REDUCED TO A HEAP OF ASHES
The notification of the sacking of Louvain was contained in the notice issued by the British Press Bureau on Friday, August 28, 1914, which read as follows: “On Tuesday evening a German corps, after receiving a check, withdrew in disorder into the town of Louvain. A German guard at the entrance to the town mistook the nature of this incursion and fired on their routed fellow-countrymen, mistaking them for Belgians. In spite of all denials from the authorities the Germans, in order to cover their mistake, pretended that it was the inhabitants who had fired on them, whereas the inhabitants, including the police, had been disarmed more than a week before. Without inquiry and without listening to any protests the German commander-in-chief announced that the town would be immediately destroyed. The inhabitants were ordered to leave their dwellings; a party of the men were made prisoners and the women and children put into trains, the destination of which is unknown. Soldiers furnished with bombs set fire to all parts of the town. The splendid church of St. Pierre, the University buildings, the library, and the scientific establishment were delivered to the flames. Several notable citizens were shot. A town of 45,000 inhabitants, the intellectual metropolis of the Low Countries since the fifteenth century, is now no more than a heap of ashes.”