GERNAN TERROR
IN BELGIUM
An Historical Record by
ARNOLD J. TOYNBEE
Class J? A XC>
Book , ^ — ■
COEOtlGHT DEPOSm
THE GERMAN TERROR
IN BELGIUM
THE INVADED COUNTRY
S^€tnfordi g*oy/f>ta^*
Be Sanson
.•SVnTZERLAND
RLAND
THE GERMAN TERROR
IN BELGIUM
An Historical Record
BY
ARNOLD J. TOYNBEE
LATE FELLOW OF BALLIOL COLLEGE,
OXFORD
NEW YORK
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPAI^
MCMXVII
.Q3T6
COPYRIGHT, 1917,
BY GEORGE H DORAN COMPANV
MAY 24 1917
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
©CLA462650
T
PREFACE
t I "IHE 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*
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 wit-
nesses without oath by competent legal examiners,
others written and published on the witnesses' own in-
itiative as books or pamphlets. Most of them origin-
ally 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
*A schedule of the more important documents will be found in the
"List of Abbreviations" pp. xi-xiii.
PREFACE
— 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 con-
cerned, 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 pro-
posals, made both unofficially and officially, that it
should allow such an investigation to be conducted in
the territory at present under German military occu-
pation,* 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 exposi-
tion to pure narration at every point, for in the original
evidence the facts observed and the inferred explana-
tion 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
* Belgian Reply pp. vii. and 97-8.
vi
PREFACE
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 judg-
ment as to which of the inferences is the truth, and
this judgment involves discussion. What is remark-
able, 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.
vu
CONTENTS
FRONTISPIECE The Invaded Country {Map)
PAGE
PREFACE ....'....... V
TABLE OF CONTENTS «
LIST OF MAPS '^
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS • . • x
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS xi
CHAPTER I.: THE TRACK OF THE ARMIES .... 15
CHAPTER II.: FROM THE FRONTIER TO LIEGE . . 23
(i) On the Vise Road 23
(ii) On the Barchon Road 27
(iii) On the Fleron Road 31
(iv) On the Verviers Road 37
(v) On the Malmedy Road 38
(vi) Between the Vesdre and the Ourthe .... 42
(vii) Across the Meuse 44
(viii) The City of Liege 46
CHAPTER III.: FROM LifiGE 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* End of Volume'^
LOUVAIN, FROM THE GERMAN WHITE BOOK End of Volume
"^ This map shows practically all the roads and places referred to in the text,
ix
^'
ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGS
1. MoiTLANn To face page 16''
2. Battice 17*^
3. Li6ge Forts: A Destroyed Cupola 32"^
4. Ans: An Interior 33*^
5. Ans: The Church 48"^
6. Li^ge: a Farm House .49"^
7. Liege Under German Occupation 52*^
8. LitcE Under the Germans: Ruins and Placards . . 53*^
9. Liege in Ruins 6o»^
10. "We Live Like God in Belgium" 611^
11. Haelen 641^
12. Aerschot . 6$*^
13. Brussels: A Booking-Office , . . . 80*^
14. Malines After Bombardment Si*^
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 v
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 ii7v'
25. Louvain: The Church of St. Pierre — Interior . . . 124-^
26. Louvain: Station Square 125/
X
ABBREVIATIONS
Alphabet, Letters of the: —
Capitals . . Appendices to the German White Book en-
titled: "The Violation of International Law in
the Conduct of the Belgian People' s-War" (dated
Berlin, loth May, 19 15): Arabic numerals after
the capital letter refer to the depositions con-
tained in each Appendix.
Lower Case . Sections of the "Appendix to the Report of the
Committee on Alleged German Outrages, Appoint-
ed 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 con-
tained in each Section.
Ann (ex)
Annexes (numbered i to 9) to the Reports of
the Belgian Commission {vide infra).
Belg.
Reports {numbered i to xxii) of the Official Com-
mission of the Belgian Government on the Viola-
tion of the Rights of Nations and of the Laws and
Customs of War. (English translation, pub-
lished, 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 trans-
lated into English with an Introduction by
J. O. P. Bland. (London: Heinemann. 191 5.)
Bryce
Appendix to the Report of the Committee on Al-
leged German Outrages appointed by His Britannic
Majesty's Government.
Chambry
" The Truth about Louvain," by R€n6 Chambry.
(Hodder and Stoughton. 1915.)
XI
ABBREVIATIONS
Davignon . .
"Eye-Witness"
"Germans"
Grondijs
Hocker . . .
"Horrors" . .
Massart . .
Mercier . .
Morgan . . .
Numerals, Roman
lower case ,
R(eply) . . . ,
"Belgium and Germany," Texts and Docu-
ments, preceded by a Foreword by Henri
Davignon. (Thomas Nelson and Sons.)
"An Eye-Witness at Louvain."
and Spottiswoode. 1914.)
(London: Eyre
"The Germans at Louvain," by a volunteer
worker in the Hopital St. -Thomas. (Hodder
and Stoughton. 19 16.)
" 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.)
"An der Spitze Meiner Kompagnie, Three
Months of Campaigning," by Paul Oskar
Hocker. (UUstein and Co., Berlin and Vi-
enna. 1914.)
"The Horrors of Louvain," by an Eye-witness,
with an Introduction by Lord Halifax. (Pub-
lished by the London Sujiday Times.)
"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.)
Pastoral Letter, dated Xmas, 1914, of His Emi-
nence Cardinal Mercier, Archbishop of Malines.
"German Atrocities: An Official Investigation,"
by J. H. Morgan, M.A., Professor of Constitu-
tional Law in the University of London. (Lon-
don: Fisher Unwin. 1916.)
Reports {numbered i to xxii) of the Belgian Com-
mission {vide supra).
"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 depo-
sitions contained in the particular section of the
Reply that is being cited at the moment: e.g.,
R15 denotes the fifteenth deposition in the sec-
xii
ABBREVIATIONS
S(omville) .
Struyken
tion 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."
"The Road to Liege," by Gustave Somville.
(English translation by Bernard Miall. Hodder
and Stoughton. 19 16.)
"The German White Book on the War in Bel-
gium: A Commentary," by Professor A. A. H.
Struyken. (EngUsh Translation of Articles in
the Journal Van Onzen Tijd, of Amsterdam,
July 31st, August 7th, 14th, 2ist, 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.
xm
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 fortifi-
cations 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
manoeuvring gave place to trench warfare along all the
line from Switzerland to the sea. Similar outrages ac-
companied 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
15
THE TRACK OF THE ARMIES
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 popu-
lation in the campaigns of 1914 was the result of pol-
icy, deliberately tried and afterwards deliberately
given up. The hypothesis would account for the pe-
culiar features in the German Army's conduct, but be-
fore 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 neces-
sary introduction to it.
In August, 1914, the Central Empires threw their
main strength against Belgium and France, and pene-
trated 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
16
THE TRACK OF THE ARMIES
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 anny after another took up
the movement toward the left or south-eastern flank,
but each made less progress than its right-hand neigh-
bour. While the first three annies from the right all
crossed the Mame before they were compelled to re-
treat, 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.
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 Ger-
many 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
Liege. On Aug. 7 th the town of Liege was entered,
and the crossings of the Meuse, from Liege to the Dutch
frontier, were in German hands.
Beyond Liege the invading forces spread out like a
fan. On the extreme right a force advanced north-
west to outflank the Belgian anny covering Brussels
17
THE TRACK OF THE ARMIES
and to mask the fortress of Antwerp, and this right
wing, again, was the first to move. Its van was de-
feated by the Belgians at Haelen on Aug. I2th, 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 M alines, 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 Demer.
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 Liege, As soon as
Antwerp was covered, the mass of these armies was
launched westward from Liege into the gap between
the fortresses of Antwerp and Namur — von Kluck's
army on the right and von Biilow's on the left. By
Aug. 21st von Billow was west of Namur, and attack-
ing the French on the Sambre. On Aug. 20th an
army corps of von Kluck's had paraded through Brus-
sels, 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-Char-
leroi line and retreated to the south. Von Kluck and
von Billow hastened in pursuit. They passed Cam-
brat on Aug. 26th and St. Ouentln on the 29th; on the
18
THE TRACK OF THE ARMIES
31st von Kluck was crossing the Oise at Comptegne,
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 manoeuvre, only this
time the Anglo-French had the initiative, and it was
von Kluck who was outflanked. His retirement com-
pelled von Billow to fall back on his left, after a bloody
defeat in the marshes of S>t. Gond, and the retreat was
taken up, successively, by the other armies which had
come into line on the left of von Biilow.
These armies had all crossed the Meuse south of the
fortress of Namur, and, to retain connexion with them,
von Biilow had had to detach a force on his left to
seize the line of the Meuse from Liege to Namur and
to capture Namur itself. The best German heavy ar-
tillery was assigned to this force for the purpose, and
Namur fell, after an unexpectedly short bombardment,
on Aug. 23rd, while Von Billow's main army at Char-
leroi 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 Wiirtemberg's army between Mezieres and Sedan;
and the third by the Crown Prince of Prussia's army
19
THE TRACK OF THE ARMIES
immediately north of Verdun. West of the Metise the
Saxons and Wiirtembergers amalgamated, and got into
touch with von Biilow on their right. Advancing par-
allel with him, they reached Charleville on Aug. 25th,
crossed the Aisne at Rethel on the 30th and the Mame
at Chalons on the 4th, and were stopped on the 7th at
Vitry en Ferthois. 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 Serjnaize, which he had
reached on Sept. 6th, and never saw the Mame.
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 Wiirtem-
berg had joined hands with von Biilow round the flank
of Namur. But Verdun never fell, and the Bavarian
advance was the weakest of any. Luneville fell on
Aug. 22nd, and Baccarat was entered on the 24th; but
Nancy was never reached, and on Sept. I2th the gen-
eral 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 Mame.
The Mame was followed immediately by the Aisne,
and the issue of the Aisne was a change from open to
20
THE TRACK OF THE ARMIES
trench warfare along a line extending from the Vosges
to the Oise. This change was complete before Septem-
ber closed, and the line formed then has remained prac-
tically 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 coin-
cide with the counter-offensive of Joffre, and this time
they had even reoccupied Aerschot. The Germans re-
taliated 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 Septem-
ber, by the occupation of Termo?ide 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 be-
tween Ostend and the Oise. Meanwhile, each side had
been feverishly extending its lines from the Oise to-
wards the north and pushing forward cavalry to turn
the exposed flank of the opponent. These two simul-
taneous movements — the extension of the trench lines
from the Oise to the sea, and the German thrust across
21
THE TRACK OF THE ARMIES
Flanders to the Channel — intersected one another at
YpreSi 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 occu-
pation are of a different order from one another, and
must be dealt with apart.
22
11. FROM THE FRONTIER TO LIEGE.
(i) On the Vise Road.
The Germans invaded Belgium on Aug. 4th, 1914.
Their immediate objective was the fortress of Liege
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 Vise, skirting the Dutch
frontier, and Warsage^ was the first Belgian village on
this road to which the Germans came. Their advance-
guards distributed a proclamation by General von
Emmich: "/ give formal pledges to the Belgian popu-
lation that they will not have to suffer from the hor-
rors of war. , . . If you wish to avoid the horrors of
war^ you must act wisely and with a true appre-ciation
of your duty to your country P This was on the morn-
ing of Aug. 4th, and the Mayor of Warsage, M.
Flechet, had already posted a notice on the town-hall
* Belgian Report xvl (statements by the Mayor and another inhab-
itant) ; Somville pp. 134-143.
23
ON THE VISE ROAD
warning the inhabitants to keep calm. All that day
and the next the Germans passed through ; on the after-
noon of the 6th the village was clear of them, when
suddenly they swarmed back, shooting in at the win-
dows 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 in-
quiry was held; no post-mortem examination made (the
German soldiers were nervous and marched with iinger
on trigger) ; the village was condemned. The houses
were systematically plundered, and then systematically
burnt. A dozen inhabitants, including the Burgomas-
ter, 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 thie morning
six: were hanged, the rest set free. Eighteen people
in all were killed at Warsage and 25 houses de-
stroyed.
At Fouron-St. Martin^ five people were killed and
20 houses burnt. Nineteen houses were burnt at
Fouron-le-Compte.^ At Berneau,'^ a few miles further
down the road, 67 houses (out of 116) were burnt on
Aug. 5th, and 7 people killed. "The people of Ber-
neau," writes a German in his diary on Aug. 5th, "have
* Belg. xvii.
t Soraville pp. 143-6.
24
BERNE AU, MOV LAND, VISE
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 iired. Among these victims
was the Burgomaster, M. Bruyere, 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 * itself 4 people were
killed and 73 houses destroyed (out of 132).
The road from Aix-la-Chapelle reaches the Meuse
at Vise.'\ It was a town of 900 houses and 4,000 souls,
and, as a German describes it, "It vanished from the
map." X The inhabitants were killed, scattered or de-
ported, the houses levelled to the ground, and this was
done systematically, stage by stage.
The Germans who marched through Warsage
reached Vise on the afternoon of Aug. 4th. The Bel-
gians had blown up the bridges at Vise and Argenteau,
and were waiting for the Germans on the opposite bank.
As they entered Vise, 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
Vise they burned" (a 16), and they began to fire at
random in the streets. At least eight civilians were
* Somville pp. 146-7.
tBelg. xvii; Somville pp. 177-184; Bland pp. 164-5; a 16.
^ Hocker p. 46.
2^
ON THE VISE ROAD
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 loth they burned the church; on the
1 ith 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 Vise 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 furni-
ture, 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 f ranc-
tireurs. "During the night of Aug. 15-16," as another
German diarist* describes the scene, "Pioneer Grim-
bow gave the alarm in the town of Vise. Everyone
was shot or taken prisoner, and the houses were burnt.
The prisoners were made to march and keep up with
* Bland p. 165.
26
ST. ANDRE, JULEMONT, BLEGNY
the troops." About 30 people in all were killed at
Vise, and 575 out of 876 houses destroyed. On the
final day of destruction the Germans had been in peace-
able occupation of the place for ten days, and the Bel-
gian 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 Fori Barchon and leads
straight to Liege. The Germans took this road also,
and Barchon was the first of the Liege forts to fall.
The civil population was not spared.
(ii) On the Barchon Road.
At St. Andre, ^ 4 civilians were killed and 14 houses
burnt. Julemont,^ the next village, was completely
plundered and burnt. Only 2 houses remained stand-
ing, and 12 people were killed. Advancing along this
road, the Germans arrived at BlegnyX on Aug. 5th.
Several inhabitants of Blegny were murdered that af-
ternoon, among them M. Smets, a professor of gun-
smithry (the villagers worked for the small-arms
manufacturers of Liege). 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
* Somville p. 148.
t Somville pp. 147-8.
$ Somville pp. 157-168; a 7, 20.
27
ON THE BARCHON ROAD
baby were dragged out after it. That night the popu-
lation of Blegny was herded together in the village in-
stitute ; their houses were set on fire. Next morning —
the 6th — the wornen were released and the men driven
forward by the German infantry towards Barchon fort.
The Cure of Blegny, the Abbe 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 cure 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 vic-
tims by placing lighted cigarettes in their nostrils and
ears. After this second execution on the 7th, the re-
mainder were set free. . . .
On the 10th Aug. the cure 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 cure taken prisoner "
28
BLEGNY, BARCHON, CHEFNEUX
The cure's last notes for a sermon have survived:
"My brothers, perhaps we shall again see happy days
. . ." But on the i6th, before the sermon was deliv-
ered, the cure 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 authori-
ties (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 Blegny 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
Blegny-Trembleur, and 45 houses burnt in all.
The village of Barchon,'^ as the cure of Blegny re-
cords, 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 com-
pelled to keep up with the horses. On the 16th the
Germans evicted the inhabitants of Chefneux,'\ and
* Somville pp. 152-7; xvii.
tSomville p. 156.
29
ON THE BARCHON ROAD
shot 4 men. On the 17th they burned all the 22 houses
in the hamlet. At Saives^ 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 vil-
lages had been destroyed except Wandre,'^ which stood
where the road debouched upon the Meuse.
"15th Aug. — 11 :5o a.m. Crossed the Belgian fron-
tier 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 in-
habitants 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 1 1 .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 shoot-
ing was absolutely heart-rending, for they all knelt
and prayed. But this got them no mercy. A few shots
* S. p. 148 ; xvii.
tBryce pp. 161-2; S. pp. 168-177.
30
WANDRE, FORT FLERON, BATTICE
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 roar-
ing 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 any-
where 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 Fleron Road.
There is another road from Aix-la-Chapelle to Liege,
which passes through Battice and is commanded by
Fort Fleron (Fort Fleron offered the most determined
resistance of all the forts of Liege, and cost the Ger-
mans 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
31
ON THE FLERON ROAD
three men in the streets of Battice, and shot them with-
out 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 Mzcheroux," states a Belgian witness
(a 12), "during the time when Fort Fleron 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."*
"The position was dangerous," writes a German in
his diaryf on August 5th, from a picket in front of
Fort Fleron. "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 civil-
ian with my rifle, at 400 metres, slap through the
head. ..."
That day the cure of Batticei (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 Ger-
man troops again retired on Battice in confusion, and
the village was destroyed that afternoon. Shots were
* Same incident recorded in xvii, p. 50.
fBryce pp. 168-9.
tS. pp. 46-55; xvii; Reply pp. 110-116 (Report of L'AbW Voisin,
Cure of Battice, to the Belgian Government).
32
3. Liege Forts: A Destroyed Cupola
4. Ans: An Interior
BATTICE, HERVE
iired indiscriminately and the houses set on fire. The
first victim was a young man sitting in a cafe with his
fiancee — ^he fell dead by her side. Three people were
taken to the field to which the men of Blegny had been
brought, and were shot with the five victims there.
On the yth they shot a workman who had been given
a safe-conduct by a GeiTnan 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^ lies a mile or so beyond Bat-
tice on the Fleron 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 in-
habitants of having fired on German troops, and
threatened to shoot the inhabitants and burn the town
to the ground. The Mayor and the cure spent the
night going from house to house and warning the peo-
ple 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 cure were then retained as host-
ages for the civilians' good behaviour. On the 6th
*S. pp. 55-72; xvii; Reply pp. 123-7; ^ *•
33
ON THE FLERON ROAD
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 de-
stroyers 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 hun-
dred, 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 wit-
ness quoted above (a 2) records that "the German staff
officers staying in his hotel told his wife that the rea-
son why they had so treated Herve was becau^sc the
34
HERVE, LA BOUXHE-MELEN, SOUMAGNE
inhabitants of the town would not petition for a pas-
sage for the Germans at Fleron."
In the villages between Herve and Fort Fleron the
slaughter and devastation were, if possible, more com-
plete. At la Bouxhe-Melen"^ there were two massacres
— one on Aug. 5th and another on the 8th. In the sec-
ond 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 ^oumagne,\ 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 indiscrim-
inately 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 indis-
criminate 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 liv-
ing. I saw many bayonetted in this way" (a 4). One
boy was shot and bayonetted in four places, and lay
* S. pp. 73-9 ; xvii.
tS. pp. n 3-126; xvii; a 4, 5, 9.
35
ON THE FLERON ROAD
several days among the dead, keeping himself alive on
weeds and grass. This boy survived. In another field
18 vt^ere 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 Fecher 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
Liege, 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^ 9 people were killed
and 17 houses destroyed. These villages were all out-
* S. pp. 1 10-2; xvii; a 12.
36
FLERON, RETINNES, QUEUE DU BOIS
side the eastern line of forts, but the places inside the
line, between the forts and Liege, were devastated to
an equal degree. At Fleron"^- 15 civilians were killed
and 152 houses destroyed.^ At Retinnes% 41 civilians
were killed and 118 houses destroyed.f At Queue du
Bois^ 1 1 civilians were killed and 35 houses destroyed.
At Evegnee 2 civilians were killed and 5 houses de-
stroyed. At Cerexhe\ 4 women and children were
burnt alive in a house, and 2 houses destroyed. At
Bellaire^ 4 people were killed and 15 houses destroyed.
At Jupille^^ 8 people were killed and 1 house de-
stroyed. These villages were saved none of the hor-
rors of war by the surrender of the forts.
(iv) On the Vervzers Road.
The Germans converged on the forts by more south-
erly roads as well. At Dolhain,\\ on the road from
Eupen to Verviers, 28 houses were burnt on Aug. 8th
and several civilians killed. At Metten,X% near Verviers,
a German soldier confesses that he and his comrades
"were ordered to search a house from which shots had
* S. pp. 126-130.
t Partly by bombardment during the attack on the fort.
%%. pp. 105-no; Reply pp. 133-4-
§S. pp. 151-2.
II S. p. 148.
IS. p. 153.
** S. p. 149.
tfxvli. p. 57.
:{::): Bland pp. 105-9.
37
ON THE MALMEDY ROAD
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 com-
paratively unscathed. Far worse was done by the Ger-
mans who descended on the Vesdre from Malmedy,
south-eastward, over the hills.
(v) On the Malmedy Road.
¥ rancor champs ^ the first Belgian village on the
Malmedy 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 detach-
ments. At Hockay^^ near Francorchamps, the cure was
shot. In Hockay and Francorchamps 13 people were
killed altogether, and 25 houses burnt. "M. Darcham-
beau, who was wounded (in the cellar of a burning
house), asked a young officer for mercy. This young
* S. pp. 16-18; xrii. p. 56.
t S. p. 18; Mercier.
38
PEPINSTER, CORNESSE, SOIRON, OLNES
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 Pepznstef^ 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 Corne5se-\
was shot in their stead (a 33, 34) — "an old man and
quite deaf. (He was only hit in the leg, and a Ger-
man officer came up and shot him through the heart
with his revolver.)" Five houses in Comesse were
burnt. At Soiron.t on Aug. 4th, the Germans bivou-
acking there fired on one another, and eight German
soldiers were wounded or killed. "But the officers,"
deposes a German private§ 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 car-
ried out, and there was terrible butchery. I must men-
tion that we only killed the males, but we burned all
the houses." At Olnes\\ the cure and the communal
* Bland p. 185.
txvii; a 33, 34.
:j:xvii; Reply p. 126.
§ Reply p. 126.
U xvii ; Mercier ; S. pp. 79-82.
39
ON THE MALMEDY ROAD
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 ham-
let of SL Hadelin,^ which came within the radius of
Fort Fleron's guns, there was a wholesale massacre on
the same date. Early in the day the Germans "re-
quisitioned" 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 ar-
tillery 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 de-
stroyed— ^40 in St. Hadelin and 38 in Olne itself.
At Foref\ 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 surviv-
ing sons in front of them as a screen. The school-
master and two others were shot outside the village.
"At Foret," states the German soldier quoted above,J
"we found prisoners — a priest and five civilians, includ-
ing a boy of 17. Pillage began . . . but we were
shelled . . . and moved off to the next village. The
* S. pp. 82-92.
txvii; S. pp. 93-4,
% Reply p. 136.
40
FORET, MAGNEE, ROMSEE
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
cure." (The cure, too, was shot that night.)* "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 bum 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 Foret, and 6
houses destroyed. At Magnee-f 18 houses were de-
stroyed and 21 people killed. The German troops in
Magnee were caught by the fire from the Fleron 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 Ro?nsee,'^ 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.
* Mercier.
fS. pp. 94-100.
:}: S. pp. jqQ-5.
4J
BETWEEN THE VESDRE AND THE OURTHE
(vi) Between the Vesdre and the Ourthe.
The same outrages were committed between the
Vesdre and the Ourthe. At Louveigne^^ 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
Louveigne was systematically set on fire with the
same incendiary apparatus that was used at Vise, and
the cure 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 Louveigne was 29, and there were 77
houses burnt. The devastation impressed the German
soldiers who passed through Louveigne on the follow-
ing days. "Louveigne has been completely burnt out.
All the inhabitants are dead," writes a German diarist
on Aug. 9th. "March to Louveigne," another records
on Aug. 16th. "Several citizens and the cur€ shot
according to martial law, some not yet buried — still
lying where they were executed, for everyone to see.
Stench of corpses everj^where. Cure said to have in-
cited the inhabitants to ambush and kill the Germans."
— "Bivouac! Rain I Burnt villages I Louveigne!"
* S. pp. 40-5: Belg. Ann. 5, pp. 167-8; Morgan p, 100; Bryce p. 172.
42
LOUVEIGNE, LINCE, POULSEUR
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 Lince^^ in the commune of Sprimont, a German
ofBcer was wounded when the troops returned in con-
fusion from before the southern forts of Liege. The
Germans forbade an autopsy to discover by what bul-
let 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 cure 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 hos-
tages took place in the afternoon. Sixteen men were
shot, of whom 7 were more than 60 years old. At
Chanxke,-\ 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
»S. pp. 30-8.
t S. pp. 20-30.
43
ACROSS THE MEUSE
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
Vise, and were descending on Liege from the north.
At Hallembaye, in the commune of Haccourt,'^ 18
people were killed. There were women, children and
old men among them, and also the cure,f 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% was plun-
dered on Aug. 15th, and 9 houses destroyed. There
* S. pp. 191-3 ; xvii.
t Mercier,
% S. pp. ^190-1, a 15.
44
VIVEGNIS, HEURE-LE-ROMAIN, HERMEE
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^
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'\ 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
cure, J 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 com-
pleted 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 Hermee,^ on Aug. 6th, the Germans,
caught by the fire of Fori Pontisse^ revenged them-
selves by shooting 11 civilians, including old men of
76 and 82 years. On the 14th, the day after the sur-
render of the fort, the inhabitants of Hermee were
driven from their homes and the village systematically
burnt, 146 houses out of 308 being destroyed. In the
*S. pp. 187-8.
t S. pp. 200-5; xvii; a 17.
% Mercier.
§S. pp. 194-200; xvii; a 35.
45
THE CITY OF LIEGE
village itself, as apart from the outlying hamlets of
the commune, only two or three houses were left stand-
ing. At Fexhe-Slms, near Hermee, 3 people were
killed. Twenty- three were killed, and 13 houses de-
stroyed, in the hamlet of RhSes in the commune of
Herstal.^
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 Liege — from the north-east, the south-east, and
the north. One thousand and thirty-two civiliansf
were shot by the Germans in the whole Province of
Liege^ and 3,173 houses were destroyed in two arron-
dissements (those of Liege and Verviers) alone out of
the four of which the Province is made up.
(viii) The City of Liege.
Twenty-nine of these civilians were killed and ^^X
of the houses destroyed in the city of Liege itself — on
August 20th, a fortnight after it had fallen into the
German Army's possession. The Germans entered
Liege 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. § The Germans
* S. pp. 185-7; ^ 6, 10, II, 13.
t Known by name. See Reply, p. 142.
:|: There were also thirty-seven houses destroyed in the suburb of
Grivegnee.
§a 24.
46
THE GERMAN OUTBREAK
found themselves in peaceful occupation of a great
industrial city, caught in the full tide of its nornial
life. There was nothing to suggest outrage, still less
to excuse it, in their surroundings there; their conduct
on August 2oth 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. i6th, Liege," writes a German soldier in his
diary.* "The villages we passed through had been
destroyed.
"Aug. 19th. Quartered in University. Gone on
the loose and boozed through the streets of Liege. Lie
on straw; enough booze; too little to eat, or we must
steal.
"Aug. 20th. In the night the inhabitants of Liege
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 — warn-
ings from German soldiers to civilians on whom they
were billeted,f and an ammunition waggon which
drew up at 8.0 a.m. in the Rue des Pitteurs, and twelve
* Bryce pp. 172-3.
ta a8.
47
THE CITY OF LIEGE
hours later disgorged the benzine with which the houses
in that street were drenched before being burnt. ^'
"The city was perfectly quiet," declares a Belgian
witnesSjf "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
rUniversite, in the heart of the town. J 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.§ "About io.o p.m. they were shooting every-
where. 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.|| ) "About 1 1.0 p.m. I saw between 45 and 50
houses burning. There were two seats of the fire —
the first at the Place de I'Universite (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
* a 24.
fa 28.
rjrS. p. 209.
§ Names given by S. pp. 21 1-2; cp. a 27.
II S. p. 212.
48
THE BURNING AND KILLING
of the victims, and I saw women with children running
about in the street, pursued by soldiers. . . ." (a 28).
The arson was elaborate. In the Rue des Pitteurs
the waggon loaded with benzine moved from door to
door.* "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 I'Universite, 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 mid-
night," states a witness (a 30), "a whole heap of
civilian corpses were brought to the Hotel 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 win-
dows after the Germans had driven the people into the
cellars." In this way a number of men and women
*a 24, 27, 31.
49
THE CITY OF LIEGE
were burnt alive.* 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,'j* 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 2 1st, the district round the
University Buildings on either side of the Meuse was
cleared of its inhabitants — such inhabitants as sur-
vived and such streets as still stood. The people were
evicted at a few hours' notice, and not allowed to
return for a month.J The same day a proclamation
was posted by the German authorities: "Civilians
have fired on the German soldiers. Repression is the
result." § 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 Liege shifted his ground, and laid the blame on
Russian students "who had been a burden on the
* a 31 ; S. p. 213.
t S. pp. 219-224.
:{: S. pp. 217-8, 325.
§ S. p. 2i8.
50
THE MOTIVE UNMASKED
population of the city."* A clearer light is thrown
on the outbreak of August 2oth by what occurred on
the night of August 2ist-22nd. "Aug. 22nd, 3 a.m.,
Liege," 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 sev-
eral houses more." The soldiers fire, the civilians suffer
reprisals, but the Germans' object is gained. The con-
quered 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 eat-
ing and drinking for the rest of the day. We live like
God in Belgium."
*S. p. 334; a 24.
51
III. FROM LIEGE TO MALINES.
(i) Through Limburg to Aerschot.
The first German force to push forward from Liege
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.* The invaders were obsessed
with the terror of franc-tireurs. At Hasselt^^ on
August 17th, they made the Burgomaster post a proc-
lamation advising his fellew-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."
*xv p. 20.
tBryce pp. 185-4-
52
o
TONGRES
At Tongres,^ on August i8th, 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 (includ-
ing 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 pro-
fession."f — "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 im-
mense 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
*xvii p. 66; xxi p. 129; Morgan p. loi ; Bland p. 131; Davignon
p. 107.
fXhe man was a glass-maker.
53
THROUGH LIMBURG TO AERSCHOT
shot down the Burgomaster's wife and a lawyer at
Cannes,^ and two men and a boy at Lixht,'^ a few
miles north-west of the Vise 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 Anny on August l2th, 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^"% the cure 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 ure 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 pres-
ence 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 uncon-
*xvii p. 66.
txvii p. 63.
:|: Reply pp. 140-1 ; k4; Bedier pp. lo-i; i pp. 3-4.
54
SCHAFFEN, MOLENSTEDE, ST. TROND
scious. 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.=^ All the civilians were shot."
The cure 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 south-
erly road from Tongres through St. Trond. At St.
Trond,-^ 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 Lean they killed 19 civilians
altogether, and 174 houses were destroyed.
♦There had been Belgian soldiers with a machine-gun in the
village.
tki8.
55
THROUGH LIMBURG TO AERSCHOT
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^"^
when they entered the village, they drove the cure 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 pil-
laged, 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,f "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 KieseghemX the Germans used civilians as a screen
again, and killed two more when they entered the vil-
lage. At Attenrode they killed 6 civilians and burned
17 houses, at Lubbeck 15 and 46. In the CMnton of
Glabbeek 35 civilians were killed from first to last,
and 140 houses destroyed.
* Reply p. 128.
t Davignon p. 97.
:j:xv p. 20.
56
THE GERMAN ENTRY
(ii) AerschoL
The Germans marched into Aerschot^ on the morn-
ing of Aug. 19th, driving before them two girls and
four women with babies in their arms as a screen.f
One of the women was wounded by the fire of the
Belgian troops, who had posted machine guns to dis-
pute 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 employe
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
*ci-38; Belg. xxi pp. 111-4; Anns, i, 7; Reply pp. 147-178; Ger-
man White Book, A; Struycken; Davignon p. 97.
t Reply No, i ; ga.
57
AERSCHOT
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,*
and driven, with their hands raised above their heads,
to an open space on the banks of the River Demer.
"There were about 200 prisoners, some of them in-
valids 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 Burgo-
master was brought to them under guard,f and com-
pelled 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 H6tel-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 trans-
lation of their contents to the German commandant
*ci, 6, 9, is; R. No. 9.
tci, 15; R. Nos. 4, 9, II.
58
THE GERMAN ENTRY
(R. No. li). That officer* 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
H6tel-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),
* German White Book, A 3.
59
AERSCHOT
"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 pil-
laged 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. l6).
"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."
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 Burgo-
master's house, in rooms overlooking the square. Cap-
tain 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
60
lo. "We Live Like God in Belgium"
THE FIRST SHOT
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. ii),
"followed by a multitude of discharges." — "I could
perceive a light cloud of smoke and dust," states Cap-
tain Karge,* who was at his window across the square,
''coming from the eaves of a red comer 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 f 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
* White Book A 3, Appendix,
t White Book A 5.
61
AERSCHOT
was no enemy, and turned back. "About 350 yards
from the square," states the commander of this unit,*
"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,f "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 win-
dows, or Germans taking cover from the undoubted
fire of their comrades, and replying from these vantage
points upon an imaginary foe? "Near the H6tel-de-
Ville," continues Captain Folz, "there stood an officer
who had the signal 'Cease Fire' blown continuously. J
Clearly this officer desired in the first place to stop the
shooting of our men, in order to set a systematic action
on foot."
*A 4.
t White Book A 5.
:j:cp. A 3, Appendix.
62
THE PANIC FIRING
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 Ger-
man 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 oc-
curred to him that they might be German volleys com-
manded by German officers as apprehensive as himself.
"Everywhere, apparently," he proceeds, "the firing
came, nol 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
63
AERSCHOT
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 Regi-
mental 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
64
a
INCENDIARISM AND MASSACRE
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, in-
cluding 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 prisjners.
Then I ordered my police ... to escort the prison-
ers 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
cripples — shot. . . ."
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 v/e 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 funda-
ment. , . . In the hospital, on Aug. 22nd, I saw
6i
AERSCHOT
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 suffocat-
ing inhabitants when they tried to escape."
At' 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 com-
mand," states a professor (c 14). "I found him per-
sonally 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 Ger-
mans at a distance of 18 yards (c 5). Another house-
holder (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
Gemians with their rifles prevented anyone going to
help this man, and he had to drag himself along with
66
INCENDIARISM AND MASSACRE
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 (cq)
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 out-
side 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 Demer and shot down by two com-
panies 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 Demer.
I clung to a branch and set my feet against the stones
67
AERSCHOT,
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 Burgo-
master 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 Burgo-
master'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 pil-
lage 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
68
THE ARREST OF THE BURGOMASTER
blacksmith (c i), "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 execu-
tion. For fear of breaking down his courage, I could
not even cry out to my husband : T am here.' " There
were 50 or 60 prisoners altogether, and another batch
of 30 followed behind.* "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 sec-
ond 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 com-
pelled him to walk on with the rest." — "Our hands,"
♦C4, 8.
69
A^RSCHOT
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 Burgo-
master'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 Burgo-
master, his son and his brother. "The boy got up and
stood betAveen 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
70
THE SECOND MASSACRE
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 inhabi-
tants 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.*
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 them-
selvesf and bombarded it from outside with artillery ;X
but in the daylight of Aug. 2oth they came back again,
and burned and pillaged continuously for three days
* R. No. 3 ; c 12.
t White Book A 2 and 3 (Appendix).
:j:c I, 4, 5; R. No. 11.
71
AERSCHOT
— taking not only food and clothing but valuables of
every kind, and loading them methodically on waggons
and motor cars.* On the evening of the 2oth, the
Institut Damien, hospital though it was, was com-
pelled 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." f
On Aug. 26th and 27th the remnant of the popula-
tion— about 600 men, women, and children, who had
not perished or fled — were herded into the church.t
They were given little food, and no means of sanita-
tion. 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 Lou-
vain, in the Place de la Station, they were fired upon,
and a number were wounded and killed. The sur-
vivors were released on the 29th, but when they re-
turned to Aerschot they were arrested and imprisoned
*R. Nos. 9, 10, 15.
tR. No. 16.
:j:c 7, 13, zo, 33-5; R. Nos. 12, 13, 15, 16.
72
BOMBARDMENT AND PILLAGE
again— the men in the church, the women in a chateau.
The women and children were released the day follow-
ing (that day the active troops at Aerschot were re-
placed by a landsturm garrison, who began to pillage
the town once more).* 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, what-
ever their age.f
"On Aug. 31st," writes a German landsturmer in
his diary,| "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 inno-
cence 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. §
"It was our soldiers who fired, but they have been
punished."
* R. No. 9.
fcp. the treatment of the monks at Louvain, p. 137 below.
^Davignon, p. 97.
§R. p. 171-
73
THE AERSCHOT DISTRICT
(iii) The Aerschot District.
The smaller places round Aerschot suffered in their
degree. At Nieuw-Rhode 2oo houses (out of 321)
were plundered, one civilian killed, and 27 deported
to Germany. At Gelrode,^ on August 19th, the Ger-
mans 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 im-
prisoned in the church there. None of them were dis-
covered with arms, for the Burgomaster of Gelrode had
collected all arms in private hands before the Germans
arrived. The priest of Gelrodef was dragged away to
Aerschot on August 27th by German soldiers. "When
they got to the churchyard the priest was struck sev-
eral 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 Demer.
Eighteen civilians altogether were shot in the com-
mune of Gelrode, and 99 deported to Germany.
Twenty-three houses were burnt, and 131 plundered,
out of 201 in the village.
* C39-45.
tc3, 23-5, 40; R. No. to (Aerschot).
74
TREMELOO, ROTSELAER, WESPELAER
At Tremeloo^ 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^ 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 con-
fined 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)t 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 Lou-
vain itself, and were sent on the terrible journey in
cattle-trucks to Aix-la-Chapelle.
At Wespelaer^ 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
* C54-6.
tc48-9, 52; R. pp. 351-3.
X For his death see footnote on p. 151 below.
§ C60-63. ..
75
THE AERSCHOT DISTRICT
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" (c6o).
At Campenhout^ 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.f
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
*c 46-47.
tg 16-18.
76
CAMPENHOUT, MALINES
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, Theophile 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* 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 in-
spector 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 com-
rades still singing. The child screamed when the
*d 1-9.
77
THE RETREAT FROM M ALINES
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 3^ears 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 (dp).
The next place from which the Germans were driven
was Hofstade,^ and here, too, they revenged them-
selves before they went. They left the corpses of
women lying in the streets. There was an old woman
mutilated with the bayonet.f There was a young
pregnant woman who had been ripped open. J In the
lodge of a chateau the porter's body was found lying
on a heap of straw. § 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. II Adjoining the blacksmith's house there
was a cafe, and here a middle-aged woman lay dead,
* d 10-65 j vii p. 54.
td 18, 20, 21, 34, 52, 62.
Jd II, 18, 20, 21, 37, 39, 41, 44.
§d 36, 38, 40.
II d 32-4» 38-9.
78
MALINES, HOFSTADE
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 hang-
ing 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.''' Several saw him before he was
quite dead.
In one house at Hofstadef the Belgian troops found
the dead bodies of two women and a man. One of
the women, who was middle-aged, had been bay-
onetted 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 Bel-
gian soldier,^ "to find his parents who lived in Hof-
stade. 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
*d 12, 13, 16, 17, 20, 21, 25, 27, 29-31, 33, 35, 38, 43, 46, 52, 54-7.
62-5.
td 10, 13, IS, 26, 47.
td 36, cp. 37.
79
THE RETREAT FROM MALINES
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.* At Muysen
they killed 6 civilians and burned 450 houses. "There
were broken wine bottles lying about everywhere"
(d 88).
At Sentpst^"^ 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,:j: 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
*vii p. 54.
t d 66-83.
td 67-9, 73, 75.
Wi^ "■ ■■■■ ■'
MsOK^'--*
'^. .••'!?:»-■; 4f -
13. Brussels: A Booking-Office
MUYSEN, SEMPST, WEERDE
soldier hit him on the head with a revolver, and he let
the child fall. ..."
In one house they bound a bed-ridden man to his
bed, and shot another man in the presence of 13 chil-
dren 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 ;* 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 be-
side 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 Ger-
mans had pulled away the ladder and set the building
on fire.f 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
*d 66, 69-72, 77-9.
t d 74, cp. 81.
81
THE RETREAT FROM M ALINES
Eppeghem* 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,^ not even exempt-
ing old men or women with child. We have the testi-
mony 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.! Among them was
*d 87-9; g 20.
txv p. 22; g 18; d 90-1, 26.
+ x pp. 78-9.
82
CANTON OF VILVORDE
the parish priest.* "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 Vel-
vordef 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-BoisX 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^ 18 houses were burnt and one
civilian killed. He was a man who had tried to pre-
* Mercier.
td 92-3.
:|:d 112-4; cp- Massart, pp. 33S-9.
§ S 22.
83
THE RETREAT FROM M ALINES
vent 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.* At Wolverthem lo 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-Brule^'\ on Aug. 25th, the priest was imprisoned
with 28 other civilian hostages in a room. The Ger-
man 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 re-
viving he was shot. Fifty-eight houses were burnt in
the commune of Pont-Brule-Grimbergen, 5 civilians
shot, and 65 deported. These places lay in the Canton
of Wolverthem, west of the river Senne, between Ter-
monde, Malines, and Brussels. In the whole canton
426 houses were burnt, 1,292 plundered, 29 civilians
killed, and 182 deported to Germany.
In the district between Malines and Aerschot it was
the same, and places which had suffered already on
*k 21,
t Reply p. 431; Mercier.
84
HEVER, HAECHT, THILDONCK
Aug. 19th were devastated again on Aug. 25th and the
following days. At Hever^ 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 Boortmeer-
beek'\ 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^ 5 men
were seized as hostages and then shot in cold blood.
One of them survived, though K - 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 stom-
ach 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 Thil-
donck 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 morn-
*d 125.
1 94-
%A. 100-8.
THE RETREAT FROM M ALINES
ing 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 oflBcer at their head, entered Isodore Valcke-
naers' 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 cwo young men were killed in-
stantaneously. 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 Frangois-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 hold-
ing 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 four-
86
CANTON OF HAECHT
teen present, and three were severely wounded. Only
four were left unscathed.*
At Werckterf 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 de-
ported. At Hohbeek 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 devas-
tation spread into the Canton of Louvain. "When
the Germans first arrived at Herent^^X states a wit-
ness (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 Aan-
boscli^ 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) § and deported 104
altogether, burned 312 houses and sacked 200. At
*R. pp. 378-380.
td iio-i.
%A 95-9.
§ Mercier,
§7
WHERETREAT:tROM MALINES
V el them 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 Heverle 6 and 95. In the
whole Canton of Louvain 2,441 houses were burnt,
2,722 plundered, 251 civilians killed, and 831 de-
ported. 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 organ-
ised 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 inevita-
ble climax of the outrages to which they had aban-
doned themselves in their retreat upon Louvain from
Malines. The Germans burned and massacred invari-
bly, wherever they passed, but there was a blood-
thirstiness and obscenity in their conduct on this re-
treat which is hardly paralleled in their other exploits,
88
CANTON OF. LOUVAim
and which put them in the temper for the supreme
crime which followed.
(v) Louvam.
The Germans entered Louvam on August 19th. The
Belgian troops did not attempt to hold the town, and
the civil authorities had prepared for the Germans' ar-
rival. They had called in all arms in private posses-
sion and deposited them in the H6tel-de-Ville. This
had been done a fortnight before the German occupa-
tion,* and was repeated, for security, on the morning
of the 19th itself. f 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."J The
people of Louvain were indeed terrified. They had
heard what had happened in the villages round Liege,
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.§
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
* "Germans," p. 26.
teas.
tR29; cp. "Germans," p. 9; Chambry, p. 14; es; R34.
§ "Germans," p. 15; R24.
89
LOUVAIN
the town by the German Command. The troops were
billeted on the inhabitants. In one house an officer de-
manded 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.'"^ It was vacation time, and the lodg-
ings of the University students were empty. Many
houses were shut up altogether, and these were broken
into and pillaged by the German soldiers. f They pil-
laged enormous quantities of wine, without interfer-
ence 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."^
There was also a great deal of wanton destruction —
"furniture destroyed, mirrors and picture-frames
smashed, carpets spoilt and so on."§ 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 Profes-
sor'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 li-
brary and its contents. They also destroyed the manu-
script of an important work of my late father's which
* Chambry, p. 1 6.
tea; Ry, lo.
%^z\\ Chambry, p. 17.
§"HoMors," p. 31.
THE FIRST SIX DAYS
was in the hands of the printer."* — "This misdemean-
our 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 pro-
tection."t The pillage was even systematic. A serv-
ant, 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 remov-
ing from my master's house wine, blankets, books, etc.,
and placing them in the vans. They stripped the whok
place of everything of value, including the furniture.
... I saw them smashing glass and crockery and the
windows."! 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. § By noon on August
20th the town itself "was like a stable. Streets, pave-
ments, public squares and trampled flower beds had
disappeared under a layer of manure." ||
On August 2oth the German military authorities
covered the walls with proclamations: "Atrocities
have been committed by (Belgian) franc-tireurs."l[ —
* 625.
tR24; cp. Rii; ez; "Germans," p. 25.
tezi.
§62; R18.
II "Germans," p. 25.
H "Germans," p. 26; R24.
91
LOUVAIN
"If anything happens to the German troops, le total
sera res pons able'"'^ (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.
Hostages were also taken by the German authori-
ties.f The Burgomaster, a City Councillor and a Sena-
tor were confined under guard in the H6tel-de-Ville on
the first day of occupation. From August 2 1 st onwards
they were replaced successively by other notables, in-
cluding the Rector and Vice-Rector of the University.
On August 21st there was another German proclama-
tion, in which the inhabitants were called upon (for
the third time) to deliver up their arms.:]: Requisi-
tions 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
* "Horrors," p. 31.
tR7. 24.
ijiRio.
92
— i,..-..v..
"AUGUST ^BTH—BEFORE 8.0 P. M.
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.* On that day, too, the German
wounded were removed from Louvainf — an ominous
precaution — and in the course of the following day
there were spoken warnings.^ On the morning of this
day, Tuesday, August 25th, Madame Roomans, a
notary's wife, is said to have been warned by the Ger-
man 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, § and the German garrison grew
*Ri, 24; "Germans," pp. 28-9.
tR29.
JR2, 24, 29.
§ "Germans," p. 31; Grondijs, p. 34; e i; Ri, 8, 11, 17.
LOUVAIN
increasingly uneasy. Despatch riders from the front
kept arriving at the Kommandantur ;* at 4.0 o'clock
a general alarm was sounded ;f the troops in the town
assembled and marched out towards the north-western
suburbs; J military waggons drove in from the north-
west in disorder, "their drivers grasping revolvers and
looking very much excited." § At the same time, re-
inforcements || began to detrain at the S>tation^ which
stands at the eastern extremity of the town, and is con-
nected with the central Grand' I* lace 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 bil-
leted hastily by their officers in the quarters nearest the
Station.^ 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.^* The square was already crowded
with the transport that had been sent back during the
day from the front.f f 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
♦"Germans," pp. 31-3.
fe I.
:j: e I ; "Germans," p. 32; D7, 8.
§ "Germans," p. 32.
Q "Germans," p. 32; DavigooD, p. 97; R17.
1 Chambry, p. 21 ; 63 ; R17.
**R7; D46.
ttD46.
8.0 P. M.—THE OUTBREAK
Hotel-de-Ville^'^ which was the seat of the Komman-
dantur.
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 out-
skirts 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.f The military police pickets^ in the centre of
the city were on the alert. Between 7.0 and 7.30 the
alarm was sounded again, § and the troops who had ar-
rived that afternoon assembled from their billets and
stood to arms. || The tension among them was extreme.
They had been travelling hard all day; they had en-
tered 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 sup-
posed 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 sig-
nals. A Belgian witness,^ living near the Tirlemont
* D46.
tD7, 8.
tei; R8.
§R7, 17-
II Chambry, pp. 23" 3.
irR6.
95
LOUVAIN
Gaie, 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 im-
mediately 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.* They found themselves under
fire immediately afterwards. A similar rocket was seen
later in the night to rise above the conflagration.f 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 Flace 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 Kue de la Station and in
the Kue de Bruxelles, which leads into the Grand'
Place from the opposite direction.
*D7, lo, 13, 13, 14-18, 32; cp. D46.
96
n
u
GERMAN AGAINST GERMAN
"We were at supper," states a Belgian witness,*
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 oc-
cupants fired. Within a few seconds the din of re-
volver and rifle shots had become terrific. The fusil-
lade was sustained, and spread (north-eastward) to-
wards 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 min-
utes with desperation ; it persisted an hour longer after
that, but with less violence."
"At the stroke of eight," states another witness,!
"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 Leopold, 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
*R4.
tR7-
97
LOUVAIN
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* who was present. "I heard the clock
strike in a tower. . . . Complete darkness already pre-
vailed. 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 dis-
tinctly heard the rattling of machine-guns, and the bul-
lets 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 evi-
dently came from Geraian troops in the Rue Leopold^
where they were attacking the house of Professor Ver-
helst. 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 Leopold and the Rue de la Station.
"I stood with my Company," states the Company
Commander,t "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
*D46.
•J-DX.
98
GERMAN EVIDENCE
Company from the surrounding houses, from the win-
dows, 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 Ex-
cellency 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 in-
habitants 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
99
LOUVAIN
fired them, and another witness,* who lived in a house
looking on to the Station Square, is equally ppsitive
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 con-
fusion 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
___
100
THE GERMAN PANIC
that stampeded in the Place du Feuple and elsewhere,
and galloped riderless in all directions— across the
Station Square,'' through the suburb of Corbeek-Loo.'^
down the Rue de la Station.X and up the Rue de Tide-
mont.l the Rue de Bruxelles,\\ and the Rue de Ma-
lines.\ The troops infected by the panic either ran
amok or took to flight.
''About 8.0 o'clock," states a witness,** "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 after-
wards, 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
*D8, 22.
tR20.
IR3.
§ "Germans," p. 33'
IIR3-
^Ri3.
** e I ; cp. R8.
101
LOVVAIN
out: 'Then we are safe,' and rejoined their compatri-
ots."
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,* "we
hold ourselves on the alert at Gri7?tde (a sugar refin-
ery) ; 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 poi-
soned; 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 Leopold^ leading from the Rue de la Sta-
tion into the Ylace du Feuple^ "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 house-
holders on whom they had been billeted,f "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 Entrees,%
♦Morgan, p. 102.
fChambry, p. 23.
+ R2.
102
THE PANIC SPREADS
Waggons and motor-cars were flying out of the town
down the Rue de Pare, and soldiers on foot down the
Rue de Tirlemont.'' 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 Superieur de Pkilosopkie" (now converted
into the Hopital St. Thomas). "We had scarcely
taken note of it," states one of the workers in the hos-
pital,t "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 Di-
rector of the Hospital, reportsj 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
Leopold, Rue Marie-There se. Rue des Joyeuses En-
trees, Rue de Tirlemont, etc.§ It was the German
troops firing with rifles and machine-guns. Some
houses were literally riddled with bullets, and a num-
ber of civilians were killed in their homes."
Higher up the Rue de Tirlemont, in the direction of
* "Horrors," p. 38.
t "Germans," p. 33-
§A1^ in the Rue Vital Decoster, north of the Rue de la Station
(Ri3)-
103
LOUVAIN
the Grand' Place, there was a Belgian Infantry Bar-
racks, 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,* "had his rifle by his side, also
ball-cartridge." — "About 9.0 o'clock," states another,f
"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 cart-
ridges. He was arrested and shot." — "We now," con-
tinues 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
*D29; cp. R2.
tDao; cp. 035, vj.
104
THE GERMANS RUN AMOK
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 "Brown-
ings" 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 {Rtie
Leopold^ 1 6), and fired into the street out of the sec-
ond storey window. Other Germans passing shouted :
"They have been shooting here," and returned the fire.*
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.f 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, J "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
* "Germans," pp. 41, 107; 624; Rag.
t "Germans," p. 107; Grondijs p. 58.
tes; cp. eis; Rio.
105
LOUVAIN
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 Ba-
varians. ..."
The Poles openly blamed the Bavarians for the error.
A wounded Polish Catholic, who was brought in dur-
ing 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."* On the Thursday
following, a wounded Polish soldier was lying in the
hospital of the Sisters of Mary at Wesemael, and, see-
ing German troops patrolling the road between Wese-
mael and Louvain, exclaimed to one of the nuns:
"These drunken pigs fired on us."f
The casualties inflicted by the Germans on each
other do not, however, appear to have been heavy.
One German witnessj saw "two dead transport horses
and several dead soldiers" lying in the Place du Peuple.
Another§ saw a soldier lying near the Juste-Lipse
*xx\ p. 115.
tRs-
t D20.
§D9.
106
SELF-INFLICTED CASUALTIES
Monument who had been killed by a shot through the
mouth. But most express astonishment at the light-
ness 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,* "that not
one soldier has been wounded by this violent fusillade."
— "A murderous fire," states the surgeon of the Second
Neuss Landsturm Battalion,f "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,J "was opened
from the houses surrounding the Grand' Place, which
was now filled with artillery (one batter)0» 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 § 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
*Ri3.
tD9.
SDi.
107
LOUVAIN
high," states a N.C.O. of the Landsturm Company
drawn up in the Station Square.'^ *'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 iired 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 Sep-
tember 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 naively
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, de-
liberately, to save their own reputation.
The Director and the Chief Surgeon of the Hopital
St.'Thomas went out into the street after the first fusil-.
lade was over. Three soldiers with fixed bayonets
rushed at them shouting: "You fired! Die!" — audit
_____
108
GERMAN HALLUCINATIONS
was only with difficulty that they persuaded them to
spare their lives. When the firing began again a ser-
geant broke into the hospital shouting: "Who fired
here^" — and placed the hospital staff under guard.*
This was the effect of panic, but there were cases in
which the firing was imputed to civilians, and punish-
ment 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,*!* and it is stated that every bullet extracted
from the bodies of wounded German soldiers was found
to be of German origin. J 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§ 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 pre-
pare a mise-en-scene to pretend that the Belgians had
been fighting in the street."
* "Germans" pp. 33-5.
tR25.
:|:R29 (Statement by the Abbe van den Bergh, accredited by His
Eminence Cardinal Piffl, Prince-Bishop of Vienna, to conduct in-
quiries on behalf of the Wiener Priester-Verein) ; cp. R35.
§e8.
109
LOUVAIN
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 ser-
geant 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.*
A staff-surgeon billeted on a cure in the suburb of
Blauwput pretended he had been wounded by civilians
when he had really fallen from a wall. On the morn-
ing of the 26th the officer in local command arrested
fifty-seven men at Blauwput^ this cure included, in
order to decimate them in reprisal for wounds which
the surgeon and two other soldiers had received. The
cure was exempted by the lot, when the surgeon came
up with a handful of revolver-cartridges which he pro-
fessed to have discovered in the cure's house. The
officer answered: "Go away. I have searched this
house myself," and the surgeon slunk off. The cure
was not added to the victims, but every tenth man was
shot all the same.f
*R3; cp. e24.
tR29; cp. 636.
110
GERMAN BAD FAITH
That "the civilians had fired" was already an official
dogma with the German military authorities in Lou-
vain. Mgr. Coenraets, Vice-Rector of the University,
was serving that day as a hostage at the Hotel-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 Flem-
ish 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.*
But "reprisals" against the civil population had al-
ready begun. The firing from German soldiers in the
houses upon Geraian soldiers in the street was answered
by a general assault of the latter upon all houses within
*Di (von Boehn), 2, 3 (von Manteuffel), 9, 49 (2).
Ill
LOUVAIN
their reach. "They broke the house-doors," states a
Belgian woman,* "with the butt-ends of their rifles.
. . . They shot through the gratings of the cellars." —
"In the Hotel'de-Ville," states von Manteuffel,t "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 Hotel-de-Vzlle, 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,^ "that we were fired at from the Hotel
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 an-
swered 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 march-
ing with his unit into the town.§ "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
*ei3; cp. R17, 24.
tD3.
tDz; cp. Dii.
§D36 (I).
112
21. Capelle-au-Bois: The Church
ATTACKS ON PRIVATE HOUSES
battalion,* "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 petro-
leum lamp, lying overturned on the table and still
smouldering. ..."
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 Cathe-
dral" (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
*D36 (2).
LOUVAIN
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 Gemian troops, employing the same
incendiary apparatus as had been used already at Vise,
Liege and elsewhere.'''-
The burning was directed by a German officer from
the Vieux Marchc^ a large open space near the centre
of the town, and by another group of officers stationed
in the Vlace du Peuple.^ The burning here is de-
scribed by a German officer^: (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, set-
ting 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 igni-
tion. The order to set fire to the houses was given out
* Area of incendiarism: "Eye-witness" p. i; "Horrors" pp. 39, 43;
"Germans" pp. 35-S, 92; Chambry pp. 25, 92; Apparatus: ez, 13;
R8, 13; cp. also D31, 37 (2).
t R24.
4:D46.
114
INCENDIARISM
by Colonel von Stubcnrauch, whose voice I distin-
guished. . . ."
In the Rue de la Station the Germans set the houses
on fire with incendiary bombs. This was seen by a
Belgian witness,* and is confirmed by the German offi-
cer just cited, who, in the Place du Feuple^ "heard
repeatedly the detonation of what appeared to be
heavy gims" round about him. "I supposed," he pro-
ceeds, "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 Manege-\ another Belgian witness
saw a soldier pouring inflammable liquid over a house
from a bucket, and this though a German military sur-
geon, present on the spot, admitted that in that house
there had been nobody firing. Soldiers are also stated
to have been seent with a complete incendiary equip-
ment (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 ;§ but a Dutch witness || saw
it burning while the adjoining houses were still intact.
There is less evidence for the deliberate burning of the
* R8 ; e23 ; cp. "Germans" p. 46.
tRi3; cp. 614, 28.
rjieis; cp. €24.
§D4.
II R14 (Grondijs) ; cp. R19, 29.
115
LOUVAIN
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 ii.o p.m., in the middle of the burn-
ing, an officer answered a Belgian monk, who protested,
that it was "By Order."* 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 Hotel-de-Ville, but they saved
it because it was the seat of the German Komman-
dantur, 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.f Others
were shot down by the German troops as they ran out
into the street, t or while they were fighting the flames. §
"The franc-tireurs," as they are called by the German
officer in the Place du Peuple,\^ "were without excep-
*R29; cp. "Eye-witness" p. 3; "Germans" p. 37; R25.
tea, 23; Rio, ii, 18, 24.
:l:ei; R8.
§Rio.
II D46.
116
Ph
w
o
M
h
g
o
INCENDIARISM
tion evil-looking figures, such as I have never seen else-
where in all my life. They were shot down by the
German posts stationed below. . . ."
Others, again, tried to save themselves by climbing
garden walls.* "I, my mother and my servants,"
states one of these,t ''took refuge at A.'s, whose cel-
lars are vaulted and therefore afforded us a better pro-
tection 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 Ger-
mans were firing upon them from the street."
"When we were crossing a particularly high wall,''
states another victim, J "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.
*R8, 26; ei4.
t ei.
^eS; cp. "Horrors" p. 39; eij; R8, 15, 17.
117 '
LOUVAIN
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 num-
ber 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 sepa-
rated. 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-w^ound 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 ges-
tures. . . . The streets were full of empty wine bot-
tles. . . .
"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
118
THE MURDER OF M. DAVID-FISCHBACH
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 Gern[ij;:in occupation he
had entertained Grerman 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. Berg*
hausen, the German military surgeon who was respon-
sible for M. David-Fischbach's death,* "I saw a Ger-
man soldier lying dead on the ground. . . . His com-
rades told me that the shot had been fired from the
corner house belonging to David-Fischbach. There-
upon 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. There-
upon 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 ser-
vant 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. . . ."
*D9; cp. R34; C14 (M. David-Fischbach's servant).
119
LOUVAIN
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 asphyxi-
ated in the cellar.*
"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 monu-
ment 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 Hopital St.-Thomas — the old
man's white beard was stained with blood.f
The massacre spread. Six workmen returning from
their work were shot down from behind. J A woman
was shot as she was beating for admittance on a door.§
A man had his hands tied behind his back, and was
shot as he ran down the street. || Another witness saw
20 men shot.^ One saw 19 corpses,** and corpses
were also seen with their hands tied behind their backs,
* Charabry pp. 26-7.
t "Germans" p. 42.
+ ei6.
§ei.
II ei5.
ITeiy.
** ei5.
120
MURDERS IN THE STREETS
like the victim mentioned above.* There was the body
of a woman cut in two, with a child still alive beside
her.f Other children had been murdered, and were
lying dead.J There was the body of another mur-
dered woman, and a girl of fourteen who had been
wounded and was being carried to hospital. A Ger-
man soldier beckoned a Dutch witness into a shop,§
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 II recognised the corpses of people they
knew. Here a bootmaker lay,1[ here a hair-
dresser,!]" here a professor. The corpse of Pro-
fessor 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 Hopital St.-
Thomas, and so escaped himself.** "On the 27th,"
states a Belgian lady,tt "M. Lenertz' body was still
* 619.
tei7.
+ ei3.
§ Grondijs p. 39.
II "Germans" pp. 46-7. '
1fRi9.
** "Germans" p. 43.
ttR2.
1:21
LOUVAIN
lying on the Boulevard. When his wife and children
were evicted by the Grermans 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 Tlrlemont there were six or seven
more.* There was one at the end of the Rue du
Manege.^ But the greatest number were in the Station
Square, where they were seen by all the civilian prison-
ers herded thither this night and the following day.J
Their murder is described by a German sergeant-major§
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 hav-
ing 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 in-
habitants of the town."
The slaughter itself increased the thirst for blood.
A Dutch witness II met a German column marching in
*Rn, 17.
tRi3.
tei, 9, 13; R7, 8, 26.
§D37(2).
II Grondijs p. 41.
122
MURDERS IN THE STREETS
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 Span-
ish 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
Hopital 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
Hopital St.'Thomas next day."'' An aged concierge
was cast alive into the blazing ruins of the house it
was his duty to guard. f So it went on till dawn, when
the havoc was completed by salvoes of artiller}^ "At
four o'clock in the morning," states an officer of the
Ninth German Reserve Corps Staff, J "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 continu-
ously fired on, the order was given to clear the town by
♦"Germans" pp. 43-5; tz.
tR24.
123
LOUVAIN
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.* The inhabitants, meanwhile, were pay-
ing 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,^ "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 I 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
* "Horrors" p. 40; "Germans" p. 47; xxi p. 115; R6, 10.
te3.
124
25. Louvain: The Church of St. Pierre — Interior
TRIALS m THE STATION SQUARE
witness's wife,* "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."
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 revol-
ver.f "We were separated from our families," states
one of the men;t "we were knocked about and blows
were rained on us from rifle butts; the women and
children and the men were isolated from one an-
other. ..."
The men's pockets were rifled. Purses, keys, pen-
knives and so on were taken from them.§ One gen-
tleman's servant had 7,805 francs taken from his bag,
and was given a receipt for 7,000 francs in exchange. ||
This was the preliminary to a "trial," conducted by
Captain Albrecht,1f a staff officer of the Ninth Re-
serve Corps. "The soldiers," states a German trades-
man who acted as Captain Albrecht's interpreter,**
"brought forward the civilians whom they had seized.
... In all about 600 persons may have been brought
* 64 ; cp. R7.
tei = R8; cp. Ri, 7.
$Ri7.
§63-
||ei=R8.
H Killed, October, 1914.
** D38.
125
LOUVAIN
in, the lives of at least 500 of whom were spared, be*
cause no clear proof of their guilt seemed to be estab-
lished 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 discov-
ered, 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 ma-
terial evidence by the German Government. And was
the other material evidence so clear? One man, for in-
stance,'-" 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."t One priest was shot
"because he had purposely enticed the soldiers, ac-
cording to their testimony, under the fire of the franc-
tireurs."J Two other priests were shot "for distribut-
* C4 ; cp. R20,
t e4.
126
THE EXECUTIONS
ing ammunition to civilians,"* 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 Statioft Square and drive
out their inmates. The chief culprits found, appar-
ently, 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 submitsf
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 for-
ward was made when the order for execution was is-
sued." But one of the Belgian women'| held prisoner
in the Station Square describes how "the men were
*D48.
tDsS.
4:ei3.
127
LOUVAIN
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,* "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 every-
where in all directions."
The executions were also witnessed by the German
troops. "On the morning of August 26th," states a
soldier,f "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
*R9.
tDi9;cp. D37 (3), 41, 43.
1:28
THE WOMEN
the women were confined in the Station. "My aunt,"
continues the witness quoted above,* "was taken to
the Station with her baby and kept there till the morn-
ing. 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.t This
firing was due in part to panic, but was in part of a
more deliberate character. "The whole day," states a
Belgian witness, J "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 cafe proprietor and his daughter were shot
by two German soldiers waiting to be served. The
other daughter crept under a table and escaped.§
* ei3 ; cp. Chambry pp. 38-9.
t "Eye-witness" p. 4; cp. "Horrors" p. 39; Chambry pp. 33, 71-2;
I>37(2)-
■^ 62.
§ Grondijs pp. 50-1,
129
LOUVAIN
The women held prisoner at the Station were only
released at 8.0 o'clock on the morning of the 27th,*
but they had suffered less during these hours than the
men. "Of the men," as a German witness puts it,t
"some were shot according to Martial Law. In the
case of a large number of others it was, however, im-
possible to determine whether they had taken part in
the shooting. These persons were placed for the mo-
ment in the Station; some of them were conveyed
elsewhere."
The first batch J of those "not found guilty" was
"conveyed" by the Boulevard de Diest round the out-
skirts of the town, and out along the M alines 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,§ 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 ;|| the
rest were searched, had their hands bound behind their
backs, and were marched in column under guard. On
*e4; R9.
tD44.
:j:Ri, 7, 8 (=ei), 20, 26.
§R26 (his deposition); cp. Grondijs, pp. 70-1.
II Ri, 8 (==ei).
130
THE PRISONERS— FIRST BATCH
the way to Herent they were used as a screen.* The
village of Herent was burning, and they had to run
through the street to avoid being scorched by the
flames.f "Carbonised corpses were lying in front of
the houses." — "At Herent" states the South American
priest,J "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^ sur-
rounded by a company which, they were given to un-
derstand, 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 vil-
lage. 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 num-
ber of country people, and were marched back towards
■ ^
*Ri, 7, 26.
tRr, 8.
:i:R26.
LOUVAIN
Campenhout. One of these countrywomen bore a baby
on the road.* 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 1 1.30 in the morning (of August 27th),
about 200 strong. Within four hours of their arrival
the German bombardmentf of Malines began, and they
had to march on again to Antwerp.
A second batch^ 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 win-
dows of the houses and shot down one of the prisoners,
who was panic-stricken and tried to escape. § At
Herent they were yoked to heavy carts and made to
drag them along by-roads for three hours,§ and an-
other civilian was shot on the way.§ 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, ThUdonck, Wespelaer — still in pour-
ing rain — with their hands bound by a single long
cord. They reached Catnpenhout 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
*R7.
tR8.
q:xxi p, 117; ei8, 21; R23; "Germans" pp. 59-61,
§ ezi.
132
THE PRISONERS—SECOND BATCH
bombarding the Antwerp forts,* which might have
opened retahation 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."* That night at Louvain they were
crowded into the Cavalry Riding School in the Rue du
Manege. Six or seven thousand people were impris-
oned there in all.f 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.f
Two women went out of their minds and two babies
died.^ 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,§ and
they were marched out again through the streets. They
passed corpses left unburied since the night of August
25th. § "The German soldiers giggled at the sight." ||
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 cure was
added to the company, after being dragged round his
* 621.
tei8.
tR22; cp. ei8, 21; "Germans" p. 60.
§R22; ei8.
II xxi p. 117.
LOUVAIN
parish at the tail of a cart.* At Boortmeerheek 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 ar-
rived in front of Fort Waelhem in the dark, at 1 1 .o
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 Lou-
vain on August 26th consisted of the Garde Civique.f
All members of this body v/ere summoned by proclama-
tion to present themselves at the Hotel-de-Ville at 2.0
p.m.^ 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 Beygkem and Grimberghen, and about a
hundred women and children. They did not reach the
internment camp at Miinster 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.§ In
the camp at Miinster all the men were crowded pro-
* cp. p. 76 above.
tR23.
^ Chambry p. 33; Grondijs p. 47.
§ A German soldier was so much shocked at this that he fetched
the milk himself.
THE PRISONERS— FOURTH BATCH
miscuously 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 in-
decent. 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 Liege, 600 or 700 people from
Vise, the Gardes Civiques of Hasselt and Tongres,
people from Hac court and from several communes in
the Province of Limburg — about 1,700 prisoners in
all. On October 4th an article in the Berliner Tage-
hlatt, signed by a German general, admitted that
''only two of the prisoners at Milnster were under sus-
picion of having fired" ; but none of the prisoners from
Louvain were released till October 30th, and then only
cripples 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:^ This
group seems to have been treated even more brutally
than the rest. One man was so violently mishandled
* e3=:Ris; R17.
LOUVAIN
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 fare-
well. 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 ii.o
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 com-
pany of 3,000 men and women, including all the in-
habitants 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 fol-
lowed up by more comprehensive measures on the
morning of the 27th. Between 8.0 and 9.0 a.m. Ger-
man soldiers went round the streets proclaiming from
door to door: "Louvain is to be bombarded at noon;
everyone is to leave the town immediately."* The
people had no time to set their affairs in order or to
prepare for the journey. They started out just as
* "Germans" pp. 52-4, 71 ; Chambry pp. 40-1, 73 ; "Horrors" pp.
40-1; Grondijs p. 52; "Eye-witness" p. 5; e2; Rii; D31.
136
THE EXPULSION ON AUGUST 27TH
they were, fearing that the bombardment would over-
take them before they could escape from the town.
The exodus was complete. About 40,000 people alto-
gether were in flight,''' and the majority of them
streamed towards the Station Square^ where they had
been ordered to assemble, and then out by the Boule-
vard de Tirlemont, along the Tirlemont Road.
The Dominicans from the Monastery in the Rue
Juste-Lipse were expelled with the rest. "At the mo-
ment 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 popula-
tion was hurrying towards the Railway Station. . . ."f
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.J "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
* "Germans" p. 54.
t xxi p. 116.
4:Rii.
LOUVAIN
literally lifting us along like a wave, our feet not touch-
ing the ground. We progressed with difficulty, and
had to stop every ten metres. Sometimes a German
asked us if we had any arms. . . ."* When they
arrived at Tirlejnont they were kept outside the town
till nightfall. f The inhabitants did their best for
them, but Tirle?nont, too, had been ravaged by the
invasion. The number of the refugees was overwhelm-
ing, and there was a dearth of supplies. "My mother
and I," states a Professor of Louvain University,^
"had to walk about 20 miles on the 27th and the fol-
lowing 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 unfortu-
nate 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 maltreat-
ment. This professor, and twelve other priests or
monks with him, was stopped by German troops en-
camped at Lovenjoul. They were informed that they
* Chambry pp. 53-4.
fRii.
AUGUST 27TH—0N THE TERVUEREN ROAD
were going to be shot for "having incited the popula-
tion."— "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,* "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 ec-
clesiastics 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,'\ towards the south-
west. "On the road," states a professor,^ "we had to
raise our arms each time we met soldiers. An officer
*Rl3,
t "Eye-witness" pp. 5-9; "Germans" p. 58; Grondijs pp. 61-71
(=Ri4) ; Chambry p, 73; R4, 13, 21 (=xxi pp. 117-9; "Eye-witness"
pp. 8-9).
:i:Ri3.
LOUVAIN
in a motor-car levelled his revolver at us. He threat-
ened 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.* Another was charged with
carrying "cartridges," which turned out to be a packet
of chocolates.f One soldier tried to slip a cartridge
into a Jesuit's pocket, but the trick was fortunately
seen by another monk standing by.J Insults were
hurled at them — "Swine"; "Beastly Papists"; "You
incite the people to fire on us"; "You will be castrated,
you swine I" Then they were driven into a field, and
surrounded by a guard with loaded rifles. About 140
ecclesiastics were collected altogether, § including Mgr.
Ladeuze, the Rector of Louvain University; Canon
Cauchie, the Professor of History; Mgr. Becker, the
Principal of the American Seminary; and Mgr. Wil-
lemsen, 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
*R22.
t "Eye-witness" p. 5.
:;R2i.
§ "Eye-witness" p. 6.
140
THE EXECUTION OF FATHER DUFIERREUX
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 Ger-
man a paper that had been found on Father Dupier-
reux's person. The paper (it was a manuscript mem-
orandum 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.* "Father Dupierreux," states Father
Schill,t the Jesuit who had been forced to translate
the document, "had listened to the reading with com-
plete calm. ... He kept his eyes fixed on the
crucifix. . . . The command rang out: 'Aim!
Fire!' We only heard one report. The Father fell
*R3i; "Eye-witness" p. 7-
fRsi.
141
LOUVAIN
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 har-
angued:* "When we pass through a village, if a
single shot is iired 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 1 1 .0
and 12.0 o'clock a few cannon shots were heard in the
distance, but that was all.f "At Rolselaer" states an
inhabitant of Louvain who was in the party conveyed
there on the 27th,J "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 v/ere in the church
the Germans robbed the houses and then burned the
*R2I.
t "Germans" p. 72 ; "Horrors" p. 42 ; cp. Charabry p. 56.
142
PILLAGE
village." At Louvain the German strategy was the
same. The bombardment was only a pretext for the
wholesale expulsion of the inhabitants, which was fol-
lowed 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 con-
ducted under the supervision of officers from house to
house.*
On the morning of August 27th, even before the
exodus began, a Dutch witnessf waiting at the Hotel-
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.^ "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.§ "My
factory has been completely plundered," states a cigar-
manufacturer. || "Seven million cigars have disap-
« R24.
t"Grondijs" p. 51.
§e8.
II Rio.
LOUVAIN
peared." 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."* 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 wit-
ness from Blauwput.^ "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 cham-
pagne 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.
*R24.
te26.
ARSON
They are now actually loaded with all sorts of things,
none of which have anything to do with military
supplies or equipment."*
This systematic pillage went on day after day.
"The Station Square," states a refugee from Louvainf
who traversed the city again on August 29th, "was
transformed into a vast goods-depot, 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 any-
thing 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 Leopold and the Rue Marie-
Therese-X 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. § Householders who returned when all was
over found the destruction complete. "I found my
parents' house sacked," states one.|| "A great deal of
the furniture was smashed, the contents of cupboards
* Chambry p. 86 ; v. p. 29.
tRii.
% "Germans" pp. 73, 89.
§Rio.
llRiS-
145
LOUVAIN
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." — "In-
side our house," states another,* "everything is upside
down. . . . The floors are strewn with flowers and
with silver plate not belonging to our house, the writ-
ing 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, f and the work
continued on the 27th and the following days. All
varieties of incendiary apparatus were employed — a
* Chambry pp. 74-7. ^
tRi9.
146
GERMANS AS FRANCTIREURS
white powder,* an inflammable stick,f a projectile
fired from a rifle. i: They introduced these into the
house to be burnt by staving in a panel of the front
door § or breaking a window, || 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,^ "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 identi-
fication can be inferred from the experience of the
Rector of Louvain University, Mgr. Ladeuze, on the
night of August 25'th, when he detected two German
soldiers firing over the garden wall of the Chemical
Institute into the Rue de Namur."^^^ Another German
witness, a military surgeon in the Neuss LandstunTi,tf
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
* ei6.
tRi9.
§ Chambry p. 53.
II Ri9-
ID19.
** "Germans" p. 107 ; Grondijs p. 58 ; cp. p. 105 above.
tt D21.
LOUVAIN
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 un-
used 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 catas-
trophe, 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.*
*R27 (Deposition of Mgr. Deploige, President of the Institut
Superietir de Phtlosophie and Director of the Hopital St.-Thomas) ;
148
THE DEPORTATION TO COLOGNE
After the exodus on the morning of the 27th, Lou-
vain la)'" empty of inhabitants all day, while the burn-
ing 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,* "we rested
a moment. The cure 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 cure 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 cure himself,f
"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 Hotel-
de-ViUe. Fatigue compelled me to stretch myself on
the pavement, while the houses blazed all the time.
R29 (Report by Abbe Van den Bergh, accredited by His Eminence
Cardinal Piffl, Prince-Bishop of Vienna, to make enquiries on behalf
of the Vienna Priester-Verein).
*e3. tRi6.
149
LOUVAIN
"Other prisoners from Louvain and the neighbour-
hood 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' Flace,"" states the former witness,*
"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,f "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, ^ "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, § "the Third Battalion of
* 63.
t Ri7-
§034.
THE CATTLE-TRUCKS
the Landwehr Infantry Regiment No. 53 had to take
with it on its march from Rotselaer to Louvain a con-
voy of about 1,000 civilian prisoners. . . . Among
the prisoners were a number of Belgian priests, one of
whom,'^ 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 Lou-
vain 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,ooo,t and the overcrowding was
appalling. The cure 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
* This was the Priest of Herent, the Abbe van Bladel, whose body
was exhumed at Louvain on Jan. 14th, 191 5, in the Station Square
(R30).
tes, 7, 17; R16.
LOUVAIN
people,* while the majority were forced into cattle
trucks — from 70 to 100 men, women, and children in
each,f which had never been cleaned, and were knee-
deep in dung4 They stood in these trucks all night,
while the train remained standing in the Statioti. 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,§
and were not allowed to get out of the train to relieve
themselves when it stopped. || "We had nothing to
eat," states one of them,1[ "not even the child one
month old." — "My wife was suckling her child," states
another,** "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."f f — "I asked for some water for my
*Ri6; cp. eio.
te3, 7, 17; "Germans" p. 68 (Narrative of a Bulgarian student).
$63, 7, lo, 17; "Germans" p. 68.
§e3, 5, 10; R17.
II e3, 7. 17- . '
1fe3.
** 65.
tt eio.
152
THE DAYS IN THE TRAIN
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."* — "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."f
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 go-
ing 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 bay-
onetted 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 draw-
ing 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. . . ."J
Between Louvain and the frontier two men in a
passenger-carriage "tried to escape and broke the win-
*e5.
tei7.
:|:eio; confirmed by eii.
LOUVAIN
dows. The German sentinels bayonetted these two
men and killed them."*
Two people on the train went mad,f and two com-
mitted suicide.^ When the train started again after
its halt at Liege, 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. § When
the train was emptied at Cologne, three of the prisoners
were taken out dead. ||
The trucks were chalked with the inscription:
"Civilians who shot at the soldiers at Louvain,"|f and
at every place in Germany where the train stopped the
prisoners were persecuted by the crowd.** "At Aix-la-
Chapelle," states the cure of Rotselaer, "an officer
came up to spit on me."ff At Aix, too, those destined
for the internment camp at Munster had to change
trains and were marched through the streets. "As we
went," states one of them,^^ "the German women and
children spat at us." — "We arrived at Aix-la-Cha-
pelle,"" states another witness.§§ "There the German
people shouted at us. At Diirren, between Aix-la-
* 65.
tes; cp. 67; R17.
§eio, II.
II ei6.
1[ei6.
** eio.
ttRi6.
§§e3=Ri5.
THE CROWD AT COLOGNE
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."*
"At Cologne,'' states the cure of Rotselaer,-\ "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,i: "the chil-
dren 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.§ 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 threat-
* 67 ; cp. eio.
tRi6; cp. eio; R17; "Germans" p. 68.
§ei7; R16.
LOUVAIN
ening them with execution.* Next morning they were
marched back to the station, once more under the in-
sults 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.f OthersJ were sent direct from
Azx-la-Chapelle to the internment camp at Miinster^
where the Garde Civique of Louvain had been sent
before. In this camp the men were separated com-
pletely from the women and children — one of them
was the man§ 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 imprison-
ment. 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 Decem-
ber 6th, but the others still remained.
Meanwhile, the main body of the prisoners was
being transported back to Belgium. This return jour-
ney was almost as painful as the journey out; they
*Ri5.
tei6.
tes.
§e5.
156
THE RETURN JOURNEY
were almost as badly crowded and starved ;'^ but the
delays were less, and they reached Brussels on Septem-
ber 2nd. While they were halted at Brussels, Burgo-
master Max managed to serve out to each of them a
ration of white bread.f They were carried on to
Schaerbeek, detrained, and marched in column to Vil-
vorde. "I was in the last file," states one of them.J
"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."§
At Vilvorde they were informed that they were free.||
They dragged themselves forward towards the Belgian
lines, but at Sempst another party of Germans took
them prisoner again. || "The Germans thrust their
bayonets quite close to our chests," states one of the
prisoners ;|[ "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
*e3.
fey, lo, 17; R16, 17.
tei7; cp. es; R15, 16, 17.
§ 67; R16, 17.
II es, 17; Ri5-
irei7.
LOUVAIN
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 Malmes.^ It was now midnight,
and pouring with rain. The prisoners stumbled on
again, and made their way, in scattered parties, to the
Belgian outposts. f
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 re-
leased with her fellow prisoners on the 29th. "We
will not hurt you any more," said the officer in com-
mand; "stay in Louvain. All is finished." J
On August 30th the staff of the Hopital St.-Thomas,
who had defied the proclamation of the 27th and re-
mained continuously at their posts, took the task of
reconstruction in hand.§ A committee of notables was
formed, and overtures were made to Major von Man-
teuffel, the German Etappen-Kommandant in the
town. On September 1st a proclamation, signed by
the provisional municipal government, was posted up,
*e3; R15.
tRi6.
§ "Germans" p. 84 seqq.; R27.
158
THE DIARY OF GASTON KLEIN
with von Manteuffel's sanction, in the streets.* 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 de-
stroyed 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.t "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
* "Germans" p. 86; R37.
t Ann. 8 (Extract from the Diary of Gaston Klein) ; cp, Bryce p.
80, No. 33.
159
LOUVAIN
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."
160
THE TRACK OF THE ARMIES: FROM THE FRONTIER TO MALINES.
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