ELEVENTH REPORT SUBMITTED TO HIS EXCELLENCY, MR. CARTON DE WIART, Belgian Minister of Justice.
(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.