On the morning of August 25th there were few German troops in Louvain.

The greater part of those that had entered the town since the 19th

had passed on to the front in the direction of Malines, and were

now engaged in resisting the Belgian sortie from Antwerp, which was

made this day. As the Belgian offensive made progress, the sound of

the cannon became louder and louder in Louvain,[165] and the German

garrison grew increasingly uneasy. Despatch riders from the front kept

arriving at the Kommandantur;[166] at 4.0 o’clock a general alarm was

sounded;[167] the troops in the town assembled and marched out towards

the north-western suburbs;[168] military waggons drove in from the

north-west in disorder, “their drivers grasping revolvers and looking

very much excited.”[169] At the same time, reinforcements[170] began

to detrain at the _Station_, which stands at the eastern extremity of

the town, and is connected with the central _Grand’ Place_ and with

the University buildings by the broad, straight line of the _Rue de la

Station_, flanked with the private houses of the wealthier inhabitants.

These fresh troops were billeted hastily by their officers in the

quarters nearest the _Station_.[171] The cavalry were concentrated

in the _Place du Peuple_, a large square lying a short distance to

the left of the _Rue de la Station_, about half-way towards the

_Grand’ Place_.[172] The square was already crowded with the transport

that had been sent back during the day from the front.[173] As the

reinforcements kept on detraining, and the quarters near the _Station_

filled up, the later arrivals went on to the _Grand’ Place_ and the

_Hôtel-de-Ville_,[174] which was the seat of the Kommandantur.

During all this time the agitation increased. About 7.0 o’clock a

company of Landsturm which had marched out in the afternoon to the

north-western outskirts of the town, were ordered back by their

battalion commander to the _Place de la Station_--the extensive square

in front of the _station buildings_, out of which the _Rue de la

Station_ leads into the middle of the city.[175] The military police

pickets[176] in the centre of the city were on the alert. Between

7.0 and 7.30 the alarm was sounded again,[177] and the troops who

had arrived that afternoon assembled from their billets and stood to

arms.[178] The tension among them was extreme. They had been travelling

hard all day; they had entered the town at dusk; it was now dark, and

they did not know their way about the streets, nor from what quarter

to expect the enemy forces, which were supposed to be on the point of

making their appearance. It was in these circumstances that, a few

minutes past eight o’clock, the shooting in Louvain broke out.

All parties agree that it broke out in answer to signals. A Belgian

witness,[179] living near the _Tirlemont Gate_, saw a German

military motor-car dash up from the _Boulevard de Tirlemont_, make

luminous signals at the Gate, and then dash off again. A fusillade

immediately followed. The German troops bivouacked in the _Place de

la Station_ saw two rockets, the first green and the second red, rise

in quick succession from the centre of the town.[180] They found

themselves under fire immediately afterwards. A similar rocket was seen

later in the night to rise above the conflagration.[181] It is natural

to suppose that the rockets, as well as the lights on the car, were

German military signals of the kind commonly used in European armies

for signalling in the dark. There had been two false alarms already

that afternoon and evening; there is nothing incredible in a third. The

German troops in the _Place de la Station_ assumed that the signals

were of Belgian origin (and therefore of civilian origin, as the

Belgian troops did not after all reach the town), because these signals

were followed by firing directed against themselves. They could not

believe that the shots were fired in error by their own comrades, yet

there is convincing evidence that this was the case.

It is certain that German troops fired on each other in at least two

places--in the _Rue de la Station_ and in the _Rue de Bruxelles_, which

leads into the _Grand’ Place_ from the opposite direction.

“We were at supper,” states a Belgian witness,[182] whose house was in

the _Rue de la Station_, “when about 8.15, shots were suddenly fired in

the street by German cavalry coming from the _Station_. The troops who

were bivouacked in the square replied, and an automobile on its way to

the _Station_ had to stop abruptly opposite my house and reverse, while

its occupants fired. Within a few seconds the din of revolver and rifle

shots had become terrific. The fusillade was sustained, and spread

(north-eastward) towards the _Boulevard de Diest_. It became so furious

that there was even gun-fire. The encounter between the German troops

continued as far as the _Grand’ Place_, where on at least two occasions

there was machine-gun fire. The fight lasted for from fifteen to twenty

minutes with desperation; it persisted an hour longer after that, but

with less violence.”

[Illustration: 19. CAPELLE-AU-BOIS]

[Illustration: 20. CAPELLE-AU-BOIS]

“At the stroke of eight,” states another witness,[183] “shots were

heard by us, coming from the direction of the _Place du Peuple_, where

the German cavalry was concentrated. Part of the baggage-train, which

was stationed in the _Rue Léopold_, turned right about and went off

at a gallop towards the _Station_. I was at my front door and heard

the bullets whistling as they came from the _Place du Peuple_. At this

moment a sustained fusillade broke out, and there was a succession of

cavalry-charges in the direction of the _Station_.”

The stampede in the _Place du Peuple_ is described by a German

officer[184] who was present. “I heard the clock strike in a tower....

Complete darkness already prevailed. At the same moment I saw a green

rocket go up above the houses south-west of the square.... Firing was

directed on the German troops in the square.... Whilst riding round

the square, I was shot from my horse on the north-eastern side. I

distinctly heard the rattling of machine-guns, and the bullets flew in

great numbers round about me.... After I had fallen from my horse, I

was run over by an artillery transport waggon, the horses of which had

been frightened by the firing and stampeded....”

The shots by which this officer was wounded evidently came from German

troops in the _Rue Léopold_, where they were attacking the house of

Professor Verhelst. The Landsturm Company bivouacked in the _Station

Square_ was already replying vigorously to what it imagined to be the

Belgian fire, coming from the _Rue Léopold_ and the _Rue de la Station_.

“I stood with my Company,” states the Company Commander,[185] “at

about ten minutes to eight in the _Station Square_. I had stood

about five minutes, when suddenly, quite unexpectedly, shots were

fired at my Company from the surrounding houses, from the windows,

and from the attics. Simultaneously I heard lively firing from the

_Rue de la Station_, as well as from all the neighbouring streets.”

(Precisely the district in which the newly-arrived troops had taken

up their quarters.) “Shots were also fired from the windows of my

hotel--straight from my room” (which had doubtless been occupied by

some newly-arrived soldier during the afternoon, while the witness was

on duty at the Malines Gate)....

“We now knelt down and fired at the opposite houses.... I sought cover

with my Company in the entrances of some houses. During the assault

five men of my Company were wounded. The fact that so few were wounded

is due to the fact that the inhabitants were shooting too high....

“About an hour later I was summoned to His Excellency General von

Boehn, who was standing near by. His Excellency asked for an exact

report, and, after I had made it, he said to me: ‘Can you take an oath

concerning what you have just reported to me--in particular, that the

first shots were fired by the inhabitants from the houses?’ I then

answered: ‘Yes, I can swear to that fact.’”

But what evidence had the Lieutenant for the “fact” to which he swore?

There was no doubt about the shots, but he gives no proof of the

identity of those who fired them, and another witness,[186] who lived

in a house looking on to the _Station Square_, is equally positive that

the assailants, too, were German soldiers.

“Just before eight,” he states, “we heard one shot from a rifle,

followed immediately after by two others, and then a general fusillade

began. I went at once to my garden; the bullets were passing quite

close to me; I went back to the house and on to the balcony, and there

I saw the Germans, not fighting Belgians, but fighting each other at a

distance of 200 or 300 yards. At 8.0 o’clock it begins to be dark, but

I am perfectly certain it was Germans fighting Germans. The firing on

both sides passed right in front of my house, and from the other side

of the railway. I was low down on the balcony, quite flat, and watched

it all. They fought hard for about an hour. The officers whistled

and shouted out orders; there was terrible confusion until each side

found out they were fighting each other, and then the firing ceased.

About half an hour after, on the other side of the railway, I heard

a machine-gun--I was told afterwards that the Germans were killing

civilians with it. It went on certainly for at least five or six

minutes, stopping now and then for a few seconds....”

This fighting near the _Station_ seems to have been the first and

fiercest of all, but the panic spread like wildfire through the city.

It was spread by the horses that stampeded in the _Place du Peuple_

and elsewhere, and galloped riderless in all directions--across the

_Station Square_,[187] through the suburb of _Corbeek-Loo_,[188] down

the _Rue de la Station_,[189] and up the _Rue de Tirlemont_,[190] the

_Rue de Bruxelles_,[191] and the _Rue de Malines_.[192] The troops

infected by the panic either ran amok or took to flight.

“About 8.0 o’clock,” states a witness,[193] “the _Rue de la Station_

was the scene of a stampede of horses and baggage waggons, some of

which were overturned. A smart burst of rifle-fire occurred at this

moment. This came from the German police-guard in the _Rue de la

Station_, who, seeing troops arrive in disorder, thought that it was

the enemy. Another proof of their mistake is that later during the same

night a group of German soldiers, under the command of an officer, got

into a shop belonging to the F.’s and in charge of their nephew B., and

told him, pointing their revolvers at him, to hide them in the cellar.

A few hours afterwards, hearing troops passing, they compelled him to

go and see if it was the French or the Germans, and when they learnt

that it was the Germans, they called out: ‘Then we are safe,’ and

rejoined their compatriots.”

These new troops hurrying into the town in the midst of the uproar

were infected by the panic in their turn and flung themselves into

the fighting. “On August 25th,” states one of them in his diary,[194]

“we hold ourselves on the alert at _Grimde_ (a sugar refinery); here,

too, everything is burnt and destroyed. From _Grimde_ we continue our

march upon Louvain; here it is a picture of horror all round; corpses

of our men and horses; motor-cars blazing; the water poisoned; we have

scarcely reached the outskirts of the town when the fusillade begins

again more merrily than ever; naturally we wheel about and sweep the

street; then the town is peppered by us thoroughly.”

In the _Rue Léopold_, leading from the _Rue de la Station_ into the

_Place du Peuple_, “at 8.0 o’clock exactly a violent fusillade broke

out.” The newly-arrived troops, who had been under arms since the alarm

at 7.0 o’clock, “took to flight as fast as their legs could carry them.

From our cellar,” states one of the householders on whom they had been

billeted,[195] “we saw them running until they must have been out of

breath.”

There was a single shot, followed by a fusillade and machine-gun fire,

in the _Rue des Joyeuses Entrées_.[196] Waggons and motor-cars were

flying out of the town down the _Rue de Parc_, and soldiers on foot

down the _Rue de Tirlemont_.[197] In the _Rue des Flamands_, which

runs at right-angles between these two latter roads, “at ten minutes

past eight, a shot was fired quite close to the _Institut Supérieur

de Philosophie_” (now converted into the _Hôpital St. Thomas_).

“We had scarcely taken note of it,” states one of the workers in

the hospital,[198] “when other reports followed. In less than a

minute rifle-shots and machine-gun fire mingled in a terrific din.

Accompanying the crack of the firearms, we heard the dull thud of

galloping hoofs in the _Rue de Tirlemont_.”

Mgr. Deploige, President of the Institute and Director of the Hospital,

reports[199] that “a lively fusillade broke out suddenly at 8.0 o’clock

(Belgian time), at different points simultaneously--at the _Brussels

Gate_, at the _Tirlemont Gate_, in the _Rue de la Station_, _Rue

Léopold_, _Rue Marie-Thérèse_, _Rue des Joyeuses Entrées_, _Rue de

Tirlemont_, etc.[200] It was the German troops firing with rifles and

machine-guns. Some houses were literally riddled with bullets, and a

number of civilians were killed in their homes.”

Higher up the _Rue de Tirlemont_, in the direction of the _Grand’

Place_, there was a Belgian Infantry Barracks, which had been

turned into a hospital for slightly incapacitated German soldiers.

The patients were in a state of nervous excitement already. “Every

man,” states one of them,[201] “had his rifle by his side, also

ball-cartridge.”--“About 9.0 o’clock,” states another,[202] “we heard

shots.... We had to fall in in the yard. A sergeant-major distributed

cartridges among us, whereupon I marched out with about 20 men. In the

_Rue de Tirlemont_ a lively fire was directed against us from guns of

small bore.... We pushed our way into a restaurant from which shots

had come, and found in the proprietor’s possession about 100 Browning

cartridges. He was arrested and shot.”--“We now,” continues the former,

“stormed all the houses out of which shots were being fired.... Those

who were found with weapons were immediately shot or bayonetted.... I

myself, together with a comrade, bayonetted one inhabitant who went for

me with his knife....”

But who would not defend himself with a knife when attacked by an

armed man breaking into his house? The witness admits that only five

civilians were armed out of the twenty-five dragged out. Were these

“armed” with knives? Or if revolver bullets were found in their houses,

was it proved that they had not delivered up their revolvers at the

time when they had been ordered to do so by the municipal authorities

and the German Command? The witness does not claim to have found the

revolvers themselves as well as the ammunition, though even if he

had that was no proof that his victims had been firing with them, or

even that they were theirs. The German Army uses “Brownings” too,

and at this stage of the panic many German soldiers had broken into

private houses and were firing from the windows as points of vantage.

Two German soldiers broke into the house of Professor Verhelst (_Rue

Léopold_, _16_), and fired into the street out of the second storey

window. Other Germans passing shouted: “They have been shooting here,”

and returned the fire.[203] Mgr. Ladeuze, Rector of Louvain University,

was looking from the window of his house adjoining the garden of

the _Chemical Institute, Rue de Namur_, and saw two German soldiers

hidden among the trees and firing over the wall into the street.[204]

Moreover, there is definite evidence of Germans firing on one another

by mistake in other quarters beside the neighbourhood of the _Station_.

“I myself know,” declares a Belgian witness,[205] “that the Germans

fired on one another on August 25th. On that day, at about 8.0 p.m.,

I was in the _Rue de Bruxelles_ at Louvain. I was hidden in a house.

There was one party of German soldiers at one end of the street firing

on another party at the other end. I could see that this happened

myself. On the next day I spoke to a German soldier called Hermann

Otto--he was a private in a Bavarian regiment. He told me that he

himself was in the _Rue de Bruxelles_ the evening before, and that the

two parties firing on one another were Bavarians and Poles, he being

among the Bavarians....”

The Poles openly blamed the Bavarians for the error. A wounded Polish

Catholic, who was brought in during the night to the Dominican

Monastery in the _Rue Juste-Lipse_, told the monks that “he had been

wounded by a German bullet in an exchange of shots between two groups

of German soldiers.”[206] On the Thursday following, a wounded Polish

soldier was lying in the hospital of the Sisters of Mary at Wesemael,

and, seeing German troops patrolling the road between Wesemael and

Louvain, exclaimed to one of the nuns: “These drunken pigs fired on

us.”[207]

The casualties inflicted by the Germans on each other do not, however,

appear to have been heavy. One German witness[208] saw “two dead

transport horses and several dead soldiers” lying in the _Place du

Peuple_. Another[209] saw a soldier lying near the _Juste-Lipse

Monument_ who had been killed by a shot through the mouth. But most

express astonishment at the lightness of the losses caused by so heavy

a fire. “It is really a miracle,” said a German military doctor to

a Belgian Professor in the course of the night,[210] “that not one

soldier has been wounded by this violent fusillade.”--“A murderous

fire,” states the surgeon of the Second Neuss Landsturm Battalion,[211]

“was directed against us from _Rue de la Station_, _No. 120_. The fact

that we or some of us were not killed I can merely explain by the fact

that we were going along the same side of the street from which the

shots were fired, and that it was night.”--“A tremendous fire,” states

Major von Manteuffel, the Etappen-Kommandant,[212] “was opened from

the houses surrounding the _Grand’ Place_, which was now filled with

artillery (one battery), and with transport columns, motor-lorries and

tanks of benzine.... I believe there were three men wounded, chiefly

in the legs.” General von Boehn, commanding the Ninth Reserve Army

Corps, estimates[213] that the total loss, in killed, wounded, and

missing, of his General Command Staff, which was stationed in the

_Place du Peuple_, “amounts to 5 officers, 2 officials, 23 men, and 95

horses.”--“I note that the inhabitants fired far too high,” states a

N.C.O. of the Landsturm Company drawn up in the _Station Square_.[214]

“That was our good luck, because otherwise, considering the fearful

fire which was directed against us from all the houses in the _Station

Square_, most German officers and soldiers would have been killed or

seriously wounded.”

Thus the German troops in Louvain seem not merely to have fired on one

another, but to have exaggerated hysterically the amount of danger each

incurred from the other’s mistake. And the legend grew with time. The

deposition last quoted was taken down on September 17th, 1914, less

than a month after the event. But when examined again, on November

19th, the same witness deposed that “Many of us were wounded, and some

of us even received mortal wounds.... I fully maintain my evidence of

September 17th,” he naïvely adds in conclusion.

On the night of August 25th these German soldiers were distraught

beyond all restraints of reason and justice. They blindly assumed that

it was the civilians, and not their comrades, who had fired, and when

they discovered their error they accused the civilians, deliberately,

to save their own reputation.

The Director and the Chief Surgeon of the _Hôpital St.-Thomas_ went

out into the street after the first fusillade was over. Three soldiers

with fixed bayonets rushed at them shouting: “You fired! Die!”--and

it was only with difficulty that they persuaded them to spare their

lives. When the firing began again a sergeant broke into the hospital

shouting: “Who fired here?”--and placed the hospital staff under

guard.[215] This was the effect of panic, but there were cases in which

the firing was imputed to civilians, and punishment meted out for

it, by means of criminal trickery. It was realised that the material

evidence would be damning to the German Army. The empty cartridge cases

were all German which were picked up in the streets,[216] and it is

stated that every bullet extracted from the bodies of wounded German

soldiers was found to be of German origin.[217] The Germans, convicted

by these proofs, shrank from no fraud which might enable them to

transfer the guilt on to the heads of Belgian victims.

“The Germans took the horses out of a Belgian Red Cross car,” states a

Belgian witness[218] living in the _Station Square_, “frightened them

so that they ran down the street, and then shot three of them. Two fell

quite close to my house. They then took a Belgian artillery helmet and

put it on the ground, so as to prepare a _mise-en-scène_ to pretend

that the Belgians had been fighting in the street.”

At a late hour of the night a detachment of German soldiers was

passing one of the professors’ houses, when a shot rang out, followed

by a volley from the soldiers through the windows of the house. The

soldiers then broke in and accused the inmates of having fired the

first shot. They were mad with fury, and the professor and his family

barely escaped with their lives. A sergeant pointed to his boot, with

the implication that the shot had struck him there; but a witness

in another house actually saw this sergeant fire the original shot

himself, and make the same gesture after it to incite his comrades.[219]

A staff-surgeon billeted on a curé in the suburb of _Blauwput_

pretended he had been wounded by civilians when he had really fallen

from a wall. On the morning of the 26th the officer in local command

arrested fifty-seven men at _Blauwput_, this curé included, in order

to decimate them in reprisal for wounds which the surgeon and two

other soldiers had received. The curé was exempted by the lot, when

the surgeon came up with a handful of revolver-cartridges which he

professed to have discovered in the curé’s house. The officer answered:

“Go away. I have searched this house myself,” and the surgeon slunk

off. The curé was not added to the victims, but every tenth man was

shot all the same.[220]

That “the civilians had fired” was already an official dogma

with the German military authorities in Louvain. Mgr. Coenraets,

Vice-Rector of the University, was serving that day as a hostage at

the _Hôtel-de-Ville_. A Dominican monk, Father Parijs, was there at

the moment the firing broke out, in quest of a pass for remaining

out-of-doors at night on ambulance service. He was now retained as

well, and Alderman Schmit was fetched from his house. Von Boehn, the

General Commanding the Ninth Reserve Corps, harangued these hostages

on his arrival from the Malines front, and von Manteuffel, the

Etappen-Kommandant, then conducted them, with a guard of soldiers,

round the town. Baron Orban de Xivry was dragged out of his house

to join them on the way. The procession halted at intervals in the

streets, and the four hostages were compelled to proclaim to their

fellow-citizens, in Flemish and in French, that, unless the firing

ceased, the hostages themselves would be shot, the town would have to

pay an indemnity of 20,000,000 francs, the houses from which shots were

fired would be burnt, and artillery-fire would be directed upon Louvain

as a whole.[221]

But “reprisals” against the civil population had already begun. The

firing from German soldiers in the houses upon German soldiers in

the street was answered by a general assault of the latter upon all

houses within their reach. “They broke the house-doors,” states a

Belgian woman,[222] “with the butt-ends of their rifles.... They shot

through the gratings of the cellars.”--“In the _Hôtel-de-Ville_,”

states von Manteuffel,[223] “I saw the Company stationed there on the

ground floor, standing at the windows and answering the fire of the

inhabitants. In front of the _Hôtel-de-Ville_, on the entrance steps,

I also saw soldiers firing in reply to the inhabitants’ fire in the

direction of their houses.”--“Personally I was under the distinct

impression,” states a staff officer,[224] “that we were fired at from

the Hôtel Maria Theresa with machine-guns.” (This is quite probable,

and merely proves that those who fired were German soldiers.) “The fire

from machine-guns lasted from four to five minutes, and was immediately

answered by our troops, who finally stormed the house and set it on

fire.”--“The order was passed up from the rear that we should fire

into the houses,” states an infantryman who had just detrained and was

marching with his unit into the town.[225] “Thereupon we shot into

the house-fronts on either side of us. To what extent the fire was

answered I cannot say, the noise and confusion were too great.”--“We

now dispersed towards both sides,” states a lance-corporal in the

same battalion,[226] “and fired into the upper windows.... How long

the firing lasted I cannot say.... We now began shooting into the

ground-floor windows too, as well as tearing down a certain number of

the shutters. I made my way into the house from which the shot had

come, with a few others who had forced open the door. We could find no

one in the house. In the room from which the shot had come there was,

however, a petroleum lamp, lying overturned on the table and still

smouldering....”

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

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

These assaults on houses passed over inevitably into wholesale

incendiarism. “The German troops,” as the Editors of the German White

Book remark in their summarising report on the events at Louvain,

“had to resort to energetic counter-measures. In accordance with the

threats, the inhabitants who had taken part in the attack were shot,

and the houses from which shots had been fired were set on fire. The

spreading of the fire to other houses also and the destruction of some

streets could not be avoided. In this way the Cathedral” (_i. e._, the

Collegiate Church of St. Pierre) “also caught fire....”

There is a map in the German White Book which shows the quarters burnt

down. The incendiarism started in the _Station Square_, and spread

along the _Boulevard de Tirlemont_ as far as the _Tirlemont Gate_.

It was renewed across the railway and devastated the suburbs to the

east. Then it was extended up the _Rue de la Station_ into the heart of

the town, and here the _Church of St. Pierre_ was destroyed, and the

_University Halles_ with the priceless _University Library_--not by

mischance, as the German Report alleges, but by the deliberate work of

German troops, employing the same incendiary apparatus as had been used

already at Visé, Liége and elsewhere.[227]

The burning was directed by a German officer from the _Vieux Marché_, a

large open space near the centre of the town, and by another group of

officers stationed in the _Place du Peuple_.[228] The burning here is

described by a German officer[229] (whose evidence on other points has

been quoted above). “The Company,” he states, “continued to fire into

the houses. The fire of the inhabitants (_sic_) gradually died down.

Thereupon the German soldiers broke in the doors of the houses and set

the houses on fire, flinging burning petroleum lamps into the houses or

striking off the gas-taps, setting light to the gas which rushed out

and throwing table-cloths and curtains into the flames. Here and there

benzine was also employed as a means of ignition. The order to set fire

to the houses was given out by Colonel von Stubenrauch, whose voice I

distinguished....”

In the _Rue de la Station_ the Germans set the houses on fire with

incendiary bombs. This was seen by a Belgian witness,[230] and is

confirmed by the German officer just cited, who, in the _Place du

Peuple_, “heard repeatedly the detonation of what appeared to be heavy

guns” round about him. “I supposed,” he proceeds, “that artillery was

firing; but since there was none present, there is only one explanation

for this--that the inhabitants (_sic_) also threw hand-grenades.”

In the _Rue de Manège_[231] another Belgian witness saw a soldier

pouring inflammable liquid over a house from a bucket, and this though

a German military surgeon, present on the spot, admitted that in

that house there had been nobody firing. Soldiers are also stated to

have been seen[232] with a complete incendiary equipment (syringe,

hatchet, etc.), and with “Gott mit Uns” and “Company of Incendiaries”

blazoned on their belts. The Germans deny that the _Church of St.

Pierre_ was deliberately burnt, and allege that the fire spread to

it from private houses;[233] but a Dutch witness[234] saw it burning

while the adjoining houses were still intact. There is less evidence

for the deliberate burning of the _University Halles_, containing

the _Library_, but it is significant that the building was completely

consumed in one night (a result hardly possible without artificial

means), and at 11.0 p.m., in the middle of the burning, an officer

answered a Belgian monk, who protested, that it was “By Order.”[235]

The manuscripts and early printed books in the _Library_ were one of

the treasures of Europe. The whole collection of 250,000 volumes was

the intellectual capital of the University, without which it could

not carry on its work. Every volume and manuscript was destroyed. The

Germans pride themselves on saving the _Hôtel-de-Ville_, but they

saved it because it was the seat of the German Kommandantur, and this

only suggests that, had they desired, they could have prevented the

destruction of the other buildings as well.

As the houses took fire the inhabitants met their fate. Some were

asphyxiated in the cellars where they had taken refuge from the

shooting, or were burnt alive as they attempted to escape from their

homes.[236] Others were shot down by the German troops as they ran out

into the street,[237] or while they were fighting the flames.[238] “The

franc-tireurs,” as they are called by the German officer in the _Place

du Peuple_,[239] “were without exception evil-looking figures, such

as I have never seen elsewhere in all my life. They were shot down by

the German posts stationed below....”

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

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

Others, again, tried to save themselves by climbing garden walls.[240]

“I, my mother and my servants,” states one of these,[241] “took refuge

at A.’s, whose cellars are vaulted and therefore afforded us a better

protection than mine. A little later we withdrew to A.’s stables, where

about 30 people, who had got there by climbing the garden walls, were

to be found. Some of these poor wretches had had to climb 20 walls.

A ring came at the bell. We opened the door. Several civilians flung

themselves under the porch. The Germans were firing upon them from the

street.”

“When we were crossing a particularly high wall,” states another

victim,[242] “my wife was on the top of the wall and I was helping

her to get down, when a party of 15 Germans came up with rifles and

revolvers. They told us to come down. My wife did not follow as quickly

as they wished. One of them made a lunge at her with his bayonet. I

seized the blade of the bayonet and stopped the lunge. The German

soldier then tried to stab me in the face with his bayonet....

“They kept hitting us with the butt-ends of their rifles--the women and

children as well as the men. They struck us on the elbows because they

said our arms were not raised high enough....

“We were driven in this way through a burning house to the _Place de

la Station_. There were a number of prisoners already there. In front

of the station entrance there were the corpses of three civilians

killed by rifle fire. The women and the children were separated. The

women were put on one side and the men on the other. One of the German

soldiers pushed my wife with the butt-end of his rifle, so that she was

compelled to walk on the three corpses. Her shoes were full of blood....

“Other prisoners were being continually brought in. I saw one

prisoner with a bayonet-wound behind his ear. A boy of fifteen had a

bayonet-wound in his throat in front.... The priests were treated more

brutally than the rest. I saw one belaboured with the butt-ends of

rifles. Some German soldiers came up to me sniggering, and said that

all the women were going to be raped.... They explained themselves by

gestures.... The streets were full of empty wine bottles....

“An officer told me that he was merely executing orders, and that he

himself would be shot if he did not execute them....”

The battue of civilians through the streets was the final horror of

that night. The massacre began with the murder of M. David-Fischbach.

He was a man of property, a benefactor of the University and the town.

Since the outbreak of war he had given 10,000 francs to the Red Cross.

Since the German occupation he had entertained German officers in his

house, which stood in the _Rue de la Station_ opposite the _Statue of

Juste-Lipse_, and about 9.0 o’clock that evening he had gone to bed.

“Close to the _Monument Square_,” states Dr. Berghausen, the German

military surgeon who was responsible for M. David-Fischbach’s

death,[243] “I saw a German soldier lying dead on the ground.... His

comrades told me that the shot had been fired from the corner house

belonging to David-Fischbach. Thereupon I myself, with my servant,

broke in the door of the house and met first the owner of the house,

old David-Fischbach. I challenged him concerning the soldier who had

been murdered.... Old David-Fischbach declared he knew nothing about

it. Thereupon his son, young Fischbach, came downstairs from the

first floor, and from the porter’s lodge appeared an old servant. I

immediately took father, son, and servant with me into the street. At

that moment a tumult arose in the street, because a fearful fusillade

had opened from a few houses on the same side of the street against the

soldiers standing by the Monument and against myself. In the darkness I

then lost sight of David-Fischbach, with his son and servant....”

The soldiers set the old man with his back against the statue. Standing

with his arms raised, he had to watch his house set on fire. Then

he was bayonetted and finally shot to death. His son was shot, too.

His house was burnt to the ground, and a servant asphyxiated in the

cellar.[244]

“Later,” adds Dr. Berghausen, “I met Major von Manteuffel with the

hostages, and all four or five of us saw the dead soldier lying in

front of the monument and, a few steps further on, old David-Fischbach.

I assumed that the comrades of the soldier who had been killed ... had

at once inflicted punishment on the owner of the house....”

The corpse was also seen by a professor’s wife who made her way to

the _Hôpital St.-Thomas_--the old man’s white beard was stained with

blood.[245]

The massacre spread. Six workmen returning from their work were

shot down from behind.[246] A woman was shot as she was beating for

admittance on a door.[247] A man had his hands tied behind his back,

and was shot as he ran down the street.[248] Another witness saw 20

men shot.[249] One saw 19 corpses,[250] and corpses were also seen

with their hands tied behind their backs, like the victim mentioned

above.[251] There was the body of a woman cut in two, with a child

still alive beside her.[252] Other children had been murdered, and

were lying dead.[253] There was the body of another murdered woman,

and a girl of fourteen who had been wounded and was being carried to

hospital. A German soldier beckoned a Dutch witness into a shop,[254]

and showed him the shop-keeper’s body in the back-room, in a

night-shirt, with a bullet-wound through the head.

These were the “evil-looking franc-tireurs” whom the German soldiers

shot down at sight. Inhabitants of Louvain dragged as prisoners through

the streets[255] recognised the corpses of people they knew. Here a

bootmaker lay,[256] here a hairdresser,[256] here a professor. The

corpse of Professor Lenertz was lying in front of his house in the

_Boulevard de Tirlemont_. It was recognised by Dr. Noyons, one of his

colleagues (though a Dutchman by nationality), who was serving in the

_Hôpital St.-Thomas_, and so escaped himself.[257] “On the 27th,”

states a Belgian lady,[258] “M. Lenertz’ body was still lying on the

Boulevard. When his wife and children were evicted by the Germans and

came out of their house, members of the family had to stand in front of

the body to hide it from Madame Lenertz’ sight.”

The dead were lying in every quarter of the town. In the _Boulevard

de Tirlemont_ there were six or seven more.[259] There was one at the

end of the _Rue du Manège_.[260] But the greatest number were in the

_Station Square_, where they were seen by all the civilian prisoners

herded thither this night and the following day.[261] Their murder

is described by a German sergeant-major[262] who was fighting in the

neighbourhood of the _Station_. “Various civilians,” he remarks, “were

led off by my men, and after judgment had been given against them

by the Commandant, they were shot in the _Square_ in front of the

_Station_. In accordance with orders, I myself helped to set fire to

various houses, after having in every case previously convinced myself

that no one was left in them. Towards midnight the work was done, and

the Company returned to the station buildings, before which were lying

shot about 15 inhabitants of the town.”

The slaughter itself increased the thirst for blood. A Dutch

witness[263] met a German column marching in from _Aerschot_. “The

soldiers were beside themselves with rage at the sight of the corpses,

and cried: ‘Schweinhunde! Schweinhunde!’ They regarded me with

threatening eyes. I passed on my way....”

The soldiers in their frenzy respected no one. The Hostel for Spanish

students in the _Rue de la Station_ was burnt down, though it was

protected by the Spanish flag. Father Catala, the Superior of the

Hostel and formerly Vice-Consul of Spain, barely escaped with his life.

There was no mercy either for the old or the sick. A retired barrister,

bedridden with paralysis, had his house burnt over his head, and was

brought to the _Hôpital St.-Thomas_ to die. Another old man, more than

eighty years old and in his last illness, was cast out by the soldiers

into the street, and died in the _Hôpital St.-Thomas_ next day.[264] An

aged concierge was cast alive into the blazing ruins of the house it

was his duty to guard.[265] So it went on till dawn, when the havoc was

completed by salvoes of artillery. “At four o’clock in the morning,”

states an officer of the Ninth German Reserve Corps Staff,[266] “the

Army Corps moved out to battle. We did not enter the main streets,

but advanced along an avenue.... As the road carrying our lines of

communication was continuously fired on, the order was given to clear

the town by force. Two guns were sent with 150 shells. The two guns,

firing from the _Railway Station_, swept the streets with shells. Thus

at least the quarter surrounding the _Railway Station_ was secured,

and this made it possible to conduct the supply-columns through the

town....”

It was now the morning of August 26th. At dawn Mgr. Coenraets and

Father Parijs, the hostages of the preceding night, were placed under

escort and marched round the City once more. If the firing continued

the hostages were to be shot. They had to proclaim this themselves to

the inhabitants from point to point of the town, and they were kept at

this task till far on in the day.[267] The inhabitants, meanwhile, were

paying the penalty for the shots which not they but the Germans had

already fired.

In one street after another the people were dragged from their houses,

and those not slaughtered out of hand were driven by the soldiers to

the _Station Square_. “I only had slippers on,” states one victim,[268]

“and no hat or waistcoat. On the way to the _Station Square_, soldiers

kicked me and hit me with the butt-ends of their rifles, and shouted:

‘Oh, you swine! Another who shot at us! You swine!’ My hands were tied

behind my back with a cord, and when I cried: ‘Oh, God, you are hurting

me,’ a soldier spat on me.”--“We had to go in front of the soldiers,”

adds this witness’s wife,[269] “holding our hands above our heads.

All the ladies who lived in the Boulevard--invalids or not--were taken

prisoners. One of them, an old lady of 85, who could scarcely walk, was

dragged from her cellar with her maid.”

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

[Illustration: 26. LOUVAIN: STATION SQUARE]

When they reached the _Station Square_ the men were herded to one side,

the women and children to the other. It was done by an officer with a

loaded revolver.[270] “We were separated from our families,” states one

of the men;[271] “we were knocked about and blows were rained on us

from rifle butts; the women and children and the men were isolated from

one another....”

The men’s pockets were rifled. Purses, keys, penknives and so on

were taken from them.[272] One gentleman’s servant had 7,805 francs

taken from his bag, and was given a receipt for 7,000 francs in

exchange.[273] This was the preliminary to a “trial,” conducted by

Captain Albrecht,[274] a staff officer of the Ninth Reserve Corps.

“The soldiers,” states a German tradesman who acted as Captain

Albrecht’s interpreter,[275] “brought forward the civilians whom they

had seized.... In all about 600 persons may have been brought in, the

lives of at least 500 of whom were spared, because no clear proof of

their guilt seemed to be established at the trial. These persons were

set on one side.... Captain Albrecht followed the course--I imagine,

by the command of his superiors--of ordering that those among the men

brought forward upon whom either a weapon or an identification mark

was discovered, or in whose case it was established by at least two

witnesses that they had fired upon the German troops, should be shot.

It is an utter impossibility, according to my firm conviction, that any

innocent man should have lost his life....”

But was there really “clear proof of guilt” in any of these cases? Not

one of these “identification marks” (assumed to establish that the

bearer was a member of the Belgian Army) has been brought forward as

material evidence by the German Government. And was the other material

evidence so clear? One man, for instance,[276] had a German bullet in

his pocket which he had picked up in the street. “He was shot down,

and two of his comrades had to make a pit and bury him in the place

where he was shot.”[277] One priest was shot “because he had purposely

enticed the soldiers, according to their testimony, under the fire of

the franc-tireurs.”[278] Two other priests were shot “for distributing

ammunition to civilians,”[279] but this was only a story heard from

General Headquarters at second-hand. The witness who tells it was sent

with a squad “to set on fire two hotels in the _Station Square_ and

drive out their inmates. The chief culprits found, apparently, a way

of escape in good time over the roofs, since only the proprietor of

one of the hotels presented himself at 5.0 o’clock in the morning, and

very shortly afterwards received the reward he deserved.” But what was

the proof that he deserved it? Not any material evidence on his person,

or the testimony of two witnesses who had seen him fire, but simply

the fact that he was the only Belgian found in a certain building the

inmates of which had been condemned, _a priori_, as franc-tireurs. The

logic of this proceeding is defended by the tradesman interpreter, who

submits[280] that “apart from all evidence, the persons brought to

trial must have acted somehow in a suspicious manner--otherwise they

would never have been brought to trial at all.”

“It is untrue,” nevertheless he states expressly, “that an arbitrary

selection among the persons brought forward was made when the order for

execution was issued.” But one of the Belgian women[281] held prisoner

in the _Station Square_ describes how “the men were placed in rows of

five, and the fifth in each row was taken and shot,” as she affirms,

“in my presence. If the fifth man happened to be old, his place was

taken by the sixth man if he happened to be younger. This was also

witnessed by my grandmother, my uncle and his wife, my cousin and our

servant....”

“The whole day long,” states another Belgian woman,[282] “I saw

civilians being shot--twenty to twenty-five of them, including

some monks or priests--in the _Station Square_ and the _Boulevard

de Tirlemont_, opposite the warehouse. The victims were bound four

together and placed on the pavement in front of the Maison Hamaide. The

soldiers who shot them were on the other side of the Boulevard, on the

warehouse roof. For that matter, the soldiers were firing everywhere in

all directions.”

The executions were also witnessed by the German troops. “On the

morning of August 26th,” states a soldier,[283] “I saw many civilians,

more than a hundred, among them five priests, shot at the _Station

Square_ in Louvain because they had fired on German troops or because

weapons were found on their persons.”

This went on all day, and all day the women were compelled to watch it,

while the surviving men were marched away in batches, and the houses

on either side of the railway continued to burn. When night came the

women were confined in the _Station_. “My aunt,” continues the witness

quoted above,[284] “was taken to the _Station_ with her baby and kept

there till the morning. It rained all the night, and she wrapped the

baby in her skirt. The baby cried for food, and a German soldier

gave the child a little water, and took my aunt and the child to an

empty railway-carriage. Some other women got into the carriage with

her, but during the whole night the Germans fired at the carriage for

amusement....”

The firing by German soldiers had never ceased since the first outbreak

at 8.0 o’clock the evening before. An eye-witness records two bursts of

it on the 26th--one at 5.0 p.m., and a more serious one at 8.45.[285]

This firing was due in part to panic, but was in part of a more

deliberate character. “The whole day,” states a Belgian witness,[286]

“the soldiers went and came through the streets, saying: ‘Man hat

geschossen,’ but it seems that the shots came from the soldiers

themselves. I myself saw a soldier going through the streets shooting

peacefully in the air.” There was also killing in cold blood. A café

proprietor and his daughter were shot by two German soldiers waiting to

be served. The other daughter crept under a table and escaped.[287]

The women held prisoner at the _Station_ were only released at 8.0

o’clock on the morning of the 27th,[288] but they had suffered less

during these hours than the men. “Of the men,” as a German witness puts

it,[289] “some were shot according to Martial Law. In the case of a

large number of others it was, however, impossible to determine whether

they had taken part in the shooting. These persons were placed for the

moment in the _Station_; some of them were conveyed elsewhere.”

The first batch[290] of those “not found guilty” was “conveyed” by the

_Boulevard de Diest_ round the outskirts of the town, and out along

the _Malines Road_, about 11.0 o’clock in the morning. It consisted of

from 70 to 80 men, one of whom at least was 75 years old, while five

were neutrals--a Paraguayan priest, Father Gamarra,[291] the Superior

of the Spanish Hostel, Father Catala, and three of Father Catala’s

students. There were doctors, lawyers, and retired officers among the

Belgian victims. One prisoner was driven on ahead to warn the country

people that all the hostages would be executed if a single shot were

fired;[292] the rest were searched, had their hands bound behind

their backs, and were marched in column under guard. On the way to

_Herent_ they were used as a screen.[293] The village of _Herent_ was

burning, and they had to run through the street to avoid being scorched

by the flames.[294] “Carbonised corpses were lying in front of the

houses.”--“At _Herent_” states the South American priest,[295] “I saw

lying in the nook of a wall the corpse of a girl twelve or thirteen

years old, who had been burnt alive.” On the road from _Herent_ to

_Bueken_ “everything was devastated.” Beyond _Bueken_ and _Campenhout_

they were made to halt in a field, and were told that they were going

to be executed. Squads of soldiers advanced on them from the front

and rear, and they were kept many minutes in suspense. Then they were

marched on again towards _Campenhout_, surrounded by a company which,

they were given to understand, was the “execution company.” Crowds of

German troops, bivouacked by the roadside, shouted at them and spat on

them as they passed. They reached _Campenhout_ at dusk, and were locked

up for the night in the church with the inhabitants of the village. At

4.30 a.m. they were warned to confess, as their execution was imminent.

At 5.0 a.m. they were released from the church, and told they were

free. But at _Bueken_ they were arrested again with a large number of

country people, and were marched back towards _Campenhout_. One of

these countrywomen bore a baby on the road.[296] From the outskirts of

_Campenhout_ they were suddenly ordered to make their own way as best

they could to the Belgian lines. They arrived at _Malines_ about 11.30

in the morning (of August 27th), about 200 strong. Within four hours of

their arrival the German bombardment[297] of _Malines_ began, and they

had to march on again to _Antwerp_.

A second batch[298] was driven out along the _Brussels Road_ on August

26th between 1.0 and 2.0 o’clock in the afternoon. As they marched

through Louvain by the _Rue de Bruxelles_, the guard fired into the

windows of the houses and shot down one of the prisoners, who was

panic-stricken and tried to escape.[299] At _Herent_ they were yoked to

heavy carts and made to drag them along by-roads for three hours,[299]

and another civilian was shot on the way.[299] At 10.0 p.m. they were

made to lie down in an open field with their feet tied together, and

lay thus in pouring rain till 6.0 o’clock next morning. Then they

were marched through _Bueken_, _Thildonck_, _Wespelaer_--still in

pouring rain--with their hands bound by a single long cord. They

reached _Campenhout_ at noon, and were set to digging trenches. At

7.0 p.m. they were allowed to sit down and rest, but only just behind

the batteries bombarding the Antwerp forts,[300] which might have

opened retaliation fire on them at any moment. That night they passed

in Campenhout church, and at 9.0 o’clock next morning (August 28th)

they were marched back again to Louvain, about 1,000 in all--women and

children as well as men. “The houses along the road were burning. The

principal streets of Louvain itself were burnt out.”[300] That night

at Louvain they were crowded into the _Cavalry Riding School_ in the

_Rue du Manège_. Six or seven thousand people were imprisoned there

in all.[301] The press was terrible, and the heat from the burning

buildings round was so great that the glass of the roof cracked during

the night.[301] Two women went out of their minds and two babies

died.[302] Next morning a German officer read them a proclamation

to the effect that their liberty was given them because Germany had

already won the war,[303] and they were marched out again through the

streets. They passed corpses left unburied since the night of August

25th.[303] “The German soldiers giggled at the sight.”[304] Once more

they were driven round the countryside. At _Herent_ the women and

children, and the men over forty, were set free. At _Campenhout_ the

curé was added to the company, after being dragged round his parish at

the tail of a cart.[305] At _Boortmeerbeek_ the men between twenty and

forty were also released at last, and told to go forward to the Belgian

lines, under threat of being shot if they turned back. They arrived in

front of _Fort Waelhem_ in the dark, at 11.0 p.m. on the 29th, and were

fired on by the Belgian outposts; but they managed to make themselves

known and came through to safety.

The third batch “conveyed elsewhere” from Louvain on August 26th

consisted of the Garde Civique.[306] All members of this body were

summoned by proclamation to present themselves at the _Hôtel-de-Ville_

at 2.0 p.m.[307] The 95 men who reported themselves were informed that

they were prisoners, taken to the _Station_, and entrained in two

goods-vans. There were 250 other deportees on the train, including the

Gardes Civiques of _Beyghem_ and _Grimberghen_, and about a hundred

women and children. They did not reach the internment camp at _Münster_

till the night of the 28th, and on the journey they were almost

starved. At _Cologne Station_ a German Red Cross worker refused one of

the women, who asked her in German for a little milk to feed her sick

baby fourteen months old.[308] In the camp at _Münster_ all the men

were crowded promiscuously into a single wooden shed. The floor was

strewn with straw (already old), which was never changed. The blankets

(also old, and too thin to keep out the cold) were never disinfected

or washed. There was no lighting or heating. The food was insufficient

and disgusting. The sanitary arrangements were indecent. And the

deportees had to live under these conditions for months, in the clothes

they stood in, though many had come in slippers and shirt-sleeves--the

proclamation having taken them completely by surprise. In neighbouring

huts there were the 400 Russian students from _Liége_, 600 or 700

people from _Visé_, the Gardes Civiques of _Hasselt_ and _Tongres_,

people from _Haccourt_ and from several communes in the _Province of

Limburg_--about 1,700 prisoners in all. On October 4th an article in

the _Berliner Tageblatt_, signed by a German general, admitted that

“only two of the prisoners at _Münster_ were under suspicion of having

fired”; but none of the prisoners from Louvain were released till

October 30th, and then only 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_.[309] This group seems to have been treated even more

brutally than the rest. One man was so violently mishandled that he

fainted, and was carried in a waggon the first part of the way. He came

to himself in time to see his own house burning and his wife waving him

farewell. He was then thrown out of the waggon and made to go on foot.

His bonds cut so deeply into his flesh that his arms lost all sensation

for three days. The party was marched aimlessly about between _Herent_,

_Louvain_, _Bueken_, and _Herent_ again till 11.0 at night, when they

had to camp in the open in the rain. They were refused water to drink.

At 3.0 a.m. on August 27th they were driven on again, and marched till

3.0 p.m., when they arrived at _Rotselaer_. At _Rotselaer_ they were

shut up in the church--a company of 3,000 men and women, including all

the inhabitants of the village. This respite only lasted an hour, and

at 4.0 o’clock they started once more along the Louvain Road. They were

destined for a still worse torment, which will shortly be described.

These preliminary expulsions on the 26th were followed up by more

comprehensive measures on the morning of the 27th. Between 8.0 and 9.0

a.m. German soldiers went round the streets proclaiming from door to

door: “Louvain is to be bombarded at noon; everyone is to leave the

town immediately.”[310] The people had no time to set their affairs in

order or to prepare for the journey. They started out just as they

were, fearing that the bombardment would overtake them before they

could escape from the town. The exodus was complete. About 40,000

people altogether were in flight,[311] and the majority of them

streamed towards the _Station Square_, where they had been ordered

to assemble, and then out by the _Boulevard de Tirlemont_, along the

_Tirlemont Road_.

The Dominicans from the Monastery in the _Rue Juste-Lipse_ were

expelled with the rest. “At the moment when they were leaving the

Monastery an old man was brought in seriously wounded in the stomach;

it was evident that he had but a few hours to live. A German officer

proposed to ‘finish him off,’ but was deterred by the Prior. One of the

monks attempted to pick up a paralysed person who had fallen in the

street; the soldiers prevented him, striking him with the butt-ends of

their muskets. The weeping, terrified population was hurrying towards

the _Railway Station_....”[312] At the _Station_ the Dominicans were

stopped and sent to Germany by train; the rest of the crowd was driven

on. There were from 8,000 to 10,000 people in this first column.[313]

“Nothing but heads was to be seen--a sea of heads.... The wind was

blowing violently, and a remorseless rain scourged us.... The crowd

was pressing upon us, suffocating us, and sometimes literally lifting

us along like a wave, our feet not touching the ground. We progressed

with difficulty, and had to stop every ten metres. Sometimes a German

asked us if we had any arms....”[314] When they arrived at _Tirlemont_

they were kept outside the town till nightfall.[315] The inhabitants

did their best for them, but _Tirlemont_, too, had been ravaged by

the invasion. The number of the refugees was overwhelming, and there

was a dearth of supplies. “My mother and I,” states a Professor of

Louvain University,[316] “had to walk about 20 miles on the 27th and

the following day before we could find a peasant cart. We had to carry

the few belongings we were able to take away, and to walk in the heavy

rain. We could find nothing to eat, but other people were yet more

unfortunate than we. I saw ladies walking in the same plight, without

hats and almost in their night-dresses. Sick persons, too, dragged

themselves along or were carried in wheel-barrows. Thousands of people

were obliged to sleep in _Tirlemont_ on the church pavements. We found

a little room to sleep in....”

Ecclesiastics were singled out for special maltreatment. This

professor, and twelve other priests or monks with him, was stopped

by German troops encamped at _Lovenjoul_. They were informed that

they were going to be shot for “having incited the population.”--“A

soldier,” states the professor, “called me ‘Black Devil’ and pushed me

roughly into a dirty little stable.”--“I was thrust into a pig-stye,”

states one of his fellow-victims,[317] “from which a pig had just been

removed before my eyes.... There I was compelled to undress completely.

German soldiers searched my clothes and took all I had. Thereupon the

other ecclesiastics were brought to the stye; two of them were stripped

like me; all were searched and robbed of all they had. The soldiers

kept everything of value--watches, money and so on--and only returned

us trifles. Our breviaries were thrown into the manure. Some of the

ecclesiastics were robbed of large sums--one had 6,000 francs on him,

another more than 4,000. All were brutally handled and received blows.”

They were saved from death by the professor’s mother, who appealed to a

German officer with more sense of justice than his colleagues, and they

were thankful to rejoin the other refugees.

A second stream of refugees was pouring out of Louvain by the

_Tervueren Road_,[318] towards the south-west. “On the road,” states a

professor,[319] “we had to raise our arms each time we met soldiers.

An officer in a motor-car levelled his revolver at us. He threatened

fiercely a young man walking by himself who only raised one arm--he was

carrying a portmanteau in the other hand, which he had to put down in

a hurry. At _Tervueren_ we were searched several times over, and then

took the electric tram for Brussels....”

But here the ecclesiastics were singled out once more. One was searched

so roughly that his cassock was torn from top to bottom.[320] Another

was charged with carrying “cartridges,” which turned out to be a

packet of chocolates.[321] One soldier tried to slip a cartridge

into a Jesuit’s pocket, but the trick was fortunately seen by

another monk standing by.[322] Insults were hurled at them--“Swine”;

“Beastly Papists”; “You incite the people to fire on us”; “You will

be castrated, you swine!” Then they were driven into a field, and

surrounded by a guard with loaded rifles. About 140 ecclesiastics

were collected altogether,[323] including Mgr. Ladeuze, the Rector

of Louvain University; Canon Cauchie, the Professor of History; Mgr.

Becker, the Principal of the American Seminary; and Mgr. Willemsen,

formerly President of the American College. After they had waited an

hour, 26 of them were taken and lined up against a fence. Expecting

to be shot, they gave one another absolution, but after waiting

seven or eight minutes they were marched out of the field and lined

up once more with their backs to a wood. As they marched, a soldier

muttered that “one of them was going to be shot.” The two Americans

showed their passports to an officer, but were violently rebuffed. Then

Father Dupierreux, a Jesuit student 23 years old, was led before them

under guard, and one of their number was called forward to translate

aloud into German a paper that had been found on Father Dupierreux’s

person. The paper (it was a manuscript memorandum of half-a-dozen

lines) compared the conduct of the Germans at Louvain to the conduct

of Genseric and of the Saracens, and the burning of the Library to the

burning of the Library at Alexandria. The officer cut the recitation

short. Father Dupierreux received absolution, and was then ordered to

advance towards the wood. Four soldiers were lined up in front of him,

and the 26 prisoners were ordered to face about, in order to witness

the execution. Among their number was Father Robert Dupierreux, the

twin brother of the condemned.[324] “Father Dupierreux,” states Father

Schill,[325] the Jesuit who had been forced to translate the document,

“had listened to the reading with complete calm.... He kept his eyes

fixed on the crucifix.... The command rang out: ‘Aim! Fire!’ We only

heard one report. The Father fell on his back; a last shudder ran

through his limbs. Then the spectators were ordered to turn about

again, while the officer bent over the body and discharged his pistol

into the ear. The bullet came out through the eye.”

The others were then placed in carts, and harangued:[326] “When we pass

through a village, if a single shot is fired from any house, the whole

village will be burnt. You will be shot and the inhabitants likewise.”

They were paraded in these carts through the streets of _Brussels_ and

liberated, at 7.0 o’clock in the evening, at eight kilometres’ distance

beyond the city.

Meanwhile, the proclamation of the morning had had its effect. Louvain

was cleared of its inhabitants, but the bombardment did not follow.

Between 11.0 and 12.0 o’clock a few cannon shots were heard in the

distance, but that was all.[327] “At _Rotselaer_,” states an inhabitant

of Louvain who was in the party conveyed there on the 27th,[328] “I

understood from the prisoners in the church that all the people of

_Rotselaer_ were made to leave their houses on the pretext that they

were in danger of bombardment, and the Germans stated that they were

being placed in the church for security. While all these people were in

the church the Germans robbed the houses and then burned the village.”

At Louvain the German strategy was the same. The bombardment was only

a pretext for the wholesale expulsion of the inhabitants, which was

followed by systematic pillage and incendiarism as soon as the ground

was clear. The conflagration of two nights before, which had never

burnt itself out, was extended deliberately and revived where it was

dying out; the plundering, which had been desultory since the Germans

first occupied the town, was now conducted under the supervision of

officers from house to house.[329]

On the morning of August 27th, even before the exodus began, a Dutch

witness[330] waiting at the _Hôtel-de-Ville_ saw “soldiers streaming in

from all sides, laden with huge packages of stolen property--clothes,

boxes of cigars, bottles of wine, etc. Many of these men were

drunk.”--“I saw the German soldiers taking the wine away from my

house and from neighbours’ houses,” states a Belgian witness.[331]

“They got into the cellar with a ladder, and brought out the wine

and placed it on their waggons.”--“The streets were full of empty

wine bottles,” states another.[332] “My factory has been completely

plundered,” states a cigar-manufacturer.[333] “Seven million cigars

have disappeared.” The factory itself was set on fire on the 26th,

and was only saved by the Germans for fear the flames might spread to

the prison. They saved it by an extinguishing apparatus which was as

instantaneous in its effect as the apparatus they used for setting

houses alight. “The soldiers, led by a non-commissioned officer, went

from house to house and broke in the shop fronts and house doors with

their rifle butts. A cart or waggon waited for them in the street to

carry away the loot.”[334] Carts were also employed in the suburb of

_Blauwput_, on the other side of the railway. “I saw German soldiers

break into the houses,” states a witness from _Blauwput_.[335] “One

party consisting of six soldiers had a little cart with them. I saw

these break into a store where there were many bottles of champagne and

a stock of cigars, etc. They drank a good deal of wine, smoked cigars,

and carried off a supply in the cart. I saw many Germans engaged in

looting.” This employment of carts became an anxiety to the Higher

Command. A type-written order, addressed to the Officers of the 53rd

Landwehr Infantry, lays down that “For the future it is forbidden to

use army carts for the transport of things which have nothing whatever

to do with the service of the Army. At some period these carts, which

travel empty with our Army, will be required for the transport of war

material. They are now actually loaded with all sorts of things, none

of which have anything to do with military supplies or equipment.”[336]

This systematic pillage went on day after day. “The _Station Square_,”

states a refugee from Louvain[337] who traversed the city again on

August 29th, “was transformed into a vast goods-depôt, where bottles

of wine were the most prominent feature. Officers and men were

eating and drinking in the middle of the ruins, without appearing to

be in the least incommoded by the appalling stench of the corpses

which still lay in the _Boulevard_. Along the _Boulevard de Diest_ I

saw Landsturm soldiers taking from the houses anything that suited

their fancy, and then setting the house alight, and this under their

officers’ eyes.” On September 2nd there was a fresh outbreak of plunder

and arson in the _Rue Léopold_ and the _Rue Marie-Thérèse_.[338] As

late as September 5th--ten days after the original catastrophe--the

Germans were pillaging houses in the _Rue de la Station_ and loading

the loot on carts.[339] Householders who returned when all was over

found the destruction complete. “I found my parents’ house sacked,”

states one.[340] “A great deal of the furniture was smashed, the

contents of cupboards and drawers were scattered about the rooms....

In my sister’s house the looking-glasses on the ground floor were

broken. On the bedding of the glass the imprint of the rifle-butts

was clearly visible.”--“Inside our house,” states another,[341]

“everything is upside down.... The floors are strewn with flowers and

with silver plate not belonging to our house, the writing room is

filled with buckets and basins, in which they had cooled the bottles

of champagne.... There was straw everywhere--in short, the place was

like a barn. To crown everything, my father was not allowed to sleep in

his own house.... When the Germans at last quitted our residence, it

was necessary to cleanse and disinfect everything. The lowest stable

was cleaner than our bedrooms, where scraps from the gourmandising and

pieces of meat lay rotting in every corner amid half-smoked cigars,

candle ends, broken plates, and hay brought from I don’t know where.”

But these two houses were, at any rate, not burnt down, and more

frequently, when they had finished with a house, the Germans set it

on fire. They had begun on the night of August 25th; on August 26th

they were proceeding systematically,[342] and the work continued on

the 27th and the following days. All varieties of incendiary apparatus

were employed--a white powder,[343] an inflammable stick,[344] a

projectile fired from a rifle.[345] They introduced these into the

house to be burnt by staving in a panel of the front door[346] or

breaking a window,[347] and the conflagration was immediate when once

the apparatus was inside. This scientific incendiarism was the regular

sequel to the organised pillage. The firing by German soldiers also

went on. “On August 27th,” states one German witness,[348] “I was

fired at from a garden from behind the hedge, without being hit. It

was in the afternoon; I could not see the person who had shot.” The

identification can be inferred from the experience of the Rector of

Louvain University, Mgr. Ladeuze, on the night of August 25th, when

he detected two German soldiers firing over the garden wall of the

_Chemical Institute_ into the _Rue de Namur_.[349] Another German

witness, a military surgeon in the Neuss Landsturm,[350] who arrived

at Louvain in the afternoon of August 27th, testifies that “in the

course of the afternoon I heard the noise of firing in the _Rue de la

Station_.... I had the impression that we were being shot at from a

house there, in spite of my conspicuous armlet with the Red Cross.

We approached the house. A German soldier of another battalion leapt

out from the first floor, and in so doing broke the upper part of his

thigh. He told me that he had just been pursued and shot at by six

civilians in the house.” The surgeon, a young man of twenty-five, a

new-comer to Louvain, and unused to the notion of German soldiers

firing on one another, repeats this story without seeing that it fails

to explain the shots fired _from_ the house and directed against

himself, and he takes the presence of the “six civilians” on faith.

Was the soldier who escaped punishment by this lie firing into the

street from panic? This may have been so, for the German troops were

in a state of nervous degeneration, but there is another possible

explanation. Two days later, on August 29th, when Mr. Gibson, Secretary

of the American Legation at Brussels, visited Louvain to enquire

into the catastrophe, his motor-car was fired at in the _Rue de la

Station_ from a house, and five or six armed men in civilian costume

were dragged out of it by his escort and marched off for execution.

But they were not executed, for they were German soldiers disguised to

give Mr. Gibson an ocular demonstration that “the civilians had fired.”

The German Higher Command had already adopted this as their official

thesis, and they were determined to impose it on the world.[351]

After the exodus on the morning of the 27th, Louvain lay empty of

inhabitants all day, while the burning and plundering went on. But at

dusk a procession of civilians, driven by soldiers, streamed in from

the north. They were the fourth batch of prisoners who had been marched

out of Louvain on the previous day. They had spent the night in the

open, and had been locked up that afternoon in _Rotselaer_ church. But

after only an hour’s respite they had been driven forth again, and the

whole population of _Rotselaer_ with them, along the road leading back

to the city.

“On the way,” states one of the victims,[352] “we rested a moment. The

curé of _Rotselaer_, a man 86 years of age, spoke to the officer in

command: ‘Herr Offizier, what you are doing now is a cowardly act. My

people did no harm, and, if you want a victim, kill me....’ The German

soldiers then seized the curé by the neck and took him away. Some

Germans picked up mud from the ground and threw it in his face....”

“We entered Louvain,” states the curé himself,[353] “by the _Canal_

and the _Rue du Canal_. No ruins. We reached the _Grand’ Place_--what

a spectacle! The _Church of Saint-Pierre_! Rest in front of the

_Hôtel-de-Ville_. Fatigue compelled me to stretch myself on the

pavement, while the houses blazed all the time.

“Other prisoners from Louvain and the neighbourhood kept arriving. Soon

I saw fresh prisoners arrive from _Rotselaer_--women, children and old

men, among others a blind old man of eighty years, and the wife of the

doctor at _Rotselaer_, dragged from her sick-bed. (She died during the

journey to Germany.)...”

“In the _Grand’ Place_,” states the former witness,[354] “the heat from

the burning houses was so great that the prisoners huddled together to

get away from it....”

“After we had remained standing there about an hour,” states a

third,[355] “we had to proceed towards the _Station_ along the _Rue de

la Station_. In this same road we saw the German soldiers plundering

the houses. They took pleasure in letting us see them doing it. In the

city and at _Kessel-Loo_ the conflagration redoubled in intensity.”

“The houses were all burning in the _Rue de la Station_,” states the

first,[356] “and there were even flames in the street which we had to

jump across. We were closely guarded by German soldiers, who threatened

to kill us if we looked from side to side.”

Yet these victims in their misery were accused of shooting by their

tormentors. “On August 27th,” states an officer concerned,[357] “the

Third Battalion of the Landwehr Infantry Regiment No. 53 had to take

with it on its march from _Rotselaer_ to Louvain a convoy of about

1,000 civilian prisoners.... Among the prisoners were a number of

Belgian priests, one of whom,[358] especially caught my attention

because at every halt he went from one to another of the prisoners and

addressed words to them in an excited manner, so that I had to keep him

under special observation. In Louvain we made over the prisoners at the

_Station_.... On the following morning it was reported to me ... that

the above-mentioned priest had shot at one of the men of the guard, but

had failed to hit him, and in consequence had himself been shot in the

_Station Square_.”

Such were the rumours that passed current in the German Army; but there

is no reference in this officer’s deposition to what really happened

at the _Station_ on the night of the 27th-28th. The prisoners arrived

there about 7.0 p.m., and were immediately put on board a train.

Their numbers had risen by now to between 2,000 and 3,000,[359] and

the overcrowding was appalling. The curé of _Rotselaer_ was placed

in a truck which had carried troops and was furnished with benches;

but even this truck was made to hold 50 people,[360] while the

majority were forced into cattle trucks--from 70 to 100 men, women,

and children in each,[361] which had never been cleaned, and were

knee-deep in dung.[362] They stood in these trucks all night, while

the train remained standing in the _Station_. On August 28th, about

6.0 in the morning, they started for _Cologne_, but the stoppages and

shuntings were interminable, and _Cologne_ was not reached till the

afternoon of August 31st. During these four days--from the evening of

August 27th to the afternoon of August 31st--the prisoners were given

nothing to eat,[363] and were not allowed to get out of the train to

relieve themselves when it stopped.[364] “We had nothing to eat,”

states one of them,[365] “not even the child one month old.”--“My

wife was suckling her child,” states another,[366] “but her milk

came to an end. My wife was crying nearly all the time. The baby was

dreadfully ill, and nearly died.”--“We had been without food for two

days and nights, and had nothing to drink till we got to _Cologne_,

except that one of my fellow-prisoners had a bottle of water, from

which we just wetted our lips.”[367]--“I asked for some water for my

child at _Aix-la-Chapelle_, and it was refused. It was the soldiers

that I asked, and they spat at me when they refused the water. The

soldiers also took all the money that I had upon me.”[368]--“We had not

been allowed to leave the train to obey the calls of nature, till at

_Cologne_ we went on our knees and begged the soldiers to allow us to

get down.”[369]

The brutality of the soldiers did not stop short of murder. “At

_Henne_,” where the train stopped at 3.30 a.m. on August 29th, “a man

got out to satisfy nature. He belonged to the village of _Wygmael_.

He was going towards the side of the line when three German soldiers

approached him. One of them caught hold of him and threw him on the

ground, and he was bayonetted by one or other of them in his left side.

The man cried out; then the German soldier withdrew his bayonet and

showed his comrades how far it had gone in. He then wiped the blood

off his bayonet by drawing it through his hand.... After the soldier

had wiped his bayonet, he and his comrades turned the man over on his

face.... A few minutes after he had wiped his bayonet, he put his hand

in his pocket and took out some bread, which he ate....”[370]

Between Louvain and the frontier two men in a passenger-carriage “tried

to escape and broke the windows. The German sentinels bayonetted these

two men and killed them.”[371]

Two people on the train went mad,[372] and two committed suicide.[373]

When the train started again after its halt at _Liége_, a man from

_Thildonck_ was run over, and it was supposed that he had thrown

himself under the wheels to put himself out of his misery.[374] When

the train was emptied at _Cologne_, three of the prisoners were taken

out dead.[375]

The trucks were chalked with the inscription: “Civilians who shot at

the soldiers at Louvain,”[376] and at every place in Germany where

the train stopped the prisoners were persecuted by the crowd.[377]

“At _Aix-la-Chapelle_,” states the curé of _Rotselaer_, “an officer

came up to spit on me.”[378] At _Aix_, too, those destined for the

internment camp at _Münster_ had to change trains and were marched

through the streets. “As we went,” states one of them,[379] “the German

women and children spat at us.”--“We arrived at _Aix-la-Chapelle_,”

states another witness.[380] “There the German people shouted at us. At

_Dürren_, between _Aix-la-Chapelle_ and _Cologne_, 4,000 German people

crowded round. I turned round to the old woman with eight children, and

said: ‘Do these people think we are prisoners? Show them one of your

little children, at the window.’ This child was a month old, and naked.

When the child was shown at the window a hush came over the crowd.”

“When we reached _Cologne_ a crowd came round the trucks, jeering at

us, and as we marched out they prodded us with their umbrellas and

pelted us and shouted: ‘Shoot them dead! Shoot them dead!’--and drew

their fingers across their throats.”[381]

“At _Cologne_,” states the curé of _Rotselaer_,[382] “we had to

leave the train and parade--men, women and children--through the

streets under the surveillance of the police.”--“On the way,” adds

another,[383] “the children in the streets threw stones at us.”

They were herded for the night into an exhibition-ground called the

“Luna Park,” and here their first food was served out to them--for

every ten persons one loaf of mouldy bread.[384] A certain number found

shelter in a “joy-wheel”; the rest spent the night in the open, in the

rain. The guards amused themselves by making individuals kneel down in

turn and threatening them with execution.[385] Next morning they were

marched back to the station, once more under the insults of the crowd,

and started to retrace their journey, but not all of them were allowed

to return. A batch of 300 men were kept at _Cologne_ for a week, during

which time 60 of their number were shot before the eyes of the rest,

while the survivors were paraded through the town again and subjected

more than once to a sham execution.[386] Others[387] were sent direct

from _Aix-la-Chapelle_ to the internment camp at _Münster_, where the

Garde Civique of Louvain had been sent before. In this camp the men

were separated completely from the women and children--one of them was

the man[388] whose baby had nearly died on the way, and for six weeks

he was kept in ignorance of what was happening to the baby and to his

wife. For the first six weeks they were given no water to wash in, and

no soap during the whole period of their imprisonment. They were not

allowed to smoke or read or sing. This particular prisoner was allowed

by special grace to return to Louvain with his family on December 6th,

but the others still remained.

Meanwhile, the main body of the prisoners was being transported back

to Belgium. This return journey was almost as painful as the journey

out; they were almost as badly crowded and starved;[389] but the

delays were less, and they reached _Brussels_ on September 2nd. While

they were halted at _Brussels_, Burgomaster Max managed to serve out

to each of them a ration of white bread.[390] They were carried on to

_Schaerbeek_, detrained, and marched in column to _Vilvorde_. “I was in

the last file,” states one of them.[391] “We were made to run quickly,

and the soldiers struck us on the back with their rifles and on the

arms with their bayonets.”--“On the way to _Vilvorde_ one man sprang

into the water, a canal--he was mad by then. The German soldiers threw

empty bottles at this man in the water; they were bottles they got from

the houses as they passed, and were drinking from on the way.”[392]

At _Vilvorde_ they were informed that they were free.[393] They

dragged themselves forward towards the Belgian lines, but at _Sempst_

another party of Germans took them prisoner again.[393] “The Germans

thrust their bayonets quite close to our chests,” states one of the

prisoners;[394] “then four of them prepared to shoot us, but they did

not shoot. One of the prisoners went mad; I was made to hold him, and

he hurt me very much.” Finally the officer commanding the picket let

them go once more. They asked if they might return to Louvain. “If you

go back that way we will kill you,” the officer said; “you have to go

that way,” and he pointed towards _Malines_.[395] It was now midnight,

and pouring with rain. The prisoners stumbled on again, and made their

way, in scattered parties, to the Belgian outposts.[396]

This horrible railway journey to _Cologne_ was the last stroke in the

campaign of terrorisation carried out against Louvain after the night

of August 25th by the deliberate policy of the German Army Command. A

refugee who had returned to the city on August 28th, and had been kept

prisoner during the night, was released with her fellow prisoners on

the 29th. “We will not hurt you any more,” said the officer in command;

“stay in Louvain. All is finished.”[397]

On August 30th the staff of the _Hôpital St.-Thomas_, who had defied

the proclamation of the 27th and remained continuously at their posts,

took the task of reconstruction in hand.[398] A committee of notables

was formed, and overtures were made to Major von Manteuffel, the German

Etappen-Kommandant in the town. On September 1st a proclamation, signed

by the provisional municipal government, was posted up, with von

Manteuffel’s sanction, in the streets.[399] It communicated a promise

from the German Military Authorities that pillage and arson should

thenceforth cease, and it invited the inhabitants to come back to

Louvain and take up again their normal life. The most pressing task was

to clear the ruins, and to find and bury the dead. In Louvain alone,

not including the suburban communes, 1,120 houses had been destroyed

and 100 civilians had been killed during this week of terror.

“We arrived at Louvain,” writes a German soldier in his diary on August

29th.[400] “The whole place was swarming with troops. Landsturmers of

the Halle Battalion came along, dragging things with them--chiefly

bottles of wine--and many of them were drunk. A tour round the town

with ten bicyclists in search of billets revealed a picture of

devastation as bad as any imaginable. Burning and falling houses

bordered the streets; only a house here and there remained standing.

Our tour led us over broken glass, burning wood-work and rubble. Tram

and telephone wires trailed in the streets. Such barracks as were still

standing were full up. Back to the _Station_, where nobody knew what

to do next. Detached parties were to enter the streets, but actually

the Battalion marched in close order into the town, to break into the

first houses and loot--no, of course, only to ‘requisition’--for wine

and other things. Like a wild pack they broke loose, each on their own;

officers set a good example by going on ahead. A night in a barracks

with many drunk was the end of this day, which aroused in me a contempt

I cannot describe.”

* * * * *

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

* * * * *

[Illustration: LOUVAIN

SKETCH TAKEN FROM MAP ATTACHED TO THE GERMAN WHITE BOOK.

The cross hatching denotes the quarters burnt down, and is reproduced

exactly from the German original.]

* * * * *

FOOTNOTES:

[74] xv p. 20.

[75] Bryce pp. 183-4.

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

107.

[77] The man was a glass-maker.

[78] xvii p. 66.

[79] xvii p. 63.

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

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

village.

[82] k18.

[83] Reply p. 128.

[84] Davignon p. 97.

[85] xv p. 20.

[86] c1-38; Belg. xxi pp. 111-4; Anns. 1, 7; Reply pp. 147-178; German

White Book, A; Struyken; Davignon p. 97.

[87] Reply No. 1; g2.

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

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

[90] German White Book, A 2.

[91] White Book A 3, Appendix.

[92] White Book A 5.

[93] A 4.

[94] White Book A 5.

[95] cp. A 3, Appendix.

[96] c 4, 8.

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

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

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

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

[101] R. No. 16.

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

[103] R. No. 9.

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

[105] Davignon, p. 97.

[106] R. p. 171.

[107] c39-45.

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

[109] c54-6.

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

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

[112] c60-63.

[113] c 46-47.

[114] g 16-18.

[115] d 1-9.

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

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

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

[119] d 36, 38, 40.

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

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

54-7, 62-5.

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

[123] d 36, cp. 37.

[124] vii p. 54.

[125] d 66-83.

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

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

[128] d 74, cp. 81.

[129] d 87-9; g 20.

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

[131] x pp. 78-9.

[132] Mercier.

[133] d 92-3.

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

[135] g 22.

[136] k 21.

[137] Reply p. 431; Mercier.

[138] d 125.

[139] 94.

[140] d 100-8.

[141] R. pp. 378-380.

[142] d 110-1.

[143] d 95-9.

[144] Mercier.

[145] “Germans,” p. 26.

[146] e23.

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

[148] “Germans,” p. 15; R24.

[149] Chambry, p. 16.

[150] e2; R7, 10.

[151] R24; Chambry, p. 17.

[152] “Horrors,” p. 31.

[153] e25.

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

[155] e23.

[156] e2; R18.

[157] “Germans,” p. 25.

[158] “Germans,” p. 26; R24.

[159] “Horrors,” p. 31.

[160] R7, 24.

[161] R10.

[162] R1, 24; “Germans,” pp. 28-9.

[163] R29.

[164] R2, 24, 29.

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

[166] “Germans,” pp. 31-2.

[167] e 1.

[168] e 1; “Germans,” p. 32; D7, 8.

[169] “Germans,” p. 32.

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

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

[172] R7; D46.

[173] D46.

[174] D46.

[175] D7, 8.

[176] e1; R8.

[177] R7, 17.

[178] Chambry, pp. 22-3.

[179] R6.

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

[181] R6.

[182] R4.

[183] R7.

[184] D46.

[185] D8.

[186] e8.

[187] D8, 22.

[188] R20.

[189] R3.

[190] “Germans,” p. 33.

[191] R3.

[192] R13.

[193] e 1; cp. R8.

[194] Morgan, p. 102.

[195] Chambry, p. 23.

[196] R2.

[197] “Horrors,” p. 38.

[198] “Germans,” p. 33.

[199] R27.

[200] Also in the _Rue Vital Decoster_, north of the _Rue de la

Station_ (R13).

[201] D29; cp. R2.

[202] D20; cp. D25, 27.

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

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

[205] e5; cp. e13; R10.

[206] xxi p. 115.

[207] R5.

[208] D20.

[209] D9.

[210] R13.

[211] D9.

[212] D3.

[213] D1.

[214] D10.

[215] “Germans” pp. 33-5.

[216] R25.

[217] R29 (Statement by the Abbé van den Bergh, accredited by His

Eminence Cardinal Piffl, Prince-Bishop of Vienna, to conduct inquiries

on behalf of the Wiener Priester-Verein); cp. R25.

[218] e8.

[219] R3; cp. e24.

[220] R29; cp. e26.

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

[222] e13; cp. R17, 24.

[223] D3.

[224] D2; cp. D11.

[225] D36 (1).

[226] D36 (2).

[227] _Area of incendiarism_: “Eye-witness” p. 1; “Horrors” pp. 39, 43;

“Germans” pp. 35-8, 92; Chambry pp. 25, 92; _Apparatus_: e2, 13; R8,

13; cp. also D31, 37 (2)

[228] R24.

[229] D46.

[230] R8; e23; cp. “Germans” p. 46.

[231] R13; cp. e14, 28.

[232] e13; cp. e24.

[233] D4.

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

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

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

[237] e1; R8.

[238] R10.

[239] D46.

[240] R8, 26; e14.

[241] e1.

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

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

[244] Chambry pp. 26-7.

[245] “Germans” p. 42.

[246] e16.

[247] e1.

[248] e15.

[249] e17.

[250] e15.

[251] e19.

[252] e17.

[253] e13.

[254] Grondijs p. 39.

[255] “Germans” pp. 46-7.

[256] R19.

[257] “Germans” p. 43.

[258] R2.

[259] R11, 17.

[260] R13.

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

[262] D37 (2).

[263] Grondijs p. 41.

[264] “Germans” pp. 43-5; e2.

[265] R24.

[266] D2.

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

[268] e3.

[269] e4; cp. R7.

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

[271] R17.

[272] e3.

[273] e1 = R8.

[274] Killed, October, 1914.

[275] D38.

[276] e4; cp. R20.

[277] e4.

[278] D38.

[279] D48.

[280] D38.

[281] e13.

[282] R9.

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

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

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

D37 (2).

[286] e2.

[287] Grondijs pp. 50-1.

[288] e4; R9.

[289] D44.

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

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

[292] R1, 8 (= e1).

[293] R1, 7, 26.

[294] R1, 8.

[295] R26.

[296] R7.

[297] R8.

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

[299] e21.

[300] e21.

[301] e18.

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

[303] R22; e18.

[304] xxi p. 117.

[305] cp. p. 76 above.

[306] R23.

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

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

milk himself.

[309] e3 = R15; R17.

[310] “Germans” pp. 52-4, 71; Chambry pp. 40-1, 73; “Horrors” pp. 40-1;

Grondijs p. 52; “Eye-witness” p. 5; e2; R11; D31.

[311] “Germans” p. 54.

[312] xxi p. 116.

[313] R11.

[314] Chambry pp. 53-4.

[315] R11.

[316] e2.

[317] R12.

[318] “Eye-witness” pp. 5-9; “Germans” p. 58; Grondijs pp. 61-71

(= R14); Chambry p. 73; R4, 13, 21 (= xxi pp. 117-9; “Eye-witness” pp.

8-9).

[319] R13.

[320] R22.

[321] “Eye-witness” p. 5.

[322] R21.

[323] “Eye-witness” p. 6.

[324] R21; “Eye-witness” p. 7.

[325] R21.

[326] R21.

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

[328] e3.

[329] R24.

[330] “Grondijs” p. 51.

[331] e4.

[332] e8.

[333] R10.

[334] R24.

[335] e26.

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

[337] R11.

[338] “Germans” pp. 73, 89.

[339] R10.

[340] R13.

[341] Chambry pp. 74-7.

[342] R19.

[343] e16.

[344] R19.

[345] R24.

[346] Chambry p. 52.

[347] R19.

[348] D19.

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

[350] D21.

[351] R27 (Deposition of Mgr. Deploige, President of the _Institut

Supérieur de Philosophie_ and Director of the _Hôpital St.-Thomas_);

R29 (Report by Abbé Van den Bergh, accredited by His Eminence Cardinal

Piffl, Prince-Bishop of Vienna, to make enquiries on behalf of the

Vienna Priester-Verein).

[352] e3.

[353] R16.

[354] e3.

[355] R17.

[356] e3.

[357] D34.

[358] This was the Priest of _Herent_, the Abbé van Bladel, whose body

was exhumed at _Louvain_ on Jan. 14th, 1915, in the _Station Square_

(R30).

[359] e5, 7, 17; R16.

[360] R16; cp. e10.

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

[362] e3, 7, 10, 17; “Germans” p. 68.

[363] e3, 5, 10; R17.

[364] e3, 7, 17.

[365] e3.

[366] e5.

[367] e10.

[368] e5.

[369] e17.

[370] e10; confirmed by e11.

[371] e5.

[372] e3; cp. e7; R17.

[373] e3.

[374] e10, 11.

[375] e16.

[376] e16.

[377] e10.

[378] R16.

[379] e5.

[380] e3 = R15.

[381] e7; cp. e10.

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

[383] e17.

[384] e17; R16.

[385] R15.

[386] e16.

[387] e5.

[388] e5.

[389] e3.

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

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

[392] e7; R16, 17.

[393] e3, 17; R15.

[394] e17.

[395] e3; R15.

[396] R16.

[397] e13.

[398] “Germans” p. 84 _seqq._; R27.

[399] “Germans” p. 86; R27.

[400] Ann. 8 (Extract from the Diary of Gaston Klein); cp. Bryce p. 80,

No. 32.

* * * * *

Transcriber’s Notes:

Footnotes have been moved to the end of each chapter and relabeled

consecutively through the document.

Illustrations have been moved to paragraph breaks near where they are

mentioned.

Punctuation has been made consistent.

Variations in spelling and hyphenation were retained as they appear in

the original publication, except that obvious typos have been corrected.

Abbreviations for references have inconsistent spacing, such as c1

versus c 1, and these have been left as they appear in the original

publication.

Changes have been made as follows:

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

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

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