(I.) INCIDENTS AT NAMUR.
On August 21st, 1914, the Germans bombarded the town of Namur, without any previous notice given. The bombardment began about 1 p. m. and continued for twenty minutes. The besieger was in possession of long-range guns, which enabled him to fire upon the town before the forts had been taken. Shells fell upon the prison, the hospital, the Burgomaster’s house and the railway station, causing conflagrations and killing several persons.
On August 23rd, the German Army pierced the exterior line of defence, and the Belgian 4th Division retreated by the angle between the rivers Sambre and Meuse, while the greater number of the forts were still uninjured and continuing to resist. The German troops penetrated into the town of Namur on the same day about 4 p. m.
On this day order was preserved: officers and soldiers requisitioned food and drink, paying for them sometimes with coined money, more often with requisition-certificates. Most of the latter were bogus documents, but the townspeople were trustful and ignorant of the German language, and so accepted them without making difficulties.
Matters went on in the same way on August 24th till 9 o’clock in the evening. At that hour shooting suddenly began in several quarters of the town, and German infantry were seen advancing in skirmishing order down the principal streets. Almost at the same moment an immense column of smoke and fire was seen rising from the central quarter of the place: the Germans had fired houses in the Place d’Armes and four other spots, the Place Leopold, Rue Rogier, Rue St. Nicolas and the Avenue de la Plante.
All was now panic among the peaceable and defenseless townsfolk: the Germans began breaking open front doors with the butts of their rifles, and throwing incendiary matter into the vestibules. Six dwellers in the Rue Rogier, who were flying from their burning houses, were shot on their own doorsteps. The rest of the inhabitants of this street were forced to avoid a similar fate by escaping through their back gardens. Many of them were in their night clothes, for they had not the time to dress or to pick up their money.
In the Rue St. Nicolas several workmen’s dwellings were set on fire, and a larger number, together with some wood-yards, were burned in the Avenue de la Plante.
The conflagration in the Place d’Armes continued till Thursday. It destroyed the Town Hall, with its archives and pictures, the adjacent group of houses, and the whole quarter bounded by the Rue du Pont, the Rue des Brasseurs, and the Rue Bailly, with the exception of the Hotel des Quatre Fils Aymon.
No serious attempt was made to prevent the fire from spreading. At its commencement some of the townspeople came out at the appeal of the Fire-Bell, but they were forbidden to stir from their houses. The Chief of the Fire Brigade, though the balls were whistling round him, got as far as the site of the disaster; but an officer arrested him in the Place d’Armes, and then, acting under the orders of his superior, sent him away under an escort.
The Germans, with the object of justifying their proceedings, alleged that shots had been fired against their troops on the Monday evening. Every circumstance demonstrates the absurdity of this statement. The juxtaposition of observed facts and the sequence of concordant evidence lead to the conclusion that the incidents at Namur were deliberately prepared, and merely formed part of the general system of terrorism which was habitually practised by the German Army in Belgium.
Fifteen days back the people of Namur had given over to the Belgian Authorities all the firearms that they possessed. They had been informed by Official Notices as to the tenor of the Laws of War, and had been invited by the Civil and Military Authorities, by the Clergy and the Press, to take no part with the belligerents. The Belgian troops had evacuated the town 36 hours before the conflagration. The people, even if they had possessed weapons, would not have been so insane as to rise and assail the masses of German troops who crowded the town and occupied all its approaches. And how can anyone account for the strange fact that, at all the five points at which the alleged rising was supposed to have broken out, the Germans were found in possession of the incendiary substances which were required for the prompt burning of the place?
The disorder which followed helped the pillage in which the German Army habitually engages. In the Place d’Armes houses were thoroughly sacked before they were set on fire. In the quarter by the Gate of St. Nicolas the inhabitants, when they returned to their homes, found that everything had been plundered; in one case a safe had been broken up and 17,000 francs worth of securities had disappeared.
On the subsequent days, though things were comparatively quiet, pillage continued. In several houses where German officers were quartered, the furniture was broken up, and wine and underclothing (even female underclothing) was stolen.
Our witnesses have detailed to us several outrages on women. In one case we have evidence concerning the rape of a girl by four soldiers. A Belgian quartermaster of Gendarmes saw the daughter of the proprietor of the hotel in which he was staying outraged by two German soldiers, without being able to intervene for her protection, at four o’clock in the morning.
Many inhabitants of Namur perished during the fire and the fusillade. Some aged people were left in the burning houses: others were killed in the streets, or shot in their own dwellings. In all, seventy-five civilians perished in one of these ways or another on the 23rd-24th-25th August.
We may mention, without detailing, the arrest of hostages, and the brutal treatment to which the most distinguished inhabitants of the town were exposed during the early days of German occupation.
Namur and the seventeen neighbouring communes were subjected to a war contribution of fifty million francs (£2,000,000), which was afterwards reduced to thirty-two millions, on condition that the first million should be paid within twenty-four hours. The deposits at a private bank (the Banque Generale Belge) were confiscated. On the petition of its directors the concession was made that the sum seized should count towards the war contribution.
The immediate neighborhood of the town was the scene of many similar acts of violence. In this part of the province many mansions and villas were systematically pillaged. One citizen of Namur saw his own furniture from his country house going to the rear on a German cart. The plunder was all sent off to Germany.
At Vedrin a boy was shot because he was found to have in his possession an empty German cartridge case. Twenty-six priests and members of religious orders were shot in the diocese of Namur.