From time to time, soldiers emerged from our house, with
their arms full of bottles of wine. They were opening our windows, and
all the interiors were stripped bare....”--“The square was one blaze of
fire,” states a blacksmith (c 1), “and the civilians were obliged to
stand there close to the flames from the burning houses.”--“They put
the women and children on one side,” adds a woman (c 7). “I was among
them, and my 5 children--one boy of fifteen and 4 girls. I saw that
many of the men had their hands tied. They took the men away along the
road to Louvain....”

The men were being led out of the town, as Captain Karge’s prisoners
had been led out a few hours before, to be shot. The Burgomaster, his
brother, and his son were in this second convoy. “Under the glare of
the conflagration,” writes the Burgomaster’s wife, “my eyes fell upon
my husband, my son and my brother-in-law, who were being led, with
other men, to execution. For fear of breaking down his courage, I
could not even cry out to my husband: ‘I am here.’” There were 50 or
60 prisoners altogether, and another batch of 30 followed behind.[96]
“They made us walk in the same position, hands up, for 20 minutes,”
one survivor states (c 4). “When we got tired we put our hands on our
heads.”--“One of the prisoners,” states a second member of the convoy
(c 8), “was struck on the back with a rifle-butt by a German soldier.
The young man said: ‘O my father.’ His father said: ‘Keep quiet, my
boy.’ Another soldier thrust his bayonet into the thigh of another
prisoner, and afterwards compelled him to walk on with the rest.”--“Our
hands,” states a third (R. No. 7), “were bound behind our backs with
copper wire--so tightly that our wrists were cut and bled. We were
compelled to lie down, still bound, on our backs, with our heads
touching the ground. About six in the morning, they decided to begin
the executions.”

An officer read out a document to the prisoners.--One out of three was
to be shot. “It was read out like an article of the law. He read in
German, but we understood it.... They took all the young men....” (c 4).

The Burgomaster’s chief political opponent was among the prisoners. He
offered his life for the Burgomaster’s--“The Burgomaster’s life was
essential to the welfare of the town.” The Burgomaster pleaded for his
fellow citizens, and then for his son. The officer answered that he
must have them all--the Burgomaster, his son and his brother. “The boy
got up and stood between his father and uncle.... The shots rang out,
and the three bodies fell heavily one upon another....” (R. No. 7).

“The rest were drawn up in ranks of three. They numbered them--one,
two, three. Each number three had to step out of his rank and fall in
behind the corpses; they were going to be shot, the Germans said. My
brother and I were next to each other--I number two, he three. I asked
the officer if I might take my brother’s place: ‘My mother is a widow.
My brother has finished his education, and is more useful than I!’ The
officer was again implacable. ‘Step out, number three.’ We embraced,
and my brother joined the rest. There were about 30 of them lined up.
Then the German soldiers moved slowly along the line, killing three at
every discharge--each time at the officer’s word of command” (R. No. 7).

The last man in the line was spared as a medical student and member
of the Red Cross (R. No. 5). The survivors were set free. On their
way back they passed another batch going to their death (R. No. 7).
They passed the corpse of a woman on the road, and another in the
cattle-market (c 17). Other inhabitants of Aerschot were forced to bury
all the corpses on the Louvain road in the course of the same day. They
brought back to the women of Aerschot the sure knowledge that their
husbands, sons and brothers were dead.[97]

The rest of what happened at Aerschot is quickly told. When the Germans
had marched the second convoy of men out of the town and dismissed
the women from the square, they evacuated the town themselves[98] and
bombarded it from outside with artillery;[99] but in the daylight of
Aug. 20th they came back again, and burned and pillaged continuously
for three days--taking not only food and clothing but valuables
of every kind, and loading them methodically on waggons and motor
cars.[100] On the evening of the 20th, the Institut Damien, hospital
though it was, was compelled to provide quarters for 1,100 men. “We
spent all night giving food and drink to this mob, of whom many were
drunk. We collected 800 empty bottles next morning.”[101]

On Aug. 26th and 27th the remnant of the population--about 600 men,
women, and children, who had not perished or fled--were herded into the
church.[102] They were given little food, and no means of sanitation.
On the evening of the 27th a squad of German soldiers amused themselves
by firing through the church door over the heads of the hostages,
against the opposite wall. On the 28th the monks of St. Damien were
brought there also. (Their hospital was closed, and the patients turned
out of their beds.) The rest of the hostages were marched that day to
Louvain. There were little children among them, and women with child,
and men too old to walk. At Louvain, in the Place de la Station, they
were fired upon, and a number were wounded and killed. The survivors
were released on the 29th, but when they returned to Aerschot they
were arrested and imprisoned again--the men in the church, the women
in a chateau. The women and children were released the day following
(that day the active troops at Aerschot were replaced by a landsturm
garrison, who began to pillage the town once more).[103] The men were
kept prisoners till Sept. 6th, when those not of military age were
released and the remainder (about 70) deported by train to Germany. All
the monks were deported, whatever their age.[104]

“On Aug. 31st,” writes a German landsturmer in his diary,[105] “we
entered Aerschot to guard the station. On Sept. 2nd I had a little time
off duty, which I spent in visiting the town. No one, without seeing
it, could form any idea of the condition it is in.... In all my life I
shall never drink more wine than I drank here.”

Three hundred and eighty-six houses were burnt at Aerschot, 1,000
plundered, 150 inhabitants killed, and after this destruction the
Germans admitted the innocence of their victims. “It was a beastly
mess,” a German non-commissioned officer confessed to one of the monks
in the church of Aerschot on Aug. 29th.[106] “It was our soldiers who
fired, but they have been punished.”


(iii) _The Aerschot District._

The smaller places round Aerschot suffered in their degree. At
_Nieuw-Rhode_ 200 houses (out of 321) were plundered, one civilian
killed, and 27 deported to Germany. At _Gelrode_,[107] on August 19th,
the Germans seized 21 civilians as hostages, imprisoned them in the
church, and then shot one in every three against a wall--the rest
were marched to Louvain and imprisoned in the church there. None of
them were discovered with arms, for the Burgomaster of Gelrode had
collected all arms in private hands before the Germans arrived. The
priest of Gelrode[108] was dragged away to Aerschot on August 27th by
German soldiers. “When they got to the churchyard the priest was struck
several times by each soldier on the head. Then they pushed him against
the wall of the church” (c24).--“His hands were raised above his head.
Five or six soldiers stood immediately in front of him.... When he let
his hands drop a little, soldiers brought down their rifle butts on his
feet” (c25). Finally they led him away to be shot, and his corpse was
thrown into the Démer.

Eighteen civilians altogether were shot in the commune of Gelrode,
and 99 deported to Germany. Twenty-three houses were burnt, and 131
plundered, out of 201 in the village.

At _Tremeloo_[109] 214 houses were burnt and 3 civilians killed (one
of them an old man of 72). A number of women were raped at Tremeloo.

At _Rotselaer_[110] 67 houses were burnt, 38 civilians killed, and
120 deported to Germany. A girl who was raped by five Germans went
out of her mind (c52). The priest of Rotselaer was deported with his
parishioners. The men of the village had been confined in the church
on the night of August 22nd, again on the night of the 23rd, and then
consecutively till the morning of the 27th. The priest of Herent (who
was more than 70 years old)[111] and other men from Herent, Wackerzeel,
and Thildonck, were imprisoned with them, till there were a thousand
people in the church altogether. The women brought them what food could
be found, but for five days they could neither wash nor sleep. On the
27th they were marched to Louvain with a batch of prisoners taken from
Louvain itself, and were sent on the terrible journey in cattle-trucks
to Aix-la-Chapelle.

At _Wespelaer_[112] the destruction was complete. Out of 297 houses 47
were burnt and 250 gutted. Twenty-one inhabitants were killed. “The
Germans shot the owner of the first house burnt on his doorstep, and
his twenty-years-old daughter inside.... I only saw one man shot with
my own eyes--a man who had an old carbine in his house. It had not been
used; he was not carrying it.... In another house a married couple, 80
years old, were burnt alive” (c60).

At _Campenhout_[113] the Germans burned 85 houses and killed 14
civilians. In a rich man’s house, where officers were quartered, they
rifled the wine cellar and shot the mistress of the house in cold blood
as she entered the room where they were drinking. “The other officers
continued to drink and sing, and did not pay great attention to the
killing of my mistress,” states a servant who was present. As they
continued their advance, the Germans collected about 400 men, women and
children (some of the women with babies in their arms) from Campenhout,
Elewyt and Malines, and drove them forward as a screen, with the priest
of Campenhout at their head, against the Belgian forces holding the
outer ring of the Antwerp lines.[114]

The devastation of this district is described by a witness who walked
through it, from Brussels to Aerschot, after the Germans had passed (c
25). “We traversed the village of Werchter, where there had been no
battle, but it had been in the occupation of the Germans, and on all
sides of this village we saw burnt-down houses and traces of plunder
and havoc. In Wespelaer and Rotselaer and Wesemael we saw the same.
We did not pass through the village of Gelrode, but close to it, and
we saw that houses had been burnt down there. In Aerschot the Malines
Street, Hamer Street, Théophile Becker Street and other streets were
completely burnt. Half the Grand Place had been burnt down....”


(iv) _The Retreat from Malines._

Yet the devastation done by the Germans in their advance was light
compared with the outrages they committed when the Belgian sortie of
August 25th drove them back from Malines towards the Aerschot-Louvain
line.

In _Malines_ itself[115] they destroyed 1,500 houses from first to
last, and revenged themselves atrociously on the civil population. A
Belgian soldier saw them bayonet an old woman in the back, and cut off
a young woman’s breasts (d 1). Another saw them bayonet a woman and
her son (d 2). They shot a police inspector in the stomach as he came
out of his door, and blew off the head of an old woman at a window (d
3). A child of two came out into the street as eight drunken soldiers
were marching by. “A man in the second file stepped aside and drove his
bayonet with both hands into the child’s stomach. He lifted the child
into the air on his bayonet and carried it away, he and his comrades
still singing. The child screamed when the soldier struck it with
his bayonet, but not afterwards.” This incident is reported by two
witnesses (d 4-5). Another woman was found dead with twelve bayonet
wounds between her shoulders and her waist (d 7). Another--between 16
and 20 years old--who had been killed by a bayonet, “was kneeling, and
her hands were clasped, and the bayonet had pierced both hands. I also
saw a boy of about 16,” continues the witness, “who had been killed by
a bayonet thrust through his mouth.” In the same house there was an old
woman lying dead (d 9).

The next place from which the Germans were driven was _Hofstade_,[116]
and here, too, they revenged themselves before they went. They left
the corpses of women lying in the streets. There was an old woman
mutilated with the bayonet.[117] There was a young pregnant woman who
had been ripped open.[118] In the lodge of a chateau the porter’s body
was found lying on a heap of straw.[119] He had been bayonetted in the
stomach--evidently while in bed, for the empty bed was soaked with
blood. The blacksmith of Hofstade--also bayonetted in the stomach--was
lying on his doorstep.[120] Adjoining the blacksmith’s house there was
a café, and here a middle-aged woman lay dead, and a boy of about 16.
The boy was found kneeling in an attitude of supplication. Both his
hands had been cut off. “One was on the ground, the other hanging by a
bit of skin” (d 25). His face was smeared with blood. He was seen in
this condition by twenty-five separate witnesses, whose testimony is
recorded in the Bryce Report.[121] Several saw him before he was quite
dead.

In one house at Hofstade[122] the Belgian troops found the dead bodies
of two women and a man. One of the women, who was middle-aged, had been
bayonetted in the stomach; the other, who was about 20 years old, had
been bayonetted in the head, and her legs had been almost severed from
her body. The man had been bayonetted through the head. In another room
the body of a ten-year-old boy was suspended from a hanging lamp. He
had been killed first by a bayonet wound in the stomach.

“I went with an artilleryman,” states another Belgian soldier,[123] “to
find his parents who lived in Hofstade. All the houses were burning
except the one where this man’s parents lived. On forcing the door, we
saw lying on the floor of the room on which it opened the dead bodies
of a man, a woman, a girl, and a boy, who, the artilleryman told us,
were his father and mother and brother and sister. Each of them had
both feet cut off just above the ankle, and both hands just above the
wrist. The poor boy rushed straight off, took one of the horses from
his gun, and rode in the direction of the German lines. We never saw
him again....”

Retreating from Hofstade, the Germans drove about 200 of the
inhabitants with them as a screen, to cover their flank against the
Belgian attack.[124] At _Muysen_ they killed 6 civilians and burned 450
houses. “There were broken wine bottles lying about everywhere” (d 88).

At _Sempst_,[125] as they evacuated the village, they dragged the
inhabitants out of their houses. One old man who expostulated was
shot by an officer with a revolver,[126] and his son was shot when he
attempted to escape. They fired down into the cellars and up through
the ceilings to drive the people out (d 68). The hostages were taken to
the bridge. “One young man was carrying in his arms his little brother,
10 or 11 years old, who had been run over before the war and could not
walk. The soldiers told the man to hold up his arms. He said he could
not, as he must hold his brother, who could not walk. Then a German
soldier hit him on the head with a revolver, and he let the child
fall....”

[Illustration: 13. BRUSSELS: A BOOKING-OFFICE]

[Illustration: 14. MALINES AFTER BOMBARDMENT]

In one house they bound a bed-ridden man to his bed, and shot another
man in the presence of 13 children who were in the house (d 29). In
another house they burned a woman and two children (d 71); they burned
the owner of a bicycle shop in his shop;[127] these four bodies were
found, carbonised, by the Belgian troops. The Belgians also found a
woman dead in the street, with four bayonet wounds in her body (d 36),
and saw an Uhlan overtake a woman driving in a cart, thrust his lance
through her body, and then shoot her in the chest with his carbine (d
80). In a farmhouse the farmer was found with his head cut off. His two
sons, killed by bullet wounds, were lying beside him. His wife, whose
left breast had been cut off, was still alive, and told how, when her
eight-year-old son had gone up a ladder into the loft, the Germans had
pulled away the ladder and set the building on fire.[128] Twenty-seven
houses were burnt at Sempst, 200 sacked, 18 inhabitants killed, and 34
deported to Germany.

At _Weerde_ 34 houses were burnt. As the Germans retreated they
bayonetted two little girls standing in the road and tossed them into
the flames of a burning house--their mother was standing by (d 85).
At _Eppeghem_[129] 176 houses were burnt, 8 civilians killed, and
125 deported. The killing was done with the bayonet. A woman with
child, whose stomach had been slashed open, died in the hospital at
Malines. When the Germans returned to Eppeghem again, they used the
remaining civilians as a screen. On August 28th they did the same at
_Elewyt_,[130] not even exempting old men or women with child. We
have the testimony of a Belgian priest who was driven in the screen,
and of a Belgian soldier in the trenches against which the screen was
driven. A hundred and thirty-three houses were burnt at Elewyt, and
10 civilians killed. The Belgian troops found the body of a man tied
naked to a ring in a wall. His head was riddled with bullets, there was
a bayonet wound in his chest, and he had been mutilated obscenely. A
woman, also mutilated obscenely after violation, was lying dead on the
ground. In another house a man and a woman were found, with bayonet
wounds all over their bodies, on the floor. At _Perck_ 180 houses (out
of 243) were sacked and 5 civilians killed. At _Bueken_ 50 houses were
burnt, 30 sacked (out of 84), and 8 civilians killed. The victims were
killed in a meadow in the sight of the women and children.[131] Among
them was the parish priest.[132] “He was a man 75 or 80 years old.
He could not walk fast enough. He was driven along with blows from
rifle-butts and knocked down. He cried out: ‘I can go no further,’ and
a soldier thrust a bayonet into his neck at the back--the blood flowed
out in quantities. The old man begged to be shot, but the officer said:
‘That is too good for you.’ He was taken off behind a house and we
heard shots. He did not return....” (d 97, cp. 98). At _Vilvorde_[133]
33 houses were burnt and 6 civilians killed. In the whole _Canton of
Vilvorde_, in which all these places, except Malines, lay, 611 houses
were burnt, 1,665 plundered, 90 civilians killed, and 177 deported to
Germany.

The devastation spread through the whole zone of the German retreat.
At _Capelle-au-Bois_[134] the Belgian troops found two girls hanging
naked from a tree with their breasts cut off, and two women bayonetted
in a house, caught as they were making preparations to flee. A woman
told them how German soldiers had held her down by force, while other
soldiers had violated her daughter successively in an adjoining room.
Four civilians were killed at Capelle-au-Bois and 235 houses burnt.
At _Londerzeel_[135] 18 houses were burnt and one civilian killed. He
was a man who had tried to prevent the Germans from violating his
two daughters. When the Germans re-entered Londerzeel they used the
civilian population as a screen. At _Ramsdonck_, near Londerzeel, a
woman and two children were shot by the Germans as they were flying for
protection towards the Belgian lines.[136] At _Wolverthem_ 10 houses
were burnt and 5 people killed. At _Meysse_ 3 houses were burnt and 350
sacked, 2 civilians killed and 29 deported. At _Beyghem_ 32 houses were
burnt. At _Pont-Brûlé_,[137] on Aug. 25th, the priest was imprisoned
with 28 other civilian hostages in a room. The German soldiers
compelled him to hold up his hands for hours, and struck him when he
lowered them from fatigue. They compelled his fellow-prisoners to spit
on him. They tore up his breviary and threw the fragments in his face.
When he fainted they threw pails of water on him to revive him. As he
was reviving he was shot. Fifty-eight houses were burnt in the commune
of Pont-Brûlé-Grimbergen, 5 civilians shot, and 65 deported. These
places lay in the _Canton of Wolverthem_, west of the river Senne,
between Termonde, Malines, and Brussels. In the whole canton 426 houses
were burnt, 1,292 plundered, 29 civilians killed, and 182 deported to
Germany.

[Illustration: 15. MALINES: RUINS]

[Illustration: 16. MALINES: RUINS]

In the district between Malines and Aerschot it was the same, and
places which had suffered already on Aug. 19th were devastated again
on Aug. 25th and the following days. At _Hever_[138] in the Canton of
Haecht, a baby was found hanged by the neck to the handle of a door.
Thirty-five houses were burnt. At _Boortmeerbeek_[139] 103 houses were
burnt and 300 sacked (out of 437); 5 civilians were killed--one of
them a little girl who was bayonetted in the road. At _Haecht_[140]
5 men were seized as hostages and then shot in cold blood. One of
them survived, though he was bayonetted twice after the shooting to
“finish him off.” Seven others were stripped naked and threatened with
bayonets, but instead of being killed they were used as a screen. The
Belgian troops found the body of a woman on the road, stripped to
the waist and with the breasts cut off. There was another woman with
her head cut off and her body mutilated. There was a child with its
stomach slashed open with a bayonet, and another--two or three years
old--nailed to a door by its hands and feet. At Haecht 40 houses were
burnt.

At _Thildonck_ 31 houses were burnt and 10 civilians killed. Seven of
those killed in the commune of Thildonck belonged to the family of the
two Valckenaers brothers, whose farms (situated close to one another)
were occupied by the Belgian troops early on the morning of August
26th. As the Germans counter-attacked, the Belgian soldiers opened
fire on them from the farm buildings and then retired. A platoon of
Germans, with an officer at their head, entered Isodore Valckenaers’
farm (where the whole family was gathered) about 8.0 a.m. Isodore and
two of his nephews--barely more than boys--were shot at once. His
daughter, who clung to him and begged for his life, was torn away. The
two young men were killed instantaneously. The elder, though horribly
wounded by the bullet, survived, and was rescued next day. The rest of
the family--a group of eleven women and children, for François-Edouard
Valckenaers, the other brother, was away--were shot down half-an-hour
later. They were herded together in the garden and fired on from all
sides. Madame Isodore Valckenaers was holding her youngest baby in her
arms. The bullet broke the child’s arm and mangled its face, and then
tore the mother’s lip and destroyed one of her eyes. (The baby died,
but the mother survived.) Madame F.-E. Valckenaers also survived--her
dress was spattered with the brains of her fourteen-year-old son,
whom she was holding by the hand. Five died altogether out of this
group of eleven--some instantaneously, some after hours of agony. The
eldest of them was only eighteen, the youngest was two-and-a-half.
Thus seven of the Valckenaers’ family were killed in all out of the
fourteen present, and three were severely wounded. Only four were left
unscathed.[141]

At _Werchter_[142] 267 houses were burnt and 162 sacked (out of 496),
15 civilians were killed, and 32 deported. The priests of _Wygmael_
and _Wesemael_ were dragged away as hostages, and driven, with a crowd
of civilians from Herent, as a screen in front of the German troops
on Aug. 29th. At Wesemael 46 houses were burnt, 13 civilians killed
and 324 deported. At _Holsbeek_ one civilian was killed and 35 houses
burnt. In the whole _Canton of Haecht_ 899 houses were burnt, 1,772
plundered, 116 civilians killed, and 647 deported.

As the Germans fell back south-eastward, the devastation spread
into the Canton of Louvain. “When the Germans first arrived at
_Herent_,”[143] states a witness (d 97), “they did nothing, but when
they were repulsed from Malines they began to ill-treat the civilians.”
They shot a man at his door, and threw another man’s body into a
burning house. At _Aanbosch_, a hamlet of Herent, they dragged 4 men
and 9 women out of their houses and bayonetted them. In the commune
of Herent they killed 22 civilians (the priest was among the later
victims)[144] and deported 104 altogether, burned 312 houses and sacked
200. At _Velthem_ they killed 14 civilians and burned 44 houses. At
_Winxele_ they burned 57 houses and killed 5 civilians--the soldier
who had shot and bayonetted one of them thrust his bayonet into the
faces of the hostages: “Smell, smell! It is the blood of a Belgian
pig” (d 97-8). At _Corbeek-Loo_ 20 civilians were killed, 62 deported,
and 129 houses burnt. At _Wilsele_ 36 houses were burnt and 7 people
killed. One of them was an epileptic who had a seizure while he was
being carried away as a hostage. Since he could go no further, he was
shot through the head (d 129). At _Kessel-Loo_ 59 people were killed
and 461 houses burnt; at _Linden_ 6 and 103; at _Heverlé_ 6 and 95. In
the whole _Canton of Louvain_ 2,441 houses were burnt, 2,722 plundered,
251 civilians killed, and 831 deported. About 40 per cent. of this
destruction was done in the City of Louvain itself, on the night of
August 25th and on the following nights and days. The destruction of
Louvain was the greatest organised outrage which the Germans committed
in the course of their invasion of Belgium and France, and as such it
stands by itself. But it was also the inevitable climax of the outrages
to which they had abandoned themselves in their retreat upon Louvain
from Malines. The Germans burned and massacred invariably, wherever
they passed, but there was a bloodthirstiness and obscenity in their
conduct on this retreat which is hardly paralleled in their other
exploits, and which put them in the temper for the supreme crime which
followed.


(v) _Louvain._

The Germans entered _Louvain_ on August 19th. The Belgian troops did
not attempt to hold the town, and the civil authorities had prepared
for the Germans’ arrival. They had called in all arms in private
possession and deposited them in the Hôtel-de-Ville. This had been
done a fortnight before the German occupation,[145] and was repeated,
for security, on the morning of the 19th itself.[146] The municipal
commissary of police remarked the exaggerated conscientiousness with
which the order was obeyed. “Antiquarian pieces, flint-locks and
even razors were handed in.”[147] The people of Louvain were indeed
terrified. They had heard what had happened in the villages round
Liége, at Tongres and at St. Trond, and on the evening (August 18th)
before the Germans arrived the refugees from Tirlemont had come pouring
through the town.[148] The Burgomaster, like his colleagues in other
Belgian towns, had posted placards on August 18th, enjoining confidence
and calm.

The German entry on the 19th took place without disturbance. Large
requisitions were at once made on the town by the German Command.
The troops were billeted on the inhabitants. In one house an officer
demanded quarters for 50 men. “Revolver in hand, he inspected every
bedroom minutely. ‘If anything goes wrong, you are all _kaput_.’
That was how he finished the business.”[149] It was vacation time,
and the lodgings of the University students were empty. Many houses
were shut up altogether, and these were broken into and pillaged by
the German soldiers.[150] They pillaged enormous quantities of wine,
without interference on the part of their officers. “The soldiers did
not scruple to drain in the street the contents of stolen bottles,
and drunken soldiers were common objects.”[151] There was also a
great deal of wanton destruction--“furniture destroyed, mirrors and
picture-frames smashed, carpets spoilt and so on.”[152] The house of
Professor van Gehuchten, a scientist of international eminence, was
treated with especial malice. This is testified by a number of people,
including the Professor’s son. “They destroyed, tore up and threw
into the street my father’s manuscripts and books (which were very
numerous), and completely wrecked his library and its contents. They
also destroyed the manuscript of an important work of my late father’s
which was in the hands of the printer.”[153]--“This misdemeanour made
a scandal,” states another witness. “It was brought to the knowledge
of the German general, who seemed much put out, but took no measures
of protection.”[154] The pillage was even systematic. A servant, left
by an absent professor in charge of his house, found on August 20th
that the Germans “had five motor-vans outside the premises. I saw
them removing from my master’s house wine, blankets, books, etc., and
placing them in the vans. They stripped the whole place of everything
of value, including the furniture.... I saw them smashing glass and
crockery and the windows.”[155] On August 20th there were already
acts of violence in the outskirts of the town. At Corbeek-Loo a girl
of sixteen was violated by six soldiers and bayonetted in five places
for offering resistance. Her parents were kept off with rifles.[156]
By noon on August 20th the town itself “was like a stable. Streets,
pavements, public squares and trampled flower beds had disappeared
under a layer of manure.”[157]

On August 20th the German military authorities covered the walls
with proclamations: “Atrocities have been committed by (Belgian)
franc-tireurs.”[158]--“If anything happens to the German troops,
_le total sera responsable_”[159] (an attempt to render in French
the Prussian doctrine of collective responsibility). Doors must be
left open at night. Windows fronting the street must be lighted up.
Inhabitants must be within doors between 8.0 p.m. and 7.0 a.m. Most of
these placards were ready-made in German, French and Russian. There
were no placards in Flemish till after the events of August 25th. Yet
Flemish was the only language spoken and understood by at least half
the population of Louvain.

[Illustration: 17. MALINES: CARDINAL MERCIER’S STATE-ROOM AS A RED
CROSS HOSPITAL]

[Illustration: 18. MALINES: THE CARDINAL’S THRONE-ROOM]

Hostages were also taken by the German authorities.[160] The
Burgomaster, a City Councillor and a Senator were confined under guard
in the Hôtel-de-Ville on the first day of occupation. From August 21st
onwards they were replaced successively by other notables, including
the Rector and Vice-Rector of the University. On August 21st there was
another German proclamation, in which the inhabitants were called upon
(for the third time) to deliver up their arms.[161] Requisitions and
acts of pillage by individual officers and soldiers continued, and on
the evening of August 24th the Burgomaster was dragged to the Railway
Station and threatened with a revolver by a German officer, who had
arrived with 250 men by train and demanded a hot meal and mattresses
for them at once. Major von Manteuffel, the Etappen-Kommandant in the
city, was called in and the Burgomaster was released, but without
reparation.[162] On that day, too, the German wounded were removed
from Louvain[163]--an ominous precaution--and in the course of the
following day there were spoken warnings.[164] On the morning of this
day, Tuesday, August 25th, Madame Roomans, a notary’s wife, is said to
have been warned by the German officers billeted on her to leave the
town. In the afternoon, about 5.0 o’clock, another lady reported how
an officer, billeted on her and taking his leave, had added: “I hope
you will be spared, for now it is going to begin.” At supper time, when
the first shots were fired and the alarm was sounded, officers billeted
on various households are said to have exclaimed “Poor people!”--or to
have wept.

On the morning of August 25th there were few German troops in Louvain.
The greater part of those that had entered the town since the 19th
had passed on to the front in the direction of Malines, and were
now engaged in resisting the Belgian sortie from Antwerp, which was
made this day. As the Belgian offensive made progress, the sound of
the cannon became louder and louder in Louvain,[165] and the German
garrison grew increasingly uneasy. Despatch riders from the front kept
arriving at the Kommandantur;[166] at 4.0 o’clock a general alarm was
sounded;[167] the troops in the town assembled and marched out towards
the north-western suburbs;[168] military waggons drove in from the
north-west in disorder, “their drivers grasping revolvers and looking
very much excited.”[169] At the same time, reinforcements[170] began
to detrain at the _Station_, which stands at the eastern extremity of
the town, and is connected with the central _Grand’ Place_ and with
the University buildings by the broad, straight line of the _Rue de la
Station_, flanked with the private houses of the wealthier inhabitants.
These fresh troops were billeted hastily by their officers in the
quarters nearest the _Station_.[171] The cavalry were concentrated
in the _Place du Peuple_, a large square lying a short distance to
the left of the _Rue de la Station_, about half-way towards the
_Grand’ Place_.[172] The square was already crowded with the transport
that had been sent back during the day from the front.[173] As the
reinforcements kept on detraining, and the quarters near the _Station_
filled up, the later arrivals went on to the _Grand’ Place_ and the
_Hôtel-de-Ville_,[174] which was the seat of the Kommandantur.

During all this time the agitation increased. About 7.0 o’clock a
company of Landsturm which had marched out in the afternoon to the
north-western outskirts of the town, were ordered back by their
battalion commander to the _Place de la Station_--the extensive square
in front of the _station buildings_, out of which the _Rue de la
Station_ leads into the middle of the city.[175] The military police
pickets[176] in the centre of the city were on the alert. Between
7.0 and 7.30 the alarm was sounded again,[177] and the troops who
had arrived that afternoon assembled from their billets and stood to
arms.[178] The tension among them was extreme. They had been travelling
hard all day; they had entered the town at dusk; it was now dark, and
they did not know their way about the streets, nor from what quarter
to expect the enemy forces, which were supposed to be on the point of
making their appearance. It was in these circumstances that, a few
minutes past eight o’clock, the shooting in Louvain broke out.

All parties agree that it broke out in answer to signals. A Belgian
witness,[179] living near the _Tirlemont Gate_, saw a German
military motor-car dash up from the _Boulevard de Tirlemont_, make
luminous signals at the Gate, and then dash off again. A fusillade
immediately followed. The German troops bivouacked in the _Place de
la Station_ saw two rockets, the first green and the second red, rise
in quick succession from the centre of the town.[180] They found
themselves under fire immediately afterwards. A similar rocket was seen
later in the night to rise above the conflagration.[181] It is natural
to suppose that the rockets, as well as the lights on the car, were
German military signals of the kind commonly used in European armies
for signalling in the dark. There had been two false alarms already
that afternoon and evening; there is nothing incredible in a third. The
German troops in the _Place de la Station_ assumed that the signals
were of Belgian origin (and therefore of civilian origin, as the
Belgian troops did not after all reach the town), because these signals
were followed by firing directed against themselves. They could not
believe that the shots were fired in error by their own comrades, yet
there is convincing evidence that this was the case.

It is certain that German troops fired on each other in at least two
places--in the _Rue de la Station_ and in the _Rue de Bruxelles_, which
leads into the _Grand’ Place_ from the opposite direction.

“We were at supper,” states a Belgian witness,[182] whose house was in
the _Rue de la Station_, “when about 8.15, shots were suddenly fired in
the street by German cavalry coming from the _Station_. The troops who
were bivouacked in the square replied, and an automobile on its way to
the _Station_ had to stop abruptly opposite my house and reverse, while
its occupants fired. Within a few seconds the din of revolver and rifle
shots had become terrific. The fusillade was sustained, and spread
(north-eastward) towards the _Boulevard de Diest_. It became so furious
that there was even gun-fire. The encounter between the German troops
continued as far as the _Grand’ Place_, where on at least two occasions
there was machine-gun fire. The fight lasted for from fifteen to twenty
minutes with desperation; it persisted an hour longer after that, but
with less violence.”

[Illustration: 19. CAPELLE-AU-BOIS]

[Illustration: 20. CAPELLE-AU-BOIS]

“At the stroke of eight,” states another witness,[183] “shots were
heard by us, coming from the direction of the _Place du Peuple_, where
the German cavalry was concentrated. Part of the baggage-train, which
was stationed in the _Rue Léopold_, turned right about and went off
at a gallop towards the _Station_. I was at my front door and heard
the bullets whistling as they came from the _Place du Peuple_. At this
moment a sustained fusillade broke out, and there was a succession of
cavalry-charges in the direction of the _Station_.”

The stampede in the _Place du Peuple_ is described by a German
officer[184] who was present. “I heard the clock strike in a tower....
Complete darkness already prevailed. At the same moment I saw a green
rocket go up above the houses south-west of the square.... Firing was
directed on the German troops in the square.... Whilst riding round
the square, I was shot from my horse on the north-eastern side. I
distinctly heard the rattling of machine-guns, and the bullets flew in
great numbers round about me.... After I had fallen from my horse, I
was run over by an artillery transport waggon, the horses of which had
been frightened by the firing and stampeded....”

The shots by which this officer was wounded evidently came from German
troops in the _Rue Léopold_, where they were attacking the house of
Professor Verhelst. The Landsturm Company bivouacked in the _Station
Square_ was already replying vigorously to what it imagined to be the
Belgian fire, coming from the _Rue Léopold_ and the _Rue de la Station_.

“I stood with my Company,” states the Company Commander,[185] “at
about ten minutes to eight in the _Station Square_. I had stood
about five minutes, when suddenly, quite unexpectedly, shots were
fired at my Company from the surrounding houses, from the windows,
and from the attics. Simultaneously I heard lively firing from the
_Rue de la Station_, as well as from all the neighbouring streets.”
(Precisely the district in which the newly-arrived troops had taken
up their quarters.) “Shots were also fired from the windows of my
hotel--straight from my room” (which had doubtless been occupied by
some newly-arrived soldier during the afternoon, while the witness was
on duty at the Malines Gate)....

“We now knelt down and fired at the opposite houses.... I sought cover
with my Company in the entrances of some houses. During the assault
five men of my Company were wounded. The fact that so few were wounded
is due to the fact that the inhabitants were shooting too high....

“About an hour later I was summoned to His Excellency General von
Boehn, who was standing near by. His Excellency asked for an exact
report, and, after I had made it, he said to me: ‘Can you take an oath
concerning what you have just reported to me--in particular, that the
first shots were fired by the inhabitants from the houses?’ I then
answered: ‘Yes, I can swear to that fact.’”

But what evidence had the Lieutenant for the “fact” to which he swore?
There was no doubt about the shots, but he gives no proof of the
identity of those who fired them, and another witness,[186] who lived
in a house looking on to the _Station Square_, is equally positive that
the assailants, too, were German soldiers.

“Just before eight,” he states, “we heard one shot from a rifle,
followed immediately after by two others, and then a general fusillade
began. I went at once to my garden; the bullets were passing quite
close to me; I went back to the house and on to the balcony, and there
I saw the Germans, not fighting Belgians, but fighting each other at a
distance of 200 or 300 yards. At 8.0 o’clock it begins to be dark, but
I am perfectly certain it was Germans fighting Germans. The firing on
both sides passed right in front of my house, and from the other side
of the railway. I was low down on the balcony, quite flat, and watched
it all. They fought hard for about an hour. The officers whistled
and shouted out orders; there was terrible confusion until each side
found out they were fighting each other, and then the firing ceased.
About half an hour after, on the other side of the railway, I heard
a machine-gun--I was told afterwards that the Germans were killing
civilians with it. It went on certainly for at least five or six
minutes, stopping now and then for a few seconds....”

This fighting near the _Station_ seems to have been the first and
fiercest of all, but the panic spread like wildfire through the city.
It was spread by the horses that stampeded in the _Place du Peuple_
and elsewhere, and galloped riderless in all directions--across the
_Station Square_,[187] through the suburb of _Corbeek-Loo_,[188] down
the _Rue de la Station_,[189] and up the _Rue de Tirlemont_,[190] the
_Rue de Bruxelles_,[191] and the _Rue de Malines_.[192] The troops
infected by the panic either ran amok or took to flight.

“About 8.0 o’clock,” states a witness,[193] “the _Rue de la Station_
was the scene of a stampede of horses and baggage waggons, some of
which were overturned. A smart burst of rifle-fire occurred at this
moment. This came from the German police-guard in the _Rue de la
Station_, who, seeing troops arrive in disorder, thought that it was
the enemy. Another proof of their mistake is that later during the same
night a group of German soldiers, under the command of an officer, got
into a shop belonging to the F.’s and in charge of their nephew B., and
told him, pointing their revolvers at him, to hide them in the cellar.
A few hours afterwards, hearing troops passing, they compelled him to
go and see if it was the French or the Germans, and when they learnt
that it was the Germans, they called out: ‘Then we are safe,’ and
rejoined their compatriots.”

These new troops hurrying into the town in the midst of the uproar
were infected by the panic in their turn and flung themselves into
the fighting. “On August 25th,” states one of them in his diary,[194]
“we hold ourselves on the alert at _Grimde_ (a sugar refinery); here,
too, everything is burnt and destroyed. From _Grimde_ we continue our
march upon Louvain; here it is a picture of horror all round; corpses
of our men and horses; motor-cars blazing; the water poisoned; we have
scarcely reached the outskirts of the town when the fusillade begins
again more merrily than ever; naturally we wheel about and sweep the
street; then the town is peppered by us thoroughly.”

In the _Rue Léopold_, leading from the _Rue de la Station_ into the
_Place du Peuple_, “at 8.0 o’clock exactly a violent fusillade broke
out.” The newly-arrived troops, who had been under arms since the alarm
at 7.0 o’clock, “took to flight as fast as their legs could carry them.
From our cellar,” states one of the householders on whom they had been
billeted,[195] “we saw them running until they must have been out of
breath.”

There was a single shot, followed by a fusillade and machine-gun fire,
in the _Rue des Joyeuses Entrées_.[196] Waggons and motor-cars were
flying out of the town down the _Rue de Parc_, and soldiers on foot
down the _Rue de Tirlemont_.[197] In the _Rue des Flamands_, which
runs at right-angles between these two latter roads, “at ten minutes
past eight, a shot was fired quite close to the _Institut Supérieur
de Philosophie_” (now converted into the _Hôpital St. Thomas_).
“We had scarcely taken note of it,” states one of the workers in
the hospital,[198] “when other reports followed. In less than a
minute rifle-shots and machine-gun fire mingled in a terrific din.
Accompanying the crack of the firearms, we heard the dull thud of
galloping hoofs in the _Rue de Tirlemont_.”

Mgr. Deploige, President of the Institute and Director of the Hospital,
reports[199] that “a lively fusillade broke out suddenly at 8.0 o’clock
(Belgian time), at different points simultaneously--at the _Brussels
Gate_, at the _Tirlemont Gate_, in the _Rue de la Station_, _Rue
Léopold_, _Rue Marie-Thérèse_, _Rue des Joyeuses Entrées_, _Rue de
Tirlemont_, etc.[200] It was the German troops firing with rifles and
machine-guns. Some houses were literally riddled with bullets, and a
number of civilians were killed in their homes.”

Higher up the _Rue de Tirlemont_, in the direction of the _Grand’
Place_, there was a Belgian Infantry Barracks, which had been
turned into a hospital for slightly incapacitated German soldiers.
The patients were in a state of nervous excitement already. “Every
man,” states one of them,[201] “had his rifle by his side, also
ball-cartridge.”--“About 9.0 o’clock,” states another,[202] “we heard
shots.... We had to fall in in the yard. A sergeant-major distributed
cartridges among us, whereupon I marched out with about 20 men. In the
_Rue de Tirlemont_ a lively fire was directed against us from guns of
small bore.... We pushed our way into a restaurant from which shots
had come, and found in the proprietor’s possession about 100 Browning
cartridges. He was arrested and shot.”--“We now,” continues the former,
“stormed all the houses out of which shots were being fired.... Those
who were found with weapons were immediately shot or bayonetted.... I
myself, together with a comrade, bayonetted one inhabitant who went for
me with his knife....”

But who would not defend himself with a knife when attacked by an
armed man breaking into his house? The witness admits that only five
civilians were armed out of the twenty-five dragged out. Were these
“armed” with knives? Or if revolver bullets were found in their houses,
was it proved that they had not delivered up their revolvers at the
time when they had been ordered to do so by the municipal authorities
and the German Command? The witness does not claim to have found the
revolvers themselves as well as the ammunition, though even if he
had that was no proof that his victims had been firing with them, or
even that they were theirs. The German Army uses “Brownings” too,
and at this stage of the panic many German soldiers had broken into
private houses and were firing from the windows as points of vantage.
Two German soldiers broke into the house of Professor Verhelst (_Rue
Léopold_, _16_), and fired into the street out of the second storey
window. Other Germans passing shouted: “They have been shooting here,”
and returned the fire.[203] Mgr. Ladeuze, Rector of Louvain University,
was looking from the window of his house adjoining the garden of
the _Chemical Institute, Rue de Namur_, and saw two German soldiers
hidden among the trees and firing over the wall into the street.[204]
Moreover, there is definite evidence of Germans firing on one another
by mistake in other quarters beside the neighbourhood of the _Station_.

“I myself know,” declares a Belgian witness,[205] “that the Germans
fired on one another on August 25th. On that day, at about 8.0 p.m.,
I was in the _Rue de Bruxelles_ at Louvain. I was hidden in a house.
There was one party of German soldiers at one end of the street firing
on another party at the other end. I could see that this happened
myself. On the next day I spoke to a German soldier called Hermann
Otto--he was a private in a Bavarian regiment. He told me that he
himself was in the _Rue de Bruxelles_ the evening before, and that the
two parties firing on one another were Bavarians and Poles, he being
among the Bavarians....”

The Poles openly blamed the Bavarians for the error. A wounded Polish
Catholic, who was brought in during the night to the Dominican
Monastery in the _Rue Juste-Lipse_, told the monks that “he had been
wounded by a German bullet in an exchange of shots between two groups
of German soldiers.”[206] On the Thursday following, a wounded Polish
soldier was lying in the hospital of the Sisters of Mary at Wesemael,
and, seeing German troops patrolling the road between Wesemael and
Louvain, exclaimed to one of the nuns: “These drunken pigs fired on
us.”[207]

The casualties inflicted by the Germans on each other do not, however,
appear to have been heavy. One German witness[208] saw “two dead
transport horses and several dead soldiers” lying in the _Place du
Peuple_. Another[209] saw a soldier lying near the _Juste-Lipse
Monument_ who had been killed by a shot through the mouth. But most
express astonishment at the lightness of the losses caused by so heavy
a fire. “It is really a miracle,” said a German military doctor to
a Belgian Professor in the course of the night,[210] “that not one
soldier has been wounded by this violent fusillade.”--“A murderous
fire,” states the surgeon of the Second Neuss Landsturm Battalion,[211]
“was directed against us from _Rue de la Station_, _No. 120_. The fact
that we or some of us were not killed I can merely explain by the fact
that we were going along the same side of the street from which the
shots were fired, and that it was night.”--“A tremendous fire,” states
Major von Manteuffel, the Etappen-Kommandant,[212] “was opened from
the houses surrounding the _Grand’ Place_, which was now filled with
artillery (one battery), and with transport columns, motor-lorries and
tanks of benzine.... I believe there were three men wounded, chiefly
in the legs.” General von Boehn, commanding the Ninth Reserve Army
Corps, estimates[213] that the total loss, in killed, wounded, and
missing, of his General Command Staff, which was stationed in the
_Place du Peuple_, “amounts to 5 officers, 2 officials, 23 men, and 95
horses.”--“I note that the inhabitants fired far too high,” states a
N.C.O. of the Landsturm Company drawn up in the _Station Square_.[214]
“That was our good luck, because otherwise, considering the fearful
fire which was directed against us from all the houses in the _Station
Square_, most German officers and soldiers would have been killed or
seriously wounded.”

Thus the German troops in Louvain seem not merely to have fired on one
another, but to have exaggerated hysterically the amount of danger each
incurred from the other’s mistake. And the legend grew with time. The
deposition last quoted was taken down on September 17th, 1914, less
than a month after the event. But when examined again, on November
19th, the same witness deposed that “Many of us were wounded, and some
of us even received mortal wounds.... I fully maintain my evidence of
September 17th,” he naïvely adds in conclusion.

On the night of August 25th these German soldiers were distraught
beyond all restraints of reason and justice. They blindly assumed that
it was the civilians, and not their comrades, who had fired, and when
they discovered their error they accused the civilians, deliberately,
to save their own reputation.

The Director and the Chief Surgeon of the _Hôpital St.-Thomas_ went
out into the street after the first fusillade was over. Three soldiers
with fixed bayonets rushed at them shouting: “You fired! Die!”--and
it was only with difficulty that they persuaded them to spare their
lives. When the firing began again a sergeant broke into the hospital
shouting: “Who fired here?”--and placed the hospital staff under
guard.[215] This was the effect of panic, but there were cases in which
the firing was imputed to civilians, and punishment meted out for
it, by means of criminal trickery. It was realised that the material
evidence would be damning to the German Army. The empty cartridge cases
were all German which were picked up in the streets,[216] and it is
stated that every bullet extracted from the bodies of wounded German
soldiers was found to be of German origin.[217] The Germans, convicted
by these proofs, shrank from no fraud which might enable them to
transfer the guilt on to the heads of Belgian victims.

“The Germans took the horses out of a Belgian Red Cross car,” states a
Belgian witness[218] living in the _Station Square_, “frightened them
so that they ran down the street, and then shot three of them. Two fell
quite close to my house. They then took a Belgian artillery helmet and
put it on the ground, so as to prepare a _mise-en-scène_ to pretend
that the Belgians had been fighting in the street.”

At a late hour of the night a detachment of German soldiers was
passing one of the professors’ houses, when a shot rang out, followed
by a volley from the soldiers through the windows of the house. The
soldiers then broke in and accused the inmates of having fired the
first shot. They were mad with fury, and the professor and his family
barely escaped with their lives. A sergeant pointed to his boot, with
the implication that the shot had struck him there; but a witness
in another house actually saw this sergeant fire the original shot
himself, and make the same gesture after it to incite his comrades.[219]

A staff-surgeon billeted on a curé in the suburb of _Blauwput_
pretended he had been wounded by civilians when he had really fallen
from a wall. On the morning of the 26th the officer in local command
arrested fifty-seven men at _Blauwput_, this curé included, in order
to decimate them in reprisal for wounds which the surgeon and two
other soldiers had received. The curé was exempted by the lot, when
the surgeon came up with a handful of revolver-cartridges which he
professed to have discovered in the curé’s house. The officer answered:
“Go away. I have searched this house myself,” and the surgeon slunk
off. The curé was not added to the victims, but every tenth man was
shot all the same.[220]

That “the civilians had fired” was already an official dogma
with the German military authorities in Louvain. Mgr. Coenraets,
Vice-Rector of the University, was serving that day as a hostage at
the _Hôtel-de-Ville_. A Dominican monk, Father Parijs, was there at
the moment the firing broke out, in quest of a pass for remaining
out-of-doors at night on ambulance service. He was now retained as
well, and Alderman Schmit was fetched from his house. Von Boehn, the
General Commanding the Ninth Reserve Corps, harangued these hostages
on his arrival from the Malines front, and von Manteuffel, the
Etappen-Kommandant, then conducted them, with a guard of soldiers,
round the town. Baron Orban de Xivry was dragged out of his house
to join them on the way. The procession halted at intervals in the
streets, and the four hostages were compelled to proclaim to their
fellow-citizens, in Flemish and in French, that, unless the firing
ceased, the hostages themselves would be shot, the town would have to
pay an indemnity of 20,000,000 francs, the houses from which shots were
fired would be burnt, and artillery-fire would be directed upon Louvain
as a whole.[221]

But “reprisals” against the civil population had already begun. The
firing from German soldiers in the houses upon German soldiers in
the street was answered by a general assault of the latter upon all
houses within their reach. “They broke the house-doors,” states a
Belgian woman,[222] “with the butt-ends of their rifles.... They shot
through the gratings of the cellars.”--“In the _Hôtel-de-Ville_,”
states von Manteuffel,[223] “I saw the Company stationed there on the
ground floor, standing at the windows and answering the fire of the
inhabitants. In front of the _Hôtel-de-Ville_, on the entrance steps,
I also saw soldiers firing in reply to the inhabitants’ fire in the
direction of their houses.”--“Personally I was under the distinct
impression,” states a staff officer,[224] “that we were fired at from
the Hôtel Maria Theresa with machine-guns.” (This is quite probable,
and merely proves that those who fired were German soldiers.) “The fire
from machine-guns lasted from four to five minutes, and was immediately
answered by our troops, who finally stormed the house and set it on
fire.”--“The order was passed up from the rear that we should fire
into the houses,” states an infantryman who had just detrained and was
marching with his unit into the town.[225] “Thereupon we shot into
the house-fronts on either side of us. To what extent the fire was
answered I cannot say, the noise and confusion were too great.”--“We
now dispersed towards both sides,” states a lance-corporal in the
same battalion,[226] “and fired into the upper windows.... How long
the firing lasted I cannot say.... We now began shooting into the
ground-floor windows too, as well as tearing down a certain number of
the shutters. I made my way into the house from which the shot had
come, with a few others who had forced open the door. We could find no
one in the house. In the room from which the shot had come there was,
however, a petroleum lamp, lying overturned on the table and still
smouldering....”

[Illustration: 21. CAPELLE-AU-BOIS: THE CHURCH]

[Illustration: 22. LOUVAIN: NEAR THE CHURCH OF ST. PIERRE]

These assaults on houses passed over inevitably into wholesale
incendiarism. “The German troops,” as the Editors of the German White
Book remark in their summarising report on the events at Louvain,
“had to resort to energetic counter-measures. In accordance with the
threats, the inhabitants who had taken part in the attack were shot,
and the houses from which shots had been fired were set on fire. The
spreading of the fire to other houses also and the destruction of some
streets could not be avoided. In this way the Cathedral” (_i. e._, the
Collegiate Church of St. Pierre) “also caught fire....”

There is a map in the German White Book which shows the quarters burnt
down. The incendiarism started in the _Station Square_, and spread
along the _Boulevard de Tirlemont_ as far as the _Tirlemont Gate_.
It was renewed across the railway and devastated the suburbs to the
east. Then it was extended up the _Rue de la Station_ into the heart of
the town, and here the _Church of St. Pierre_ was destroyed, and the
_University Halles_ with the priceless _University Library_--not by
mischance, as the German Report alleges, but by the deliberate work of
German troops, employing the same incendiary apparatus as had been used
already at Visé, Liége and elsewhere.[227]

The burning was directed by a German officer from the _Vieux Marché_, a
large open space near the centre of the town, and by another group of
officers stationed in the _Place du Peuple_.[228] The burning here is
described by a German officer[229] (whose evidence on other points has
been quoted above). “The Company,” he states, “continued to fire into
the houses. The fire of the inhabitants (_sic_) gradually died down.
Thereupon the German soldiers broke in the doors of the houses and set
the houses on fire, flinging burning petroleum lamps into the houses or
striking off the gas-taps, setting light to the gas which rushed out
and throwing table-cloths and curtains into the flames. Here and there
benzine was also employed as a means of ignition. The order to set fire
to the houses was given out by Colonel von Stubenrauch, whose voice I
distinguished....”

In the _Rue de la Station_ the Germans set the houses on fire with
incendiary bombs. This was seen by a Belgian witness,[230] and is
confirmed by the German officer just cited, who, in the _Place du
Peuple_, “heard repeatedly the detonation of what appeared to be heavy
guns” round about him. “I supposed,” he proceeds, “that artillery was
firing; but since there was none present, there is only one explanation
for this--that the inhabitants (_sic_) also threw hand-grenades.”

In the _Rue de Manège_[231] another Belgian witness saw a soldier
pouring inflammable liquid over a house from a bucket, and this though
a German military surgeon, present on the spot, admitted that in
that house there had been nobody firing. Soldiers are also stated to
have been seen[232] with a complete incendiary equipment (syringe,
hatchet, etc.), and with “Gott mit Uns” and “Company of Incendiaries”
blazoned on their belts. The Germans deny that the _Church of St.
Pierre_ was deliberately burnt, and allege that the fire spread to
it from private houses;[233] but a Dutch witness[234] saw it burning
while the adjoining houses were still intact. There is less evidence
for the deliberate burning of the _University Halles_, containing
the _Library_, but it is significant that the building was completely
consumed in one night (a result hardly possible without artificial
means), and at 11.0 p.m., in the middle of the burning, an officer
answered a Belgian monk, who protested, that it was “By Order.”[235]
The manuscripts and early printed books in the _Library_ were one of
the treasures of Europe. The whole collection of 250,000 volumes was
the intellectual capital of the University, without which it could
not carry on its work. Every volume and manuscript was destroyed. The
Germans pride themselves on saving the _Hôtel-de-Ville_, but they
saved it because it was the seat of the German Kommandantur, and this
only suggests that, had they desired, they could have prevented the
destruction of the other buildings as well.

As the houses took fire the inhabitants met their fate. Some were
asphyxiated in the cellars where they had taken refuge from the
shooting, or were burnt alive as they attempted to escape from their
homes.[236] Others were shot down by the German troops as they ran out
into the street,[237] or while they were fighting the flames.[238] “The
franc-tireurs,” as they are called by the German officer in the _Place
du Peuple_,[239] “were without exception evil-looking figures, such
as I have never seen elsewhere in all my life. They were shot down by
the German posts stationed below....”

[Illustration: 23. LOUVAIN: THE CHURCH OF ST. PIERRE]

[Illustration: 24. LOUVAIN: THE CHURCH OF ST. PIERRE ACROSS THE RUINS]

Others, again, tried to save themselves by climbing garden walls.[240]
“I, my mother and my servants,” states one of these,[241] “took refuge
at A.’s, whose cellars are vaulted and therefore afforded us a better
protection than mine. A little later we withdrew to A.’s stables, where
about 30 people, who had got there by climbing the garden walls, were
to be found. Some of these poor wretches had had to climb 20 walls.
A ring came at the bell. We opened the door. Several civilians flung
themselves under the porch. The Germans were firing upon them from the
street.”

“When we were crossing a particularly high wall,” states another
victim,[242] “my wife was on the top of the wall and I was helping
her to get down, when a party of 15 Germans came up with rifles and
revolvers. They told us to come down. My wife did not follow as quickly
as they wished. One of them made a lunge at her with his bayonet. I
seized the blade of the bayonet and stopped the lunge. The German
soldier then tried to stab me in the face with his bayonet....

“They kept hitting us with the butt-ends of their rifles--the women and
children as well as the men. They struck us on the elbows because they
said our arms were not raised high enough....

“We were driven in this way through a burning house to the _Place de
la Station_. There were a number of prisoners already there. In front
of the station entrance there were the corpses of three civilians
killed by rifle fire. The women and the children were separated. The
women were put on one side and the men on the other. One of the German
soldiers pushed my wife with the butt-end of his rifle, so that she was
compelled to walk on the three corpses. Her shoes were full of blood....

“Other prisoners were being continually brought in. I saw one
prisoner with a bayonet-wound behind his ear. A boy of fifteen had a
bayonet-wound in his throat in front.... The priests were treated more
brutally than the rest. I saw one belaboured with the butt-ends of
rifles. Some German soldiers came up to me sniggering, and said that
all the women were going to be raped.... They explained themselves by
gestures.... The streets were full of empty wine bottles....

“An officer told me that he was merely executing orders, and that he
himself would be shot if he did not execute them....”

The battue of civilians through the streets was the final horror of
that night. The massacre began with the murder of M. David-Fischbach.
He was a man of property, a benefactor of the University and the town.
Since the outbreak of war he had given 10,000 francs to the Red Cross.
Since the German occupation he had entertained German officers in his
house, which stood in the _Rue de la Station_ opposite the _Statue of
Juste-Lipse_, and about 9.0 o’clock that evening he had gone to bed.

“Close to the _Monument Square_,” states Dr. Berghausen, the German
military surgeon who was responsible for M. David-Fischbach’s
death,[243] “I saw a German soldier lying dead on the ground.... His
comrades told me that the shot had been fired from the corner house
belonging to David-Fischbach. Thereupon I myself, with my servant,
broke in the door of the house and met first the owner of the house,
old David-Fischbach. I challenged him concerning the soldier who had
been murdered.... Old David-Fischbach declared he knew nothing about
it. Thereupon his son, young Fischbach, came downstairs from the
first floor, and from the porter’s lodge appeared an old servant. I
immediately took father, son, and servant with me into the street. At
that moment a tumult arose in the street, because a fearful fusillade
had opened from a few houses on the same side of the street against the
soldiers standing by the Monument and against myself. In the darkness I
then lost sight of David-Fischbach, with his son and servant....”

The soldiers set the old man with his back against the statue. Standing
with his arms raised, he had to watch his house set on fire. Then
he was bayonetted and finally shot to death. His son was shot, too.
His house was burnt to the ground, and a servant asphyxiated in the
cellar.[244]

“Later,” adds Dr. Berghausen, “I met Major von Manteuffel with the
hostages, and all four or five of us saw the dead soldier lying in
front of the monument and, a few steps further on, old David-Fischbach.
I assumed that the comrades of the soldier who had been killed ... had
at once inflicted punishment on the owner of the house....”

The corpse was also seen by a professor’s wife who made her way to
the _Hôpital St.-Thomas_--the old man’s white beard was stained with
blood.[245]

The massacre spread. Six workmen returning from their work were
shot down from behind.[246] A woman was shot as she was beating for
admittance on a door.[247] A man had his hands tied behind his back,
and was shot as he ran down the street.[248] Another witness saw 20
men shot.[249] One saw 19 corpses,[250] and corpses were also seen
with their hands tied behind their backs, like the victim mentioned
above.[251] There was the body of a woman cut in two, with a child
still alive beside her.[252] Other children had been murdered, and
were lying dead.[253] There was the body of another murdered woman,
and a girl of fourteen who had been wounded and was being carried to
hospital. A German soldier beckoned a Dutch witness into a shop,[254]
and showed him the shop-keeper’s body in the back-room, in a
night-shirt, with a bullet-wound through the head.

These were the “evil-looking franc-tireurs” whom the German soldiers
shot down at sight. Inhabitants of Louvain dragged as prisoners through
the streets[255] recognised the corpses of people they knew. Here a
bootmaker lay,[256] here a hairdresser,[256] here a professor. The
corpse of Professor Lenertz was lying in front of his house in the
_Boulevard de Tirlemont_. It was recognised by Dr. Noyons, one of his
colleagues (though a Dutchman by nationality), who was serving in the
_Hôpital St.-Thomas_, and so escaped himself.[257] “On the 27th,”
states a Belgian lady,[258] “M. Lenertz’ body was still lying on the
Boulevard. When his wife and children were evicted by the Germans and
came out of their house, members of the family had to stand in front of
the body to hide it from Madame Lenertz’ sight.”

The dead were lying in every quarter of the town. In the _Boulevard
de Tirlemont_ there were six or seven more.[259] There was one at the
end of the _Rue du Manège_.[260] But the greatest number were in the
_Station Square_, where they were seen by all the civilian prisoners
herded thither this night and the following day.[261] Their murder
is described by a German sergeant-major[262] who was fighting in the
neighbourhood of the _Station_. “Various civilians,” he remarks, “were
led off by my men, and after judgment had been given against them
by the Commandant, they were shot in the _Square_ in front of the
_Station_. In accordance with orders, I myself helped to set fire to
various houses, after having in every case previously convinced myself
that no one was left in them. Towards midnight the work was done, and
the Company returned to the station buildings, before which were lying
shot about 15 inhabitants of the town.”

The slaughter itself increased the thirst for blood. A Dutch
witness[263] met a German column marching in from _Aerschot_. “The
soldiers were beside themselves with rage at the sight of the corpses,
and cried: ‘Schweinhunde! Schweinhunde!’ They regarded me with
threatening eyes. I passed on my way....”

The soldiers in their frenzy respected no one. The Hostel for Spanish
students in the _Rue de la Station_ was burnt down, though it was
protected by the Spanish flag. Father Catala, the Superior of the
Hostel and formerly Vice-Consul of Spain, barely escaped with his life.
There was no mercy either for the old or the sick. A retired barrister,
bedridden with paralysis, had his house burnt over his head, and was
brought to the _Hôpital St.-Thomas_ to die. Another old man, more than
eighty years old and in his last illness, was cast out by the soldiers
into the street, and died in the _Hôpital St.-Thomas_ next day.[264] An
aged concierge was cast alive into the blazing ruins of the house it
was his duty to guard.[265] So it went on till dawn, when the havoc was
completed by salvoes of artillery. “At four o’clock in the morning,”
states an officer of the Ninth German Reserve Corps Staff,[266] “the
Army Corps moved out to battle. We did not enter the main streets,
but advanced along an avenue.... As the road carrying our lines of
communication was continuously fired on, the order was given to clear
the town by force. Two guns were sent with 150 shells. The two guns,
firing from the _Railway Station_, swept the streets with shells. Thus
at least the quarter surrounding the _Railway Station_ was secured,
and this made it possible to conduct the supply-columns through the
town....”

It was now the morning of August 26th. At dawn Mgr. Coenraets and
Father Parijs, the hostages of the preceding night, were placed under
escort and marched round the City once more. If the firing continued
the hostages were to be shot. They had to proclaim this themselves to
the inhabitants from point to point of the town, and they were kept at
this task till far on in the day.[267] The inhabitants, meanwhile, were
paying the penalty for the shots which not they but the Germans had
already fired.

In one street after another the people were dragged from their houses,
and those not slaughtered out of hand were driven by the soldiers to
the _Station Square_. “I only had slippers on,” states one victim,[268]
“and no hat or waistcoat. On the way to the _Station Square_, soldiers
kicked me and hit me with the butt-ends of their rifles, and shouted:
‘Oh, you swine! Another who shot at us! You swine!’ My hands were tied
behind my back with a cord, and when I cried: ‘Oh, God, you are hurting
me,’ a soldier spat on me.”--“We had to go in front of the soldiers,”
adds this witness’s wife,[269] “holding our hands above our heads.
All the ladies who lived in the Boulevard--invalids or not--were taken
prisoners. One of them, an old lady of 85, who could scarcely walk, was
dragged from her cellar with her maid.”

[Illustration: 25. LOUVAIN: THE CHURCH OF ST. PIERRE--INTERIOR]

[Illustration: 26. LOUVAIN: STATION SQUARE]

When they reached the _Station Square_ the men were herded to one side,
the women and children to the other. It was done by an officer with a
loaded revolver.[270] “We were separated from our families,” states one
of the men;[271] “we were knocked about and blows were rained on us
from rifle butts; the women and children and the men were isolated from
one another....”

The men’s pockets were rifled. Purses, keys, penknives and so on
were taken from them.[272] One gentleman’s servant had 7,805 francs
taken from his bag, and was given a receipt for 7,000 francs in
exchange.[273] This was the preliminary to a “trial,” conducted by
Captain Albrecht,[274] a staff officer of the Ninth Reserve Corps.
“The soldiers,” states a German tradesman who acted as Captain
Albrecht’s interpreter,[275] “brought forward the civilians whom they
had seized.... In all about 600 persons may have been brought in, the
lives of at least 500 of whom were spared, because no clear proof of
their guilt seemed to be established at the trial. These persons were
set on one side.... Captain Albrecht followed the course--I imagine,
by the command of his superiors--of ordering that those among the men
brought forward upon whom either a weapon or an identification mark
was discovered, or in whose case it was established by at least two
witnesses that they had fired upon the German troops, should be shot.
It is an utter impossibility, according to my firm conviction, that any
innocent man should have lost his life....”

But was there really “clear proof of guilt” in any of these cases? Not
one of these “identification marks” (assumed to establish that the
bearer was a member of the Belgian Army) has been brought forward as
material evidence by the German Government. And was the other material
evidence so clear? One man, for instance,[276] had a German bullet in
his pocket which he had picked up in the street. “He was shot down,
and two of his comrades had to make a pit and bury him in the place
where he was shot.”[277] One priest was shot “because he had purposely
enticed the soldiers, according to their testimony, under the fire of
the franc-tireurs.”[278] Two other priests were shot “for distributing
ammunition to civilians,”[279] but this was only a story heard from
General Headquarters at second-hand. The witness who tells it was sent
with a squad “to set on fire two hotels in the _Station Square_ and
drive out their inmates. The chief culprits found, apparently, a way
of escape in good time over the roofs, since only the proprietor of
one of the hotels presented himself at 5.0 o’clock in the morning, and
very shortly afterwards received the reward he deserved.” But what was
the proof that he deserved it? Not any material evidence on his person,
or the testimony of two witnesses who had seen him fire, but simply
the fact that he was the only Belgian found in a certain building the
inmates of which had been condemned, _a priori_, as franc-tireurs. The
logic of this proceeding is defended by the tradesman interpreter, who
submits[280] that “apart from all evidence, the persons brought to
trial must have acted somehow in a suspicious manner--otherwise they
would never have been brought to trial at all.”

“It is untrue,” nevertheless he states expressly, “that an arbitrary
selection among the persons brought forward was made when the order for
execution was issued.” But one of the Belgian women[281] held prisoner
in the _Station Square_ describes how “the men were placed in rows of
five, and the fifth in each row was taken and shot,” as she affirms,
“in my presence. If the fifth man happened to be old, his place was
taken by the sixth man if he happened to be younger. This was also
witnessed by my grandmother, my uncle and his wife, my cousin and our
servant....”

“The whole day long,” states another Belgian woman,[282] “I saw
civilians being shot--twenty to twenty-five of them, including
some monks or priests--in the _Station Square_ and the _Boulevard
de Tirlemont_, opposite the warehouse. The victims were bound four
together and placed on the pavement in front of the Maison Hamaide. The
soldiers who shot them were on the other side of the Boulevard, on the
warehouse roof. For that matter, the soldiers were firing everywhere in
all directions.”

The executions were also witnessed by the German troops. “On the
morning of August 26th,” states a soldier,[283] “I saw many civilians,
more than a hundred, among them five priests, shot at the _Station
Square_ in Louvain because they had fired on German troops or because
weapons were found on their persons.”

This went on all day, and all day the women were compelled to watch it,
while the surviving men were marched away in batches, and the houses
on either side of the railway continued to burn. When night came the
women were confined in the _Station_. “My aunt,” continues the witness
quoted above,[284] “was taken to the _Station_ with her baby and kept
there till the morning. It rained all the night, and she wrapped the
baby in her skirt. The baby cried for food, and a German soldier
gave the child a little water, and took my aunt and the child to an
empty railway-carriage. Some other women got into the carriage with
her, but during the whole night the Germans fired at the carriage for
amusement....”

The firing by German soldiers had never ceased since the first outbreak
at 8.0 o’clock the evening before. An eye-witness records two bursts of
it on the 26th--one at 5.0 p.m., and a more serious one at 8.45.[285]
This firing was due in part to panic, but was in part of a more
deliberate character. “The whole day,” states a Belgian witness,[286]
“the soldiers went and came through the streets, saying: ‘Man hat
geschossen,’ but it seems that the shots came from the soldiers
themselves. I myself saw a soldier going through the streets shooting
peacefully in the air.” There was also killing in cold blood. A café
proprietor and his daughter were shot by two German soldiers waiting to
be served. The other daughter crept under a table and escaped.[287]

The women held prisoner at the _Station_ were only released at 8.0
o’clock on the morning of the 27th,[288] but they had suffered less
during these hours than the men. “Of the men,” as a German witness puts
it,[289] “some were shot according to Martial Law. In the case of a
large number of others it was, however, impossible to determine whether
they had taken part in the shooting. These persons were placed for the
moment in the _Station_; some of them were conveyed elsewhere.”

The first batch[290] of those “not found guilty” was “conveyed” by the
_Boulevard de Diest_ round the outskirts of the town, and out along
the _Malines Road_, about 11.0 o’clock in the morning. It consisted of
from 70 to 80 men, one of whom at least was 75 years old, while five
were neutrals--a Paraguayan priest, Father Gamarra,[291] the Superior
of the Spanish Hostel, Father Catala, and three of Father Catala’s
students. There were doctors, lawyers, and retired officers among the
Belgian victims. One prisoner was driven on ahead to warn the country
people that all the hostages would be executed if a single shot were
fired;[292] the rest were searched, had their hands bound behind
their backs, and were marched in column under guard. On the way to
_Herent_ they were used as a screen.[293] The village of _Herent_ was
burning, and they had to run through the street to avoid being scorched
by the flames.[294] “Carbonised corpses were lying in front of the
houses.”--“At _Herent_” states the South American priest,[295] “I saw
lying in the nook of a wall the corpse of a girl twelve or thirteen
years old, who had been burnt alive.” On the road from _Herent_ to
_Bueken_ “everything was devastated.” Beyond _Bueken_ and _Campenhout_
they were made to halt in a field, and were told that they were going
to be executed. Squads of soldiers advanced on them from the front
and rear, and they were kept many minutes in suspense. Then they were
marched on again towards _Campenhout_, surrounded by a company which,
they were given to understand, was the “execution company.” Crowds of
German troops, bivouacked by the roadside, shouted at them and spat on
them as they passed. They reached _Campenhout_ at dusk, and were locked
up for the night in the church with the inhabitants of the village. At
4.30 a.m. they were warned to confess, as their execution was imminent.
At 5.0 a.m. they were released from the church, and told they were
free. But at _Bueken_ they were arrested again with a large number of
country people, and were marched back towards _Campenhout_. One of
these countrywomen bore a baby on the road.[296] From the outskirts of
_Campenhout_ they were suddenly ordered to make their own way as best
they could to the Belgian lines. They arrived at _Malines_ about 11.30
in the morning (of August 27th), about 200 strong. Within four hours of
their arrival the German bombardment[297] of _Malines_ began, and they
had to march on again to _Antwerp_.

A second batch[298] was driven out along the _Brussels Road_ on August
26th between 1.0 and 2.0 o’clock in the afternoon. As they marched
through Louvain by the _Rue de Bruxelles_, the guard fired into the
windows of the houses and shot down one of the prisoners, who was
panic-stricken and tried to escape.[299] At _Herent_ they were yoked to
heavy carts and made to drag them along by-roads for three hours,[299]
and another civilian was shot on the way.[299] At 10.0 p.m. they were
made to lie down in an open field with their feet tied together, and
lay thus in pouring rain till 6.0 o’clock next morning. Then they
were marched through _Bueken_, _Thildonck_, _Wespelaer_--still in
pouring rain--with their hands bound by a single long cord. They
reached _Campenhout_ at noon, and were set to digging trenches. At
7.0 p.m. they were allowed to sit down and rest, but only just behind
the batteries bombarding the Antwerp forts,[300] which might have
opened retaliation fire on them at any moment. That night they passed
in Campenhout church, and at 9.0 o’clock next morning (August 28th)
they were marched back again to Louvain, about 1,000 in all--women and
children as well as men. “The houses along the road were burning. The
principal streets of Louvain itself were burnt out.”[300] That night
at Louvain they were crowded into the _Cavalry Riding School_ in the
_Rue du Manège_. Six or seven thousand people were imprisoned there
in all.[301] The press was terrible, and the heat from the burning
buildings round was so great that the glass of the roof cracked during
the night.[301] Two women went out of their minds and two babies
died.[302] Next morning a German officer read them a proclamation
to the effect that their liberty was given them because Germany had
already won the war,[303] and they were marched out again through the
streets. They passed corpses left unburied since the night of August
25th.[303] “The German soldiers giggled at the sight.”[304] Once more
they were driven round the countryside. At _Herent_ the women and
children, and the men over forty, were set free. At _Campenhout_ the
curé was added to the company, after being dragged round his parish at
the tail of a cart.[305] At _Boortmeerbeek_ the men between twenty and
forty were also released at last, and told to go forward to the Belgian
lines, under threat of being shot if they turned back. They arrived in
front of _Fort Waelhem_ in the dark, at 11.0 p.m. on the 29th, and were
fired on by the Belgian outposts; but they managed to make themselves
known and came through to safety.

The third batch “conveyed elsewhere” from Louvain on August 26th
consisted of the Garde Civique.[306] All members of this body were
summoned by proclamation to present themselves at the _Hôtel-de-Ville_
at 2.0 p.m.[307] The 95 men who reported themselves were informed that
they were prisoners, taken to the _Station_, and entrained in two
goods-vans. There were 250 other deportees on the train, including the
Gardes Civiques of _Beyghem_ and _Grimberghen_, and about a hundred
women and children. They did not reach the internment camp at _Münster_
till the night of the 28th, and on the journey they were almost
starved. At _Cologne Station_ a German Red Cross worker refused one of
the women, who asked her in German for a little milk to feed her sick
baby fourteen months old.[308] In the camp at _Münster_ all the men
were crowded promiscuously into a single wooden shed. The floor was
strewn with straw (already old), which was never changed. The blankets
(also old, and too thin to keep out the cold) were never disinfected
or washed. There was no lighting or heating. The food was insufficient
and disgusting. The sanitary arrangements were indecent. And the
deportees had to live under these conditions for months, in the clothes
they stood in, though many had come in slippers and shirt-sleeves--the
proclamation having taken them completely by surprise. In neighbouring
huts there were the 400 Russian students from _Liége_, 600 or 700
people from _Visé_, the Gardes Civiques of _Hasselt_ and _Tongres_,
people from _Haccourt_ and from several communes in the _Province of
Limburg_--about 1,700 prisoners in all. On October 4th an article in
the _Berliner Tageblatt_, signed by a German general, admitted that
“only two of the prisoners at _Münster_ were under suspicion of having
fired”; but none of the prisoners from Louvain were released till
October 30th, and then only <DW36>s and men over seventy years of age.
The rest were retained, including a man with a wooden leg....

The fourth batch of prisoners on August 26th started about 3.0 o’clock
in the afternoon, also by way of the _Boulevard de Diest_ and the
_Malines Road_.[309] This group seems to have been treated even more
brutally than the rest. One man was so violently mishandled that he
fainted, and was carried in a waggon the first part of the way. He came
to himself in time to see his own house burning and his wife waving him
farewell. He was then thrown out of the waggon and made to go on foot.
His bonds cut so deeply into his flesh that his arms lost all sensation
for three days. The party was marched aimlessly about between _Herent_,
_Louvain_, _Bueken_, and _Herent_ again till 11.0 at night, when they
had to camp in the open in the rain. They were refused water to drink.
At 3.0 a.m. on August 27th they were driven on again, and marched till
3.0 p.m., when they arrived at _Rotselaer_. At _Rotselaer_ they were
shut up in the church--a company of 3,000 men and women, including all
the inhabitants of the village. This respite only lasted an hour, and
at 4.0 o’clock they started once more along the Louvain Road. They were
destined for a still worse torment, which will shortly be described.

These preliminary expulsions on the 26th were followed up by more
comprehensive measures on the morning of the 27th. Between 8.0 and 9.0
a.m. German soldiers went round the streets proclaiming from door to
door: “Louvain is to be bombarded at noon; everyone is to leave the
town immediately.”[310] The people had no time to set their affairs in
order or to prepare for the journey. They started out just as they
were, fearing that the bombardment would overtake them before they
could escape from the town. The exodus was complete. About 40,000
people altogether were in flight,[311] and the majority of them
streamed towards the _Station Square_, where they had been ordered
to assemble, and then out by the _Boulevard de Tirlemont_, along the
_Tirlemont Road_.

The Dominicans from the Monastery in the _Rue Juste-Lipse_ were
expelled with the rest. “At the moment when they were leaving the
Monastery an old man was brought in seriously wounded in the stomach;
it was evident that he had but a few hours to live. A German officer
proposed to ‘finish him off,’ but was deterred by the Prior. One of the
monks attempted to pick up a paralysed person who had fallen in the
street; the soldiers prevented him, striking him with the butt-ends of
their muskets. The weeping, terrified population was hurrying towards
the _Railway Station_....”[312] At the _Station_ the Dominicans were
stopped and sent to Germany by train; the rest of the crowd was driven
on. There were from 8,000 to 10,000 people in this first column.[313]
“Nothing but heads was to be seen--a sea of heads.... The wind was
blowing violently, and a remorseless rain scourged us.... The crowd
was pressing upon us, suffocating us, and sometimes literally lifting
us along like a wave, our feet not touching the ground. We progressed
with difficulty, and had to stop every ten metres. Sometimes a German
asked us if we had any arms....”[314] When they arrived at _Tirlemont_
they were kept outside the town till nightfall.[315] The inhabitants
did their best for them, but _Tirlemont_, too, had been ravaged by
the invasion. The number of the refugees was overwhelming, and there
was a dearth of supplies. “My mother and I,” states a Professor of
Louvain University,[316] “had to walk about 20 miles on the 27th and
the following day before we could find a peasant cart. We had to carry
the few belongings we were able to take away, and to walk in the heavy
rain. We could find nothing to eat, but other people were yet more
unfortunate than we. I saw ladies walking in the same plight, without
hats and almost in their night-dresses. Sick persons, too, dragged
themselves along or were carried in wheel-barrows. Thousands of people
were obliged to sleep in _Tirlemont_ on the church pavements. We found
a little room to sleep in....”

Ecclesiastics were singled out for special maltreatment. This
professor, and twelve other priests or monks with him, was stopped
by German troops encamped at _Lovenjoul_. They were informed that
they were going to be shot for “having incited the population.”--“A
soldier,” states the professor, “called me ‘Black Devil’ and pushed me
roughly into a dirty little stable.”--“I was thrust into a pig-stye,”
states one of his fellow-victims,[317] “from which a pig had just been
removed before my eyes.... There I was compelled to undress completely.
German soldiers searched my clothes and took all I had. Thereupon the
other ecclesiastics were brought to the stye; two of them were stripped
like me; all were searched and robbed of all they had. The soldiers
kept everything of value--watches, money and so on--and only returned
us trifles. Our breviaries were thrown into the manure. Some of the
ecclesiastics were robbed of large sums--one had 6,000 francs on him,
another more than 4,000. All were brutally handled and received blows.”
They were saved from death by the professor’s mother, who appealed to a
German officer with more sense of justice than his colleagues, and they
were thankful to rejoin the other refugees.

A second stream of refugees was pouring out of Louvain by the
_Tervueren Road_,[318] towards the south-west. “On the road,” states a
professor,[319] “we had to raise our arms each time we met soldiers.
An officer in a motor-car levelled his revolver at us. He threatened
fiercely a young man walking by himself who only raised one arm--he was
carrying a portmanteau in the other hand, which he had to put down in
a hurry. At _Tervueren_ we were searched several times over, and then
took the electric tram for Brussels....”

But here the ecclesiastics were singled out once more. One was searched
so roughly that his cassock was torn from top to bottom.[320] Another
was charged with carrying “cartridges,” which turned out to be a
packet of chocolates.[321] One soldier tried to slip a cartridge
into a Jesuit’s pocket, but the trick was fortunately seen by
another monk standing by.[322] Insults were hurled at them--“Swine”;
“Beastly <DW7>s”; “You incite the people to fire on us”; “You will
be castrated, you swine!” Then they were driven into a field, and
surrounded by a guard with loaded rifles. About 140 ecclesiastics
were collected altogether,[323] including Mgr. Ladeuze, the Rector
of Louvain University; Canon Cauchie, the Professor of History; Mgr.
Becker, the Principal of the American Seminary; and Mgr. Willemsen,
formerly President of the American College. After they had waited an
hour, 26 of them were taken and lined up against a fence. Expecting
to be shot, they gave one another absolution, but after waiting
seven or eight minutes they were marched out of the field and lined
up once more with their backs to a wood. As they marched, a soldier
muttered that “one of them was going to be shot.” The two Americans
showed their passports to an officer, but were violently rebuffed. Then
Father Dupierreux, a Jesuit student 23 years old, was led before them
under guard, and one of their number was called forward to translate
aloud into German a paper that had been found on Father Dupierreux’s
person. The paper (it was a manuscript memorandum of half-a-dozen
lines) compared the conduct of the Germans at Louvain to the conduct
of Genseric and of the Saracens, and the burning of the Library to the
burning of the Library at Alexandria. The officer cut the recitation
short. Father Dupierreux received absolution, and was then ordered to
advance towards the wood. Four soldiers were lined up in front of him,
and the 26 prisoners were ordered to face about, in order to witness
the execution. Among their number was Father Robert Dupierreux, the
twin brother of the condemned.[324] “Father Dupierreux,” states Father
Schill,[325] the Jesuit who had been forced to translate the document,
“had listened to the reading with complete calm.... He kept his eyes
fixed on the crucifix.... The command rang out: ‘Aim! Fire!’ We only
heard one report. The Father fell on his back; a last shudder ran
through his limbs. Then the spectators were ordered to turn about
again, while the officer bent over the body and discharged his pistol
into the ear. The bullet came out through the eye.”

The others were then placed in carts, and harangued:[326] “When we pass
through a village, if a single shot is fired from any house, the whole
village will be burnt. You will be shot and the inhabitants likewise.”
They were paraded in these carts through the streets of _Brussels_ and
liberated, at 7.0 o’clock in the evening, at eight kilometres’ distance
beyond the city.

Meanwhile, the proclamation of the morning had had its effect. Louvain
was cleared of its inhabitants, but the bombardment did not follow.
Between 11.0 and 12.0 o’clock a few cannon shots were heard in the
distance, but that was all.[327] “At _Rotselaer_,” states an inhabitant
of Louvain who was in the party conveyed there on the 27th,[328] “I
understood from the prisoners in the church that all the people of
_Rotselaer_ were made to leave their houses on the pretext that they
were in danger of bombardment, and the Germans stated that they were
being placed in the church for security. While all these people were in
the church the Germans robbed the houses and then burned the village.”
At Louvain the German strategy was the same. The bombardment was only
a pretext for the wholesale expulsion of the inhabitants, which was
followed by systematic pillage and incendiarism as soon as the ground
was clear. The conflagration of two nights before, which had never
burnt itself out, was extended deliberately and revived where it was
dying out; the plundering, which had been desultory since the Germans
first occupied the town, was now conducted under the supervision of
officers from house to house.[329]

On the morning of August 27th, even before the exodus began, a Dutch
witness[330] waiting at the _Hôtel-de-Ville_ saw “soldiers streaming in
from all sides, laden with huge packages of stolen property--clothes,
boxes of cigars, bottles of wine, etc. Many of these men were
drunk.”--“I saw the German soldiers taking the wine away from my
house and from neighbours’ houses,” states a Belgian witness.[331]
“They got into the cellar with a ladder, and brought out the wine
and placed it on their waggons.”--“The streets were full of empty
wine bottles,” states another.[332] “My factory has been completely
plundered,” states a cigar-manufacturer.[333] “Seven million cigars
have disappeared.” The factory itself was set on fire on the 26th,
and was only saved by the Germans for fear the flames might spread to
the prison. They saved it by an extinguishing apparatus which was as
instantaneous in its effect as the apparatus they used for setting
houses alight. “The soldiers, led by a non-commissioned officer, went
from house to house and broke in the shop fronts and house doors with
their rifle butts. A cart or waggon waited for them in the street to
carry away the loot.”[334] Carts were also employed in the suburb of
_Blauwput_, on the other side of the railway. “I saw German soldiers
break into the houses,” states a witness from _Blauwput_.[335] “One
party consisting of six soldiers had a little cart with them. I saw
these break into a store where there were many bottles of champagne and
a stock of cigars, etc. They drank a good deal of wine, smoked cigars,
and carried off a supply in the cart. I saw many Germans engaged in
looting.” This employment of carts became an anxiety to the Higher
Command. A type-written order, addressed to the Officers of the 53rd
Landwehr Infantry, lays down that “For the future it is forbidden to
use army carts for the transport of things which have nothing whatever
to do with the service of the Army. At some period these carts, which
travel empty with our Army, will be required for the transport of war
material. They are now actually loaded with all sorts of things, none
of which have anything to do with military supplies or equipment.”[336]

This systematic pillage went on day after day. “The _Station Square_,”
states a refugee from Louvain[337] who traversed the city again on
August 29th, “was transformed into a vast goods-depôt, where bottles
of wine were the most prominent feature. Officers and men were
eating and drinking in the middle of the ruins, without appearing to
be in the least incommoded by the appalling stench of the corpses
which still lay in the _Boulevard_. Along the _Boulevard de Diest_ I
saw Landsturm soldiers taking from the houses anything that suited
their fancy, and then setting the house alight, and this under their
officers’ eyes.” On September 2nd there was a fresh outbreak of plunder
and arson in the _Rue Léopold_ and the _Rue Marie-Thérèse_.[338] As
late as September 5th--ten days after the original catastrophe--the
Germans were pillaging houses in the _Rue de la Station_ and loading
the loot on carts.[339] Householders who returned when all was over
found the destruction complete. “I found my parents’ house sacked,”
states one.[340] “A great deal of the furniture was smashed, the
contents of cupboards and drawers were scattered about the rooms....
In my sister’s house the looking-glasses on the ground floor were
broken. On the bedding of the glass the imprint of the rifle-butts
was clearly visible.”--“Inside our house,” states another,[341]
“everything is upside down.... The floors are strewn with flowers and
with silver plate not belonging to our house, the writing room is
filled with buckets and basins, in which they had cooled the bottles
of champagne.... There was straw everywhere--in short, the place was
like a barn. To crown everything, my father was not allowed to sleep in
his own house.... When the Germans at last quitted our residence, it
was necessary to cleanse and disinfect everything. The lowest stable
was cleaner than our bedrooms, where scraps from the gourmandising and
pieces of meat lay rotting in every corner amid half-smoked cigars,
candle ends, broken plates, and hay brought from I don’t know where.”

But these two houses were, at any rate, not burnt down, and more
frequently, when they had finished with a house, the Germans set it
on fire. They had begun on the night of August 25th; on August 26th
they were proceeding systematically,[342] and the work continued on
the 27th and the following days. All varieties of incendiary apparatus
were employed--a white powder,[343] an inflammable stick,[344] a
projectile fired from a rifle.[345] They introduced these into the
house to be burnt by staving in a panel of the front door[346] or
breaking a window,[347] and the conflagration was immediate when once
the apparatus was inside. This scientific incendiarism was the regular
sequel to the organised pillage. The firing by German soldiers also
went on. “On August 27th,” states one German witness,[348] “I was
fired at from a garden from behind the hedge, without being hit. It
was in the afternoon; I could not see the person who had shot.” The
identification can be inferred from the experience of the Rector of
Louvain University, Mgr. Ladeuze, on the night of August 25th, when
he detected two German soldiers firing over the garden wall of the
_Chemical Institute_ into the _Rue de Namur_.[349] Another German
witness, a military surgeon in the Neuss Landsturm,[350] who arrived
at Louvain in the afternoon of August 27th, testifies that “in the
course of the afternoon I heard the noise of firing in the _Rue de la
Station_.... I had the impression that we were being shot at from a
house there, in spite of my conspicuous armlet with the Red Cross.
We approached the house. A German soldier of another battalion leapt
out from the first floor, and in so doing broke the upper part of his
thigh. He told me that he had just been pursued and shot at by six
civilians in the house.” The surgeon, a young man of twenty-five, a
new-comer to Louvain, and unused to the notion of German soldiers
firing on one another, repeats this story without seeing that it fails
to explain the shots fired _from_ the house and directed against
himself, and he takes the presence of the “six civilians” on faith.
Was the soldier who escaped punishment by this lie firing into the
street from panic? This may have been so, for the German troops were
in a state of nervous degeneration, but there is another possible
explanation. Two days later, on August 29th, when Mr. Gibson, Secretary
of the American Legation at Brussels, visited Louvain to enquire
into the catastrophe, his motor-car was fired at in the _Rue de la
Station_ from a house, and five or six armed men in civilian costume
were dragged out of it by his escort and marched off for execution.
But they were not executed, for they were German soldiers disguised to
give Mr. Gibson an ocular demonstration that “the civilians had fired.”
The German Higher Command had already adopted this as their official
thesis, and they were determined to impose it on the world.[351]

After the exodus on the morning of the 27th, Louvain lay empty of
inhabitants all day, while the burning and plundering went on. But at
dusk a procession of civilians, driven by soldiers, streamed in from
the north. They were the fourth batch of prisoners who had been marched
out of Louvain on the previous day. They had spent the night in the
open, and had been locked up that afternoon in _Rotselaer_ church. But
after only an hour’s respite they had been driven forth again, and the
whole population of _Rotselaer_ with them, along the road leading back
to the city.

“On the way,” states one of the victims,[352] “we rested a moment. The
curé of _Rotselaer_, a man 86 years of age, spoke to the officer in
command: ‘Herr Offizier, what you are doing now is a cowardly act. My
people did no harm, and, if you want a victim, kill me....’ The German
soldiers then seized the curé by the neck and took him away. Some
Germans picked up mud from the ground and threw it in his face....”

“We entered Louvain,” states the curé himself,[353] “by the _Canal_
and the _Rue du Canal_. No ruins. We reached the _Grand’ Place_--what
a spectacle! The _Church of Saint-Pierre_! Rest in front of the
_Hôtel-de-Ville_. Fatigue compelled me to stretch myself on the
pavement, while the houses blazed all the time.

“Other prisoners from Louvain and the neighbourhood kept arriving. Soon
I saw fresh prisoners arrive from _Rotselaer_--women, children and old
men, among others a blind old man of eighty years, and the wife of the
doctor at _Rotselaer_, dragged from her sick-bed. (She died during the
journey to Germany.)...”

“In the _Grand’ Place_,” states the former witness,[354] “the heat from
the burning houses was so great that the prisoners huddled together to
get away from it....”

“After we had remained standing there about an hour,” states a
third,[355] “we had to proceed towards the _Station_ along the _Rue de
la Station_. In this same road we saw the German soldiers plundering
the houses. They took pleasure in letting us see them doing it. In the
city and at _Kessel-Loo_ the conflagration redoubled in intensity.”

“The houses were all burning in the _Rue de la Station_,” states the
first,[356] “and there were even flames in the street which we had to
jump across. We were closely guarded by German soldiers, who threatened
to kill us if we looked from side to side.”

Yet these victims in their misery were accused of shooting by their
tormentors. “On August 27th,” states an officer concerned,[357] “the
Third Battalion of the Landwehr Infantry Regiment No. 53 had to take
with it on its march from _Rotselaer_ to Louvain a convoy of about
1,000 civilian prisoners.... Among the prisoners were a number of
Belgian priests, one of whom,[358] especially caught my attention
because at every halt he went from one to another of the prisoners and
addressed words to them in an excited manner, so that I had to keep him
under special observation. In Louvain we made over the prisoners at the
_Station_.... On the following morning it was reported to me ... that
the above-mentioned priest had shot at one of the men of the guard, but
had failed to hit him, and in consequence had himself been shot in the
_Station Square_.”

Such were the rumours that passed current in the German Army; but there
is no reference in this officer’s deposition to what really happened
at the _Station_ on the night of the 27th-28th. The prisoners arrived
there about 7.0 p.m., and were immediately put on board a train.
Their numbers had risen by now to between 2,000 and 3,000,[359] and
the overcrowding was appalling. The curé of _Rotselaer_ was placed
in a truck which had carried troops and was furnished with benches;
but even this truck was made to hold 50 people,[360] while the
majority were forced into cattle trucks--from 70 to 100 men, women,
and children in each,[361] which had never been cleaned, and were
knee-deep in dung.[362] They stood in these trucks all night, while
the train remained standing in the _Station_. On August 28th, about
6.0 in the morning, they started for _Cologne_, but the stoppages and
shuntings were interminable, and _Cologne_ was not reached till the
afternoon of August 31st. During these four days--from the evening of
August 27th to the afternoon of August 31st--the prisoners were given
nothing to eat,[363] and were not allowed to get out of the train to
relieve themselves when it stopped.[364] “We had nothing to eat,”
states one of them,[365] “not even the child one month old.”--“My
wife was suckling her child,” states another,[366] “but her milk
came to an end. My wife was crying nearly all the time. The baby was
dreadfully ill, and nearly died.”--“We had been without food for two
days and nights, and had nothing to drink till we got to _Cologne_,
except that one of my fellow-prisoners had a bottle of water, from
which we just wetted our lips.”[367]--“I asked for some water for my
child at _Aix-la-Chapelle_, and it was refused. It was the soldiers
that I asked, and they spat at me when they refused the water. The
soldiers also took all the money that I had upon me.”[368]--“We had not
been allowed to leave the train to obey the calls of nature, till at
_Cologne_ we went on our knees and begged the soldiers to allow us to
get down.”[369]

The brutality of the soldiers did not stop short of murder. “At
_Henne_,” where the train stopped at 3.30 a.m. on August 29th, “a man
got out to satisfy nature. He belonged to the village of _Wygmael_.
He was going towards the side of the line when three German soldiers
approached him. One of them caught hold of him and threw him on the
ground, and he was bayonetted by one or other of them in his left side.
The man cried out; then the German soldier withdrew his bayonet and
showed his comrades how far it had gone in. He then wiped the blood
off his bayonet by drawing it through his hand.... After the soldier
had wiped his bayonet, he and his comrades turned the man over on his
face.... A few minutes after he had wiped his bayonet, he put his hand
in his pocket and took out some bread, which he ate....”[370]

Between Louvain and the frontier two men in a passenger-carriage “tried
to escape and broke the windows. The German sentinels bayonetted these
two men and killed them.”[371]

Two people on the train went mad,[372] and two committed suicide.[373]
When the train started again after its halt at _Liége_, a man from
_Thildonck_ was run over, and it was supposed that he had thrown
himself under the wheels to put himself out of his misery.[374] When
the train was emptied at _Cologne_, three of the prisoners were taken
out dead.[375]

The trucks were chalked with the inscription: “Civilians who shot at
the soldiers at Louvain,”[376] and at every place in Germany where
the train stopped the prisoners were persecuted by the crowd.[377]
“At _Aix-la-Chapelle_,” states the curé of _Rotselaer_, “an officer
came up to spit on me.”[378] At _Aix_, too, those destined for the
internment camp at _Münster_ had to change trains and were marched
through the streets. “As we went,” states one of them,[379] “the German
women and children spat at us.”--“We arrived at _Aix-la-Chapelle_,”
states another witness.[380] “There the German people shouted at us. At
_Dürren_, between _Aix-la-Chapelle_ and _Cologne_, 4,000 German people
crowded round. I turned round to the old woman with eight children, and
said: ‘Do these people think we are prisoners? Show them one of your
little children, at the window.’ This child was a month old, and naked.
When the child was shown at the window a hush came over the crowd.”

“When we reached _Cologne_ a crowd came round the trucks, jeering at
us, and as we marched out they prodded us with their umbrellas and
pelted us and shouted: ‘Shoot them dead! Shoot them dead!’--and drew
their fingers across their throats.”[381]

“At _Cologne_,” states the curé of _Rotselaer_,[382] “we had to
leave the train and parade--men, women and children--through the
streets under the surveillance of the police.”--“On the way,” adds
another,[383] “the children in the streets threw stones at us.”

They were herded for the night into an exhibition-ground called the
“Luna Park,” and here their first food was served out to them--for
every ten persons one loaf of mouldy bread.[384] A certain number found
shelter in a “joy-wheel”; the rest spent the night in the open, in the
rain. The guards amused themselves by making individuals kneel down in
turn and threatening them with execution.[385] Next morning they were
marched back to the station, once more under the insults of the crowd,
and started to retrace their journey, but not all of them were allowed
to return. A batch of 300 men were kept at _Cologne_ for a week, during
which time 60 of their number were shot before the eyes of the rest,
while the survivors were paraded through the town again and subjected
more than once to a sham execution.[386] Others[387] were sent direct
from _Aix-la-Chapelle_ to the internment camp at _Münster_, where the
Garde Civique of Louvain had been sent before. In this camp the men
were separated completely from the women and children--one of them was
the man[388] whose baby had nearly died on the way, and for six weeks
he was kept in ignorance of what was happening to the baby and to his
wife. For the first six weeks they were given no water to wash in, and
no soap during the whole period of their imprisonment. They were not
allowed to smoke or read or sing. This particular prisoner was allowed
by special grace to return to Louvain with his family on December 6th,
but the others still remained.

Meanwhile, the main body of the prisoners was being transported back
to Belgium. This return journey was almost as painful as the journey
out; they were almost as badly crowded and starved;[389] but the
delays were less, and they reached _Brussels_ on September 2nd. While
they were halted at _Brussels_, Burgomaster Max managed to serve out
to each of them a ration of white bread.[390] They were carried on to
_Schaerbeek_, detrained, and marched in column to _Vilvorde_. “I was in
the last file,” states one of them.[391] “We were made to run quickly,
and the soldiers struck us on the back with their rifles and on the
arms with their bayonets.”--“On the way to _Vilvorde_ one man sprang
into the water, a canal--he was mad by then. The German soldiers threw
empty bottles at this man in the water; they were bottles they got from
the houses as they passed, and were drinking from on the way.”[392]
At _Vilvorde_ they were informed that they were free.[393] They
dragged themselves forward towards the Belgian lines, but at _Sempst_
another party of Germans took them prisoner again.[393] “The Germans
thrust their bayonets quite close to our chests,” states one of the
prisoners;[394] “then four of them prepared to shoot us, but they did
not shoot. One of the prisoners went mad; I was made to hold him, and
he hurt me very much.” Finally the officer commanding the picket let
them go once more. They asked if they might return to Louvain. “If you
go back that way we will kill you,” the officer said; “you have to go
that way,” and he pointed towards _Malines_.[395] It was now midnight,
and pouring with rain. The prisoners stumbled on again, and made their
way, in scattered parties, to the Belgian outposts.[396]

This horrible railway journey to _Cologne_ was the last stroke in the
campaign of terrorisation carried out against Louvain after the night
of August 25th by the deliberate policy of the German Army Command. A
refugee who had returned to the city on August 28th, and had been kept
prisoner during the night, was released with her fellow prisoners on
the 29th. “We will not hurt you any more,” said the officer in command;
“stay in Louvain. All is finished.”[397]

On August 30th the staff of the _Hôpital St.-Thomas_, who had defied
the proclamation of the 27th and remained continuously at their posts,
took the task of reconstruction in hand.[398] A committee of notables
was formed, and overtures were made to Major von Manteuffel, the German
Etappen-Kommandant in the town. On September 1st a proclamation, signed
by the provisional municipal government, was posted up, with von
Manteuffel’s sanction, in the streets.[399] It communicated a promise
from the German Military Authorities that pillage and arson should
thenceforth cease, and it invited the inhabitants to come back to
Louvain and take up again their normal life. The most pressing task was
to clear the ruins, and to find and bury the dead. In Louvain alone,
not including the suburban communes, 1,120 houses had been destroyed
and 100 civilians had been killed during this week of terror.

“We arrived at Louvain,” writes a German soldier in his diary on August
29th.[400] “The whole place was swarming with troops. Landsturmers of
the Halle Battalion came along, dragging things with them--chiefly
bottles of wine--and many of them were drunk. A tour round the town
with ten bicyclists in search of billets revealed a picture of
devastation as bad as any imaginable. Burning and falling houses
bordered the streets; only a house here and there remained standing.
Our tour led us over broken glass, burning wood-work and rubble. Tram
and telephone wires trailed in the streets. Such barracks as were still
standing were full up. Back to the _Station_, where nobody knew what
to do next. Detached parties were to enter the streets, but actually
the Battalion marched in close order into the town, to break into the
first houses and loot--no, of course, only to ‘requisition’--for wine
and other things. Like a wild pack they broke loose, each on their own;
officers set a good example by going on ahead. A night in a barracks
with many drunk was the end of this day, which aroused in me a contempt
I cannot describe.”

       *       *       *       *       *

[Illustration: THE TRACK OF THE ARMIES: FROM THE FRONTIER TO MALINES.]

       *       *       *       *       *

[Illustration: LOUVAIN

SKETCH TAKEN FROM MAP ATTACHED TO THE GERMAN WHITE BOOK.

The cross hatching denotes the quarters burnt down, and is reproduced
exactly from the German original.]

       *       *       *       *       *

FOOTNOTES:

[74] xv p. 20.

[75] Bryce pp. 183-4.

[76] xvii p. 66; xxi p. 129; Morgan p. 101; Bland p. 121; Davignon p.
107.

[77] The man was a glass-maker.

[78] xvii p. 66.

[79] xvii p. 63.

[80] Reply pp. 140-1; k4; Bédier pp. 10-1; i pp. 3-4.

[81] There had been Belgian _soldiers_ with a machine-gun in the
village.

[82] k18.

[83] Reply p. 128.

[84] Davignon p. 97.

[85] xv p. 20.

[86] c1-38; Belg. xxi pp. 111-4; Anns. 1, 7; Reply pp. 147-178; German
White Book, A; Struyken; Davignon p. 97.

[87] Reply No. 1; g2.

[88] c1, 6, 9, 15; R. No. 9.

[89] c1, 15; R. Nos. 4, 9, 11.

[90] German White Book, A 2.

[91] White Book A 3, Appendix.

[92] White Book A 5.

[93] A 4.

[94] White Book A 5.

[95] cp. A 3, Appendix.

[96] c 4, 8.

[97] R. No. 3; c 12.

[98] White Book A 2 and 3 (Appendix).

[99] c 1, 4, 5; R. No. 11.

[100] R. Nos. 9, 10, 15.

[101] R. No. 16.

[102] c 7, 13, 20, 23-5; R. Nos. 12, 13, 15, 16.

[103] R. No. 9.

[104] cp. the treatment of the monks at Louvain, p. 137 below.

[105] Davignon, p. 97.

[106] R. p. 171.

[107] c39-45.

[108] c3, 23-5, 40; R. No. 10 (Aerschot).

[109] c54-6.

[110] c48-9, 52; R. pp. 351-3.

[111] For his death see footnote on p. 151 below.

[112] c60-63.

[113] c 46-47.

[114] g 16-18.

[115] d 1-9.

[116] d 10-65; vii p. 54.

[117] d 18, 20, 21, 34, 52, 62.

[118] d 11, 18, 20, 21, 37, 39, 41, 44.

[119] d 36, 38, 40.

[120] d 32-4, 38-9.

[121] d 12, 13, 16, 17, 20, 21, 25, 27, 29-31, 33, 35, 38, 43, 46, 52,
54-7, 62-5.

[122] d 10, 13, 15, 26, 47.

[123] d 36, cp. 37.

[124] vii p. 54.

[125] d 66-83.

[126] d 67-9, 72, 75.

[127] d 66, 69-72, 77-9.

[128] d 74, cp. 81.

[129] d 87-9; g 20.

[130] xv p. 22; g 18; d 90-1, 26.

[131] x pp. 78-9.

[132] Mercier.

[133] d 92-3.

[134] d 112-4; cp. Massart, pp. 338-9.

[135] g 22.

[136] k 21.

[137] Reply p. 431; Mercier.

[138] d 125.

[139] 94.

[140] d 100-8.

[141] R. pp. 378-380.

[142] d 110-1.

[143] d 95-9.

[144] Mercier.

[145] “Germans,” p. 26.

[146] e23.

[147] R29; cp. “Germans,” p. 9; Chambry, p. 14; e5; R24.

[148] “Germans,” p. 15; R24.

[149] Chambry, p. 16.

[150] e2; R7, 10.

[151] R24; Chambry, p. 17.

[152] “Horrors,” p. 31.

[153] e25.

[154] R24; cp. R11; e2; “Germans,” p. 25.

[155] e23.

[156] e2; R18.

[157] “Germans,” p. 25.

[158] “Germans,” p. 26; R24.

[159] “Horrors,” p. 31.

[160] R7, 24.

[161] R10.

[162] R1, 24; “Germans,” pp. 28-9.

[163] R29.

[164] R2, 24, 29.

[165] “Germans,” p. 31; Grondijs, p. 34; e 1; R1, 8, 11, 17.

[166] “Germans,” pp. 31-2.

[167] e 1.

[168] e 1; “Germans,” p. 32; D7, 8.

[169] “Germans,” p. 32.

[170] “Germans,” p. 32; Davignon, p. 97; R17.

[171] Chambry, p. 21; e3; R17.

[172] R7; D46.

[173] D46.

[174] D46.

[175] D7, 8.

[176] e1; R8.

[177] R7, 17.

[178] Chambry, pp. 22-3.

[179] R6.

[180] D7, 10, 12, 13, 14-18, 22; cp. D46.

[181] R6.

[182] R4.

[183] R7.

[184] D46.

[185] D8.

[186] e8.

[187] D8, 22.

[188] R20.

[189] R3.

[190] “Germans,” p. 33.

[191] R3.

[192] R13.

[193] e 1; cp. R8.

[194] Morgan, p. 102.

[195] Chambry, p. 23.

[196] R2.

[197] “Horrors,” p. 38.

[198] “Germans,” p. 33.

[199] R27.

[200] Also in the _Rue Vital Decoster_, north of the _Rue de la
Station_ (R13).

[201] D29; cp. R2.

[202] D20; cp. D25, 27.

[203] “Germans,” pp. 41, 107; e24; R29.

[204] “Germans,” p. 107; Grondijs p. 58.

[205] e5; cp. e13; R10.

[206] xxi p. 115.

[207] R5.

[208] D20.

[209] D9.

[210] R13.

[211] D9.

[212] D3.

[213] D1.

[214] D10.

[215] “Germans” pp. 33-5.

[216] R25.

[217] R29 (Statement by the Abbé van den Bergh, accredited by His
Eminence Cardinal Piffl, Prince-Bishop of Vienna, to conduct inquiries
on behalf of the Wiener Priester-Verein); cp. R25.

[218] e8.

[219] R3; cp. e24.

[220] R29; cp. e26.

[221] D1 (von Boehn), 2, 3 (von Manteuffel), 9, 49 (2).

[222] e13; cp. R17, 24.

[223] D3.

[224] D2; cp. D11.

[225] D36 (1).

[226] D36 (2).

[227] _Area of incendiarism_: “Eye-witness” p. 1; “Horrors” pp. 39, 43;
“Germans” pp. 35-8, 92; Chambry pp. 25, 92; _Apparatus_: e2, 13; R8,
13; cp. also D31, 37 (2)

[228] R24.

[229] D46.

[230] R8; e23; cp. “Germans” p. 46.

[231] R13; cp. e14, 28.

[232] e13; cp. e24.

[233] D4.

[234] R14 (Grondijs); cp. R19, 29.

[235] R29; cp. “Eye-witness” p. 3; “Germans” p. 37; R25.

[236] e2, 23; R10, 11, 18, 24.

[237] e1; R8.

[238] R10.

[239] D46.

[240] R8, 26; e14.

[241] e1.

[242] e8; cp. “Horrors” p. 39; e17; R8, 15, 17.

[243] D9; cp. R24; e14 (M. David-Fischbach’s servant).

[244] Chambry pp. 26-7.

[245] “Germans” p. 42.

[246] e16.

[247] e1.

[248] e15.

[249] e17.

[250] e15.

[251] e19.

[252] e17.

[253] e13.

[254] Grondijs p. 39.

[255] “Germans” pp. 46-7.

[256] R19.

[257] “Germans” p. 43.

[258] R2.

[259] R11, 17.

[260] R13.

[261] e1, 9, 13; R7, 8, 26.

[262] D37 (2).

[263] Grondijs p. 41.

[264] “Germans” pp. 43-5; e2.

[265] R24.

[266] D2.

[267] “Horrors” p. 40; “Germans” p. 47; xxi p. 115; R6, 10.

[268] e3.

[269] e4; cp. R7.

[270] e1 = R8; cp. R1, 7.

[271] R17.

[272] e3.

[273] e1 = R8.

[274] Killed, October, 1914.

[275] D38.

[276] e4; cp. R20.

[277] e4.

[278] D38.

[279] D48.

[280] D38.

[281] e13.

[282] R9.

[283] D19; cp. D37 (3), 41, 43.

[284] e13; cp. Chambry pp. 38-9.

[285] “Eye-witness” p. 4; cp. “Horrors” p. 39; Chambry pp. 33, 71-2;
D37 (2).

[286] e2.

[287] Grondijs pp. 50-1.

[288] e4; R9.

[289] D44.

[290] R1, 7, 8 (= e1), 20, 26.

[291] R26 (his deposition); cp. Grondijs, pp. 70-1.

[292] R1, 8 (= e1).

[293] R1, 7, 26.

[294] R1, 8.

[295] R26.

[296] R7.

[297] R8.

[298] xxi p. 117; e18, 21; R22; “Germans” pp. 59-61.

[299] e21.

[300] e21.

[301] e18.

[302] R22; cp. e18, 21; “Germans” p. 60.

[303] R22; e18.

[304] xxi p. 117.

[305] cp. p. 76 above.

[306] R23.

[307] Chambry p. 33; Grondijs p. 47.

[308] A German soldier was so much shocked at this that he fetched the
milk himself.

[309] e3 = R15; R17.

[310] “Germans” pp. 52-4, 71; Chambry pp. 40-1, 73; “Horrors” pp. 40-1;
Grondijs p. 52; “Eye-witness” p. 5; e2; R11; D31.

[311] “Germans” p. 54.

[312] xxi p. 116.

[313] R11.

[314] Chambry pp. 53-4.

[315] R11.

[316] e2.

[317] R12.

[318] “Eye-witness” pp. 5-9; “Germans” p. 58; Grondijs pp. 61-71
(= R14); Chambry p. 73; R4, 13, 21 (= xxi pp. 117-9; “Eye-witness” pp.
8-9).

[319] R13.

[320] R22.

[321] “Eye-witness” p. 5.

[322] R21.

[323] “Eye-witness” p. 6.

[324] R21; “Eye-witness” p. 7.

[325] R21.

[326] R21.

[327] “Germans” p. 72; “Horrors” p. 42; cp. Chambry p. 56.

[328] e3.

[329] R24.

[330] “Grondijs” p. 51.

[331] e4.

[332] e8.

[333] R10.

[334] R24.

[335] e26.

[336] Chambry p. 86; v. p. 29.

[337] R11.

[338] “Germans” pp. 73, 89.

[339] R10.

[340] R13.

[341] Chambry pp. 74-7.

[342] R19.

[343] e16.

[344] R19.

[345] R24.

[346] Chambry p. 52.

[347] R19.

[348] D19.

[349] “Germans” p. 107; Grondijs p. 58; cp. p. 105 above.

[350] D21.

[351] R27 (Deposition of Mgr. Deploige, President of the _Institut
Supérieur de Philosophie_ and Director of the _Hôpital St.-Thomas_);
R29 (Report by Abbé Van den Bergh, accredited by His Eminence Cardinal
Piffl, Prince-Bishop of Vienna, to make enquiries on behalf of the
Vienna Priester-Verein).

[352] e3.

[353] R16.

[354] e3.

[355] R17.

[356] e3.

[357] D34.

[358] This was the Priest of _Herent_, the Abbé van Bladel, whose body
was exhumed at _Louvain_ on Jan. 14th, 1915, in the _Station Square_
(R30).

[359] e5, 7, 17; R16.

[360] R16; cp. e10.

[361] e3, 7, 17; “Germans” p. 68 (Narrative of a Bulgarian student).

[362] e3, 7, 10, 17; “Germans” p. 68.

[363] e3, 5, 10; R17.

[364] e3, 7, 17.

[365] e3.

[366] e5.

[367] e10.

[368] e5.

[369] e17.

[370] e10; confirmed by e11.

[371] e5.

[372] e3; cp. e7; R17.

[373] e3.

[374] e10, 11.

[375] e16.

[376] e16.

[377] e10.

[378] R16.

[379] e5.

[380] e3 = R15.

[381] e7; cp. e10.

[382] R16; cp. e10; R17; “Germans” p. 68.

[383] e17.

[384] e17; R16.

[385] R15.

[386] e16.

[387] e5.

[388] e5.

[389] e3.

[390] e7, 10, 17; R16, 17.

[391] e17; cp. e3; R15, 16, 17.

[392] e7; R16, 17.

[393] e3, 17; R15.

[394] e17.

[395] e3; R15.

[396] R16.

[397] e13.

[398] “Germans” p. 84 _seqq._; R27.

[399] “Germans” p. 86; R27.

[400] Ann. 8 (Extract from the Diary of Gaston Klein); cp. Bryce p. 80,
No. 32.

       *       *       *       *       *

Transcriber’s Notes:

Footnotes have been moved to the end of each chapter and relabeled
consecutively through the document.

Illustrations have been moved to paragraph breaks near where they are
mentioned.

Punctuation has been made consistent.

Variations in spelling and hyphenation were retained as they appear in
the original publication, except that obvious typos have been corrected.

Abbreviations for references have inconsistent spacing, such as c1
versus c 1, and these have been left as they appear in the original
publication.

Changes have been made as follows:

Footnote 86: Struycken changed to Struyken (A; Struyken; Davignon)

Footnote 139: Reference letter is missing and is probably d (d 94).





End of Project Gutenberg's The German Terror in Belgium, by Arnold J. Toynbee

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