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Aerschot is a humble and happy little town in Flemish Brabant, one of those modest unknown clusters of habitations which, like Dinant, for ever to be regretted and buried in the past, nobody used to visit, because they contained no buildings of note, but which retained and represented all the more, in the depths of their silence and their placid isolation, Flemish life in its most special, intimate, intense, traditional, suave and peaceable aspect. In these half-rustic little cities we find hardly any industries, at most a malt-kiln or two, a corn-mill, an oil-works, a chicory-factory. Their life is almost agricultural; and the well-to-do inhabitants live on the produce or the rents of their fields, their meadows and their woods. The houses in the church-square are substantial-looking, more or less cubical in shape and painted virgin white; their carriage-gates are adorned with glittering brasses. All through the week the square is almost deserted and wakens into life only on market-days and on Sunday mornings, at the hour of high mass. In a word, it is a picture of tranquillity, of placid waiting for meals and repose, of drowsy, easy existence and perhaps of happiness, if happiness consists in being happy in a half-slumber free of remote ambitions, exaggerated passions or over-eager dreams.

It was here, in this peaceful sojourn of immemorial restfulness, which not even the war had hitherto disturbed below the surface, that, on the 19th of August, 1914, at nine o’clock in the morning, after the retreat of the last Belgian soldiers, the square was suddenly invaded by a dense and endless stream of German troops. The burgomaster’s son, a lad of fifteen, hurried to close the Venetian shutters of his father’s house and was wounded in the leg by one of the bullets which the victors fired at random through the windows.

At ten o’clock, the German officer in command sent for the burgomaster, M. Tielemans, to appear at the Town-hall. He was received with insults, hustled and abused for a Schweinhund, or pig-dog, a species of animal which appears to be indigenous to Germany.

Next, Colonel Stenger, commanding the 8th infantry brigade, and his two aides-de-camp took up their quarters in the burgomaster’s house in the church-square and, I may add in passing, forthwith broke open all the drawers in their rooms, after which they went to the balcony and watched the march-past of their troops.

At four o’clock in the afternoon, obsessed by the delusion of francs-tireurs, some soldiers, seized with panic, began to fire shots in the streets. The colonel, standing on the balcony, was hit by a German bullet and fell. One of the aides-de-camp rushed downstairs shouting:

“The colonel is dead! I want the burgomaster!”

M. Tielemans felt that his time was come:

“This is a serious matter for me,” he said to his wife.

She squeezed his hand and urged him to keep courage. The burgomaster was arrested and ill-treated by the soldiers. In vain his wife remarked to the captain that her husband and son could not have fired, since they possessed no weapons.

“That makes no difference,” replied the bully in uniform; “he’s responsible. Also,” he added, “I want your son.”

This son was the boy of fifteen who had been wounded in the leg. As he had a difficulty in walking, because of his wound, he was brutally jostled before his mother’s eyes and escorted with kicks to the Town-hall, there to join his father.

Meanwhile this same captain, persisting in his contention that his men had been fired upon, compelled Madame Tielemans to go through the house with him, from cellar to attic. He was obliged to observe that all the rooms were empty and all the windows closed. Throughout this inspection, he threatened the poor woman with his revolver. Her daughter placed herself between her mother and their sinister visitor, who did not understand. When they returned to the hall downstairs, the mother asked him:

“What is to become of us?”

Coldly, he replied:

“You will be shot; so will your daughter and your servants.”

The pillage and the methodical setting on fire of the town now began. All the houses on the right-hand side of the square were in flames. From time to time, the soldiers apostrophized the women, shouting:

“You’re going to be shot, you’re going to be shot!”

“At that moment,” says Madame Tielemans, in her sworn deposition, “the soldiers were leaving our house, their arms filled with bottles of wine. They opened the windows and removed all the contents of our rooms. I turned away so as not to behold the pillage. By the lurid light of the burning houses, my eyes fell upon my husband, my son and my brother-in-law, accompanied by some other gentlemen who were being led to execution. Never shall I forget the sight nor the look on the face of my husband seeking his house for the last time and asking himself what had befallen his wife and daughter, while I, lest I should sap his courage, could not call out, ‘I am here!’”

The hours passed. The women were driven out of the town and led like a herd of cattle, along a road strewn with corpses, to a distant meadow, where they were penned until morning. The men were arrested and their hands tied behind their backs with copper wire so cruelly tightened as to draw blood. They were gathered into groups and made to lie down so that their heads touched the ground and they were unable to make any movement. The night was spent in this way, with the town burning and the pillage and orgy continuing.

Between five and six in the morning, the military authorities decided that the executions should begin and that one of the largest groups of prisoners, composed of about a hundred civilians, should be present at the death of the burgomaster, his son and his brother. An officer informed the burgomaster that his hour had come. On hearing these words, a citizen of Aerschot, Claes van Nuffel by name, went up to the officer, begged him to spare the chief magistrate’s life and offered to die in his stead. He added that he was the burgomaster’s political adversary, but that he considered that, at this moment, M. Tielemans was essential to the town.

“No,” replied the officer, harshly, “we must have the burgomaster.”

M. Tielemans stood up, thanked M. van Nuffel and said that he would die with an easy mind, as he had spent his existence doing all the good in his power, and that he would not beg for mercy. He entreated, however, that the lives of his fellow-citizens and of his son, a boy of fifteen and his mother’s last consolation, might be spared. The officer grinned and made no reply. The burgomaster’s brother next asked for mercy, not for himself but for his brother and his nephew. His request fell on deaf ears. The lad then got up and took his place between his father and his uncle. Six soldiers took aim at ten yards’ distance; the officer lowered his sword; and, as the widow of the heroic burgomaster says, “the best man in this world had ceased to exist.”