Chapter III: From Liége to Malines 52 (3)

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

(v) _Louvain._

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“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....”

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....”

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.”

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.”