THE POLITICS OF RAPINE
To follow in detail the operations from now of the Belgian forces from
day to day would be less informing than to sum up their plan and their
effect.
As it stood on August 25 the situation was that the Belgians held all
the country to the north of the Scheldt and the Dyle, and the Germans
all the country to the south of these rivers. From Turcoing on the
French frontier to Antwerp, the Scheldt follows a course roughly
parallel to the coast. At Antwerp its bed describes a sharp bend to
seaward. Some ten miles south of this bend, the main waterway receives
the Rupel, formed by the junction to the eastward of the Dyle and the
Nethe. Taken together, the Scheldt and the Dyle, both deep, sluggish
watercourses, offer a natural defence of the seaboard provinces.
From behind this natural line of defence the Belgians, ceaselessly
on the watch, sallied forth at every chance offered, to harass and
entrap the enemy. Sudden dashes were made upon his communications by
armed motor-cars; attacks were made upon railway lines and bridges; his
convoys were unexpectedly attacked and cut up by superior forces; in a
word, he was kept in perpetual hot water.
The military effect of this was more important than may at first sight
appear. In the first place, it was made necessary for the Germans,
not only to keep heavy forces afoot in Belgium, but to disperse those
forces. Hence though the forces, taken together, were large, the
Belgians concentrated on Antwerp were in a position to deliver in
superior strength a blow at any one of these bodies, and thus to worst
the whole of them in detail.
In the second place, these Parthian tactics made the transport of
munitions and supplies to the German armies in France by the line
through Brussels a business calling for vigilance and caution. That
greatly lessened the value of the line to the enemy. On this supply
line the German right wing in France mainly depended. The Belgians,
therefore, were not merely defending their own country, but indirectly
were aiding the French and British operations on the farther side of
the French frontier.
Now the weakness of the Belgian position was that, while they
could hold the line of the Dyle and that of the Scheldt as far as
Termonde, their force was too small to bar the passage of the Scheldt
farther west. It was open to the Germans, by seizing Ghent, to turn
the defensive position in a manner that would speedily have become
dangerous. Well aware of this, the Germans advanced upon Ghent.
Coincidently, however, the Belgian operations farther east became
more active and threatening. To meet them, the Germans were obliged
to withdraw most of the troops sent to Ghent. Just at that juncture
(August 27) a body of British marines was landed at Ostend. From Ghent
the enemy had hastily to withdraw. British troops advanced to Ghent,
and the whole line of the Scheldt was secured.
The value of that move is clear. From behind the line of the Scheldt,
the Allied forces were within easy striking distance of the main
railways south of Brussels. Later on, and at a critical juncture for
the German armies in France, the Belgians cut those railways. That
these lines were not cut before was a part of the Allies’ strategy.
What in these circumstances were the measures taken by the invaders?
The main measure was, as far as possible, to depopulate the country
between their lines and the Belgian defences. The measure had two
objects--to prevent the Belgians receiving information of German
movements, and more especially of the movement of reinforcements; and
to embarrass the defence by driving into the seaboard districts crowds
of homeless and starving refugees.
The measure, however, was carried out on such a scale as to suggest
that yet another object was to prepare the way for a German immigration
as a support of the contemplated conquest. The expropriation of native
land-owners on the frontier of Prussian Poland, and the granting of
their lands to officers and non-commissioned officers of the German
army reserves, is an example of the policy, accompanied in Prussian
Poland by the prohibition of the native language in elementary schools.
European history affords happily few episodes equal to the depopulation
of part of the valley of the Meuse, which was at this time entered
upon. The towns of Dinant and Ardenne were totally destroyed, their
male populations massacred, and the women and children carried off in
defiance of every usage of civilised warfare. Indeed, to describe this
devastation of Belgium as in any sense civilised warfare would be a
travesty of the term. Its ferocity was possibly no more than a cloak
to hide a calculated purpose.
In an official declaration issued from Berlin on August 27 it was
stated that:--
The distribution of arms and ammunition among the civil
population of Belgium had been carried out on systematic lines,
and the authorities enraged the public against Germany by
assiduously circulating false reports.
They were under the impression that with the aid of the French
they would be able to drive the Germans out of Belgium in two
days.
The only means of preventing surprise attacks from the civil
population has been to interfere with unrelenting severity and
to create examples which, by their frightfulness, would be a
warning to the whole country.
On that declaration, one or two observations are necessary. Part of
the defensive force of Belgium was its Civic Guard, having a total
strength of some 400,000. So far from arming the civil population, the
Belgian Government called in the arms of this force. It was decided
that, situated as the country was, the best course was to confide its
defence to its regular troops and reserves, and so remove all excuse
for military severities.
The reports circulated by the Government of Belgium, as anybody
who refers back to them may ascertain, were carefully drawn up and
substantially true.
The statement that the Belgians were under the impression alleged in
this declaration, is, in face of the now known facts of the Allied plan
of the campaign, ludicrous.
Still more remarkable, however, is the calm assumption that neither
Belgium nor its Government had the smallest right to defend themselves,
and that any attempt to exercise that right was, in effect, an act of
rebellion against Germany. In fact, the presumption is that Belgium was
already part of Germany; and this in face of the “solemn assurance”
offered on August 9.
Last, but not least, has been the effort more recently made to suggest,
despite this declaration, that the “unrelenting severity” and “examples
of frightfulness” are hallucinations of Belgian excitement.[H]
These things speak for themselves. Nine towns in Belgium--Louvain,
Aerschot, Tirlemont, Termonde, Jodoigne, Dinant, Ardenne, Visé,
Charleroi, and Mons--had been reduced to ruins. Others, like Malines,
Diest, and Alost, had been in great part wrecked. At Liége a whole
quarter of the city had been surrounded, set on fire, and its terrified
and unarmed inhabitants, as they fled from the burning houses, shot
down wholesale by machine guns until the streets ran with blood.[I] Yet
the world was solemnly assured that it was all no more than a bad dream.
So far from aiding, as intended, the military situation of the German
forces, this policy of rapine tended to defeat itself. After the defeat
of the German armies on the Marne, the Government of Berlin made a
second offer of accommodation to the Belgian Ministry. The reply was a
sortie in full force from the Belgian lines, which obliged the enemy
to employ against them three army corps of reserves they were just
then sending through northern Belgium into France. In France, those
reinforcements were urgently needed. It is evident that this second
offer of accommodation merely had as its primary object the prompt
arrival of those troops. They had to be recalled from the French
frontier, and to join with the forces of occupation in a fiercely
fought four days’ battle.
In putting upon the renewed offer the interpretation here alluded to,
the Belgian Government were well aware that, apart altogether from its
worthlessness as a pledge, the Germans, in the political object which
had plainly from the first dictated their treatment of the population,
had signally failed. The invaders had relied as their chief instrument
on terror. The instrument had broken in their hands. Neither had they
as yet gained one real military success. On the contrary, they had
suffered either heavy reverses, or had fought at great cost actions
yielding no substantial fruits. It was in vain that half the country
had been laid waste. So long as the Belgian army, with a strongly
fortified base, held the seaboard provinces, the situation of the
invaders remained utterly secure.
To understand the true position of the Belgian resistance, it is
advisable to realise the character of the defences of Antwerp. When,
after a prolonged discussion, General Brialmont was, fifty years ago,
authorised to modernise the defences of Antwerp and Namur, and to
re-fortify Liége, he adopted, in the case of Antwerp, the resources
afforded by its situation as a seaport. The older ramparts were
demolished, and replaced, at a distance allowing for natural expansion
of the city within them, by a new inner ring of massive earthworks
between forts, of the form known as a blunted redan. The plan adopted
by Brialmont was on the system described by military engineers as the
polygonal trace, and his work has always been looked upon as one of the
best examples of that system, considered best adapted to meet the range
and accuracy of modern siege artillery.
But undoubtedly the distinctive feature was presented by the wet
ditches, 150 feet broad with some 20 feet depth of water, which
surround not only the inner works, but also the line of detached forts
built on an average two miles in advance of those works. Brialmont was
the first military engineer to carry out this idea, now followed in
all present-day fortification. Each of his forts, with a front of 700
yards, mounted 15 howitzers and 120 guns. There were thus on the 9
forts, including Merxem, 1,080 pieces of ordnance.
Since Brialmont’s time, however, his outer forts had been connected
by an enceinte, now 15 miles or thereabouts in length, strengthened
by 18 redoubts, and the second wet ditch. As a third line of defence,
there were, at the same time, built the 25 large forts and 13 redoubts,
enclosing round the city an area of some 200 square miles. Between the
first and second line of defences, the space formed an entrenched camp
of, roughly, 17,000 acres in extent.
To protect the navigation of the Scheldt, and to prevent the city from
being deprived of supplies, six of these great outer forts were placed
at commanding points along the river. By cutting the dykes on the Rupel
and the Scheldt areas could be flooded which would limit an attack
to the south and south-east, and not only enable a defending army to
concentrate its strength in that direction, but enable it behind the
outer third line of fortifications to dispute in force the passage of
the Nethe.
There were thus on the various defences some 4,000 pieces of ordnance,
and, looking at the rivers and wet ditches to be negotiated, it was
evident that an attempt to take the fortress by storm could only hope
to succeed after a very heavy bombardment followed by an attack with
overwhelmingly superior forces.
Since at Liége, as proved by the identification tallies collected
from the German dead, the attempt to storm that place, a far easier
enterprise, had cost the attackers 16,000 lives, it is no matter for
surprise that they intended to postpone an attack upon Antwerp until
their enterprise against France had proved successful.
So acute, however, was the annoyance they experienced from the Belgian
army, and so manifest the political effects of its continued activity
and being, that they resolved upon an attack with what was evidently
an insufficient though, nevertheless, a large force. This force, more
than twice as numerous as the Belgian army, succeeded in making its way
round to the north of the fortress, where both the outer and the second
line of defence were judged weakest. They had failed, however, to
reckon upon the element of defence afforded by the dykes. These at Fort
Oudendyk, and elsewhere along the Scheldt, the Belgians promptly cut,
though not before they had allowed the besiegers to place their siege
guns in position.
The result was that the Germans found themselves flooded out, and lost
a considerable part of their artillery. Men struggling breast deep
in water, or to save their guns, were shot down from the forts. Some
climbed into trees; not a few were drowned. They were forced to beat a
hasty and disastrous retreat, harassed by a sortie of the whole Belgian
army.
Not until the failure of their great expedition into France had become
manifest, with the prospective loss, in consequence, of the possession
of Belgium, the real and primary object of the war, did they address
themselves, with all the resources available, to the reduction of the
great fortress. Evidently the hope of being able, with Antwerp in their
power, to defy efforts to turn them out, inspired this enterprise.
After a bombardment with their huge 42-centimetre guns lasting some ten
days they succeeded in making a breach in the outer ring of forts, and
at the end of five days of heavy fighting drove the Belgians across the
Nethe. These successes, however, were dearly bought.