On August 20, the day before the formal entry of the German forces into Brussels, the Belgians had evacuated Malines. It was deemed prudent, as in fact it was, to withdraw the forces to the line of the outer forts of Antwerp. Some of the most violent fighting on August 19 and 20 had taken place 16 miles to the south-east of Antwerp at Aerschot. There the Germans had made their determined, but unsuccessful, effort to cross the Dyle.

Once in occupation of Brussels, they turned Malines into the headquarters of the troops, an army corps some 60,000 strong, told off to “mask” Antwerp by keeping the Belgian army if possible cooped up within the fortress. Malines lies exactly halfway between Antwerp and Brussels, about 12 miles from either city. It is, however, not more than half a mile from the outer ring of the Antwerp fortifications. The value of such a watch-tower to the Germans is manifest. No movement could possibly be made by the Belgians from Antwerp without the invaders knowing of it.

No sooner, however, had the march of the German main forces southward from Brussels begun, than the Belgians sallied forth. They were well-informed of the enemy’s movements, and were fully aware that, acting in conjunction with the contingent moving from LiÉge direct to the Sambre, that moving by way of Brussels could not in any event turn back.

This sortie, made so soon—it took place on August 23—took the German troops in Malines by surprise. They were just beginning to make themselves comfortable after their fatigues, when the Belgian army burst in upon them. No effectual resistance was possible. The invaders were driven, a battered rout, as far as Vilvorde, a northern suburb of Brussels. There most of the 10,000 German troops forming the garrison of Brussels were drawn up to cover the retreat. Malines remained in the hands of the Belgians.

Realising from this defeat that they had a tough proposition in front of them, the Germans hurried additional troops into the country. Meanwhile the Belgians had again seized Aerschot, Termonde and Alost. The German force threatening Ghent had to be withdrawn, and the invaders found themselves in danger of being cooped up in the capital.

This situation throws light on the atrocities which almost immediately followed, and on the question of whether these atrocities were accidents of hasty indiscipline or were, in fact, military measures carried out according to a settled plan.

A glance at the map of Belgium will show that the towns of Jodoigne, Louvain, Malines, Termonde, and Alost form round Brussels an arc, rather more than a semi-circle. The middle point of that arc is the point nearest to Antwerp, that is to say, Malines.

Now these towns as well as Aerschot were destroyed with the exceptions of Malines and Alost. Though Malines was three times severely bombarded by the Germans, and in the succeeding struggles changed hands as many times over, it was, while deplorably damaged, not destroyed. Neither was Alost. Why? Because Malines was needed as a point d’appui against Antwerp, and Alost as a half-way position on the road to Ghent. Alost was also the scene of repeated struggles. It is beyond argument to suggest that this destruction of some places and not of others can have been haphazard.

When we look further into the military situation the question passes beyond all doubt. Entrenched at Antwerp the as yet undefeated Belgian main army remained a serious menace. In fact, the Germans both at Berlin and at Brussels were well aware that, so long as that state of things continued, their hold upon the country was, not only precarious, but, in the event of a reverse in France, to the last degree dangerous. For, in possession of Antwerp and the seaboard provinces, the Belgians might, in conjunction with the Allies, at once close the only door of escape, and force at Aix-la-Chapelle what is, in effect, the main door to Germany.

From the invaders’ point of view, therefore, it was essential both to restrict the operations of the Belgian forces and to affirm their own grip on Brussels. And this explains why the threats indulged in to bombard and burn Brussels were merely threats. In a city of 800,000 people, numbers of whom, doubtless, secretly possessed arms, a rising on the part of the population, with a native army of nearly 100,000 men only a few miles away, meant a risk of the garrison of Brussels and even of the occupying troops altogether having to defend themselves against extermination, for the hatred they had inspired was unspeakable.

The plan resolved upon, it was carried out without mercy. Owing to its ancient renown, and the world-wide interest of its buildings and monuments, the destruction of Louvain has most shocked civilised peoples. The loss is a loss to the world, but as regards its utter inhumanity, the razing of the other towns, not to speak of the villages surrounding them, was equally pitiless and savage. In these murders the German soldiery spared neither age nor sex, and wreaked upon the most helpless their most indescribable and debased barbarities. It has been said that for every Belgian soldier killed in action, they slew three unarmed men, women, or children.

In the devastated districts the bodies of murdered peasants lay unburied in ditches by the roadside. The corpses of children, stiff in death, clung in their last attitude of terror to the corpses of their mutilated mothers. Others lay amid the roofless ruins of their homes. There were instances in which women were stripped, outraged by brutal soldiery, hanged from the branches of trees, and disembowelled in mockery of their final agony. Those who could escaped into the woods, where they hid without food or shelter. Numbers died of starvation and exposure. To destroy the last chance of life for these fugitives, and to avoid the trouble of hunting them out, corpses of murdered people were thrown into wells in order to poison the water.D

As might be expected, troops capable of such enormities were, as combatants, of little value. Well disciplined soldiers could not be driven to such excesses. Though their greater numbers, when reinforced, enabled the invaders to make headway against the native troops, yet in every encounter between anything like equal forces they were always decisively defeated, and without exception suffered losses out of all proportion to those they were able to inflict.

It was after an encounter having these results that, on August 25, a body of these demoralised ruffians burned Louvain. They sallied out of that place with the object of driving the Belgians from Aerschot and beyond the Dyle. They were repulsed, and chased back almost to the outskirts of Louvain, sustaining on the way, as usual, a galling fire on both flanks. It has been suggested that the officer in command,E whose competence is sufficiently measured by the adventure, gave the order to sack and destroy the town in order to disguise the indiscipline of his troops. The motive assigned is not easy to accept. According to the statement for which the Belgian Government made itself responsible—a statement based on evidence which inquiry has not left open to doubt:—

The German armed guard at the entrance to the town mistook the nature of this incursion, and fired on their routed fellow-countrymen, taking them for Belgians. In spite of all denials from the authorities, the Germans, in order to cover their mistake, pretended that it was the inhabitants who had fired on them, whereas the inhabitants, including the police, had all been disarmed more than a week before.

Without inquiry and without listening to any protest, the German commander announced that the town would immediately be destroyed. The inhabitants were ordered to leave their dwellings; part of the men were made prisoners; the women and children put into trains of which the destination is unknown.

Soldiers, furnished with bombs, set fire to all parts of the town. The splendid church of St. Pierre, the University buildings, the Library, and the scientific establishments were delivered to the flames. Several notable citizens were shot.

The town of 45,000 inhabitants, the intellectual metropolis of the Low Countries since the fifteenth century, is now no more than a heap of ashes.

Such is the brief official statement. It was, however, but the palest reflection of the facts. How scrupulously restrained the Belgian Government were in framing it, is shown from the accounts given by eye-witnesses of the tragedy.

One of these, a Dutchman who owed his escape to the possession of papers proving his nationality, and afterwards reached Breda, told his experiences:—

On Tuesday, the 25th, many troops left the town. We had a few soldiers in our house. At six o’clock, when everything was ready for dinner, alarm signals sounded, and the soldiers rushed through the streets, shots whistled through the air, cries and groans arose on all sides; but we did not dare leave our house, and took refuge in the cellar, where we stayed through long and fearful hours. Our shelter was lighted up by the reflection from the burning houses. The firing continued unceasingly, and we feared that at any moment our house would be burnt over our heads. At break of day I crawled from the cellar to the street door, and saw nothing but a raging sea of fire.

At nine o’clock the shooting diminished, and we resolved to make a dash to the station. Abandoning our home and all our goods except what we could carry, and taking all the money we had, we rushed out. What we saw on our way to the station is hardly describable. Everything was burning, the streets were covered with bodies shot dead and half-burnt. Everywhere proclamations had been posted, summoning every man to assist in quenching the flames, and the women and children to stay inside the houses. The station was crowded with fugitives, and I was just trying to show an officer my legitimation papers when the soldiers separated me from my wife and children.

All protests were useless, and a lot of us were marched off to a big shed in the goods yard, from where we could see the finest buildings of the city, the most beautiful historical monuments, being burned down.

Shortly afterwards German soldiers drove before them 300 men and lads to the corner of the Boulevard van Tienen and the Maria Theresa-street, opposite the CafÉ Vermalen. There they were shot. The sight filled us with horror. The Burgomaster, two magistrates, the Rector of the University, and all police officials had been shot already.

With our hands bound behind our backs we were then marched off by the soldiers, still without having seen our wives or children. We went through the Juste de Litshstreet, along the Diester Boulevard, across the Vaart and up the hill.

From the Mont Cesar we had a full view of the burning town, St. Peter in flames, while the troops incessantly sent shot after shot into the unfortunate town. We came through the village of Herent—one single heap of ruins—where another troop of prisoners, including half-a-dozen priests, joined us. Suddenly, about ten o’clock, evidently as the result of some false alarm, we were ordered to kneel down, and the soldiers stood behind us with their rifles ready to fire, using us as a shield. But fortunately for us nothing happened.

After a delay of half an hour, our march was continued. No conversation was allowed, and the soldiers continually maltreated us. One soldier struck me with all his might with the heavy butt-end of his rifle. I could hardly walk any further, but I had to. We were choked with thirst, but the Germans wasted their drinking water without offering us a drop.

At seven o’clock we arrived at Camperhout, en route for Malines. We saw many half-burnt bodies—men, women, and children. Frightened to death and half-starved, we were locked up in the church, and there later joined by another troop of prisoners from the surrounding villages.

At ten o’clock the church was lighted up by burning houses. Again shots whistled through the air, followed by cries and groans.

At five o’clock next morning, all the priests were taken out by the soldiers and shot, together with eight Belgian soldiers, six cyclists, and two gamekeepers. Then the officer told us that we could go back to Louvain. This we did, but only to be recaptured by other soldiers, who brought us back to Camperhout. From there we marched to Malines, not by the high road, but along the river. Some of the party fell into the water, but all were rescued. After thirty-six hours of ceaseless excitement and danger we arrived at Malines, where we were able to buy some food, and from there I escaped to Holland. I still do not know where my wife and children are.F

Another witness was Mr. Gerald Morgan, an American resident at Brussels. His narrative, given after his eventual arrival in England by way of Louvain, was published in the Daily Telegraph on September 3. He made a tour over the German line of march, and found their wounded scattered through every town and village not yet destroyed. In the absence of any German field hospitals, these men were left in any buildings available to be removed as far as possible back to Germany in returning supply wagons, ’buses or motor-cars. To calculate their number was very difficult. Mr. Morgan goes on to say:—

After this I returned to Brussels, and we Americans in Brussels then decided that it was time we shook the soil of the country from our feet. We found that we could return to England on a troop-train, vi Louvain, LiÉge, and Aix-la-Chapelle, and thence over the Dutch border. A question arose as to how long the train would stop at Louvain, but on the following morning the German staff office at the railway station said, “You won’t stop at Louvain, as Louvain was being destroyed.” We left at three o’clock, the train stopping with abominable jerks every few minutes, like a German soldier saluting. We began to see signs of destruction in the outlying villages shortly before we reached Louvain. Houses in the villages were in flames.

An hour before sunset we entered Louvain, and found the city a smoking furnace. The railway station was crowded with troops, drunk with loot and liquor, and rapine as well. From house to house, acting under orders, groups of soldiers were carrying lighted straw, placing it in the basement, and then passing it on to the next. It was not one’s idea of a general conflagration, for each house burnt separately—hundreds of individual bonfires—while the sparks shot up like thousands of shooting stars into the still night air. It was exactly like a display of fireworks or Bengal lights, and set pieces, at a grand display in Coney Island.

Meanwhile, through the station arch we saw German justice being administered. In a square outside, where the cabs stand, an officer stood, and the soldiers drove the citizens of Louvain into his presence, like so many unwilling cattle on a market day. Some of the men, after a few words between the officer and the escorts, were marched off under fixed bayonets behind the railway station. Then we heard volleys, and the soldiers returned. Then the train moved out, and the last we saw of the doomed city was an immense red glare in the gathering darkness. My impressions after Louvain were just as if I had read and dreamt of one of Zola’s novels.

Weighing this evidence, it is not possible to resist the conclusion that the atrocity of Louvain was planned and carried out deliberately and in cold blood, and it is difficult to avoid the suspicion that the trivial conflict between the German armed guard and their retreating troops, a conflict which apparently hurt nobody on either side, was prearranged in order to afford a colourable excuse. It has been alleged that the troops forming the guard were drunk, and that they had just turned out on the alarm being sounded, after a debauch following the sack of a brewery. There is no present proof that the sack of the brewery had anything to do with the affair, or that the connection was anything more than an afterthought.

The inference of a plan is strengthened, not only by the method with which, as Mr. Morgan shows, the destruction and its accompanying “military executions” were completed, but by the provocation which had previously been offered to the inhabitants, but offered, as it proved, without the evidently expected effect.

On the latter point the statement of the escaped Dutch resident already quoted is circumstantial, and since this is not a Belgian witness, his relation may be accepted as unbiassed. He says:—

Before the Germans entered the town the Civic Guard had been disarmed, and all weapons in the possession of the population had to be given up. Even toy guns and toy pistols and precious collections of old weapons, bows and arrows, and other antique arms useless for any kind of modern warfare had to be surrendered, and all these things—sometimes of great personal value to the owner—have since been destroyed by the Germans. The value of one single private collection has been estimated at about £1,000. From the pulpits the priests urged the people to keep calm, as that was the only way to prevent harm being done to them.

A few days after the entry of the German troops the military authority agreed to cease quartering their men in private houses, in return for a payment of 100,000 francs (£4,000) per day. On some houses between forty and fifty men had been billeted. After the first payment of the voluntary contribution the soldiers camped in the open or in the public buildings. The beautiful rooms in the Town Hall, where the civil marriages take place, were used as a stable for cavalry horses.

At first everything the soldiers bought was paid for in cash or promissory notes, but later this was altered. Soldiers came and asked for change, and when this was handed to them they tendered in return for the hard cash a piece of paper—a kind of receipt.

All the houses abandoned by their owners were ransacked, notwithstanding the warnings from the military authorities forbidding the troops to pillage. The Germans imprisoned as hostages of war the Burgomaster, two magistrates, and a number of influential citizens. On Sunday, the 23rd, I and some other influential people in the town were roused from our beds. We were informed that an order had been given that 250 mattresses, 200 lb. of coffee, 250 loaves of bread, and 500 eggs must be on the market-place within an hour. On turning out we found the Burgomaster standing on the market-place, and crowds of citizens, half naked, or in their night attire, carrying everything they could lay hands on to the market, that no harm might befall their Burgomaster. After this had been done the German officer in command told us that his orders had been misinterpreted, and that he only wanted the mattresses.

On this, it is clear that the townspeople did everything possible to avoid giving offence to these brutal enemies. On the other hand, it is equally clear that the German military “authorities” issued orders against pillage by the troops, which were taken by the latter, and must have been well known to be, hypocritical.

The proofs as to the real responsibility for this foul deed are irresistible. The soldiers of Alva at their worst never perpetrated any horror so utterly cowardly. They were fired by the fury of religious zeal. Blindly mistaken and politically disastrous as it proved to be, it was a motive worthy of respect by the side of the stupid hate and the mean fear born of the grovelling and greedy materialism of these “conquerors.”

The destroyers saved the incomparable town hall, because they destined it to be an ornament of a Germanised Belgium. The rest of the town, however, and more particularly the older part of it, was reduced to a blackened ruin, from which, as from other burning towns, arose a mighty cloud of smoke. Doubtless it was hoped that this spectacle, visible from Antwerp, as well as from Brussels, would strike terror into the people. What they could not gain by arms the Germans sought to gain by the devices of barbarity. But a Nemesis waits on this mode of “warfare.” It is related by Lamartine that after their subjugation of Servia the Turks collected into a pyramid the skulls of the slain. This ghastly monument, situated in a desolate valley, the scene of a great battle, was intended as an everlasting warning. To the Serbs it became a remembrance of the price their fathers had been willing to pay for liberty: a revered national memorial which kept alive the spirit which at last crushed their oppressors.

In the same way, the oppressors of Belgium fanned the fires of resistance. In the library of the University of Louvain they had destroyed ancient Greek, Hebrew, and Oriental texts and manuscripts of priceless value; they had not destroyed the valour of one Belgian heart. They had laid in ashes a place which had rightly been called by Lipsius the Belgian Athens, and had earned the praise and admiration of philosophers from Erasmus to Sir William Hamilton; they had but enhanced the glory of the town where, while Northern Europe was still covered by intellectual night, and “kultur” had not yet shed its radiance on Germany, nor contributed to produce a Prussian army, a community of mere weavers had, first among the municipalities of Europe, founded out of their hard earnings, a seat of philosophy, science, and the arts, and in its twenty-eight colleges, the nurseries of many famous men, for centuries led the way in their cultivation. Its university buildings and its library; its art treasuresG; its Academy of Painting; its School of Music; its Museum of National History had been committed to the flames at the hands of rabble soldiery, urged on by still more degraded officers, but the brand applied was applied to their own country, whose good name they had burned from among nations.