Evidently they were not certain that the departure of troops from Liége might not be a ruse. Their severe handling had taught them caution. Small bodies of uhlans stole into the city from the east on August 9. These, as usual, were men who had specially volunteered for the service. Though they might never return, the ambition for the Iron Cross is strong. They found the city and the entrenchments evidently evacuated. No hostilities were offered.
Reports to the German headquarters of this state of things led to a second demand for surrender. To secure protection for the defenceless population a deputation of seventeen leading citizens sought an interview with the German general. The deputation were seized as hostages.
On August 10, German troops marched in without resistance. The city was put under martial law and a “fine” of £2,000,000 imposed upon it. But the occupation was a hollow triumph. Liége, as a military possession, was a husk from which the kernel had been carefully withdrawn.
The defence, followed by the continued resistance of the forts, had created a formidable tangle of difficulties. As the forts, by the use of reinforced concrete, had been adapted to resist modern artillery the shells, even of the 5·9 howitzers, made no impression upon them. It was necessary to bring up from Essen the 28 centimetre howitzers, and even the still heavier guns, 42 centimetre, specially made for the prospective siege of Paris.
Needless to say, with the strategical railways to Aix already working at full pressure, the transport of these heavy pieces played havoc with the cut and dried time-table. There was the necessity, too, not calculated for at this stage, of sending wounded to the rear, and of replacing by fresh troops the battalions broken in the attempted assault. To hurry troops to the front, lest the Belgians should move in force upon the Meuse, was urgent. The sending forward of supplies was, in consequence, badly hung up. The commissariat became for the time almost a chaos.
If we sum up their situation at the end of the first fortnight of the war we find that the Germans had accomplished little or nothing. They had expected by that time to be close upon Paris. All they had, in fact, gained was a passage across the Meuse. It is impossible to overrate the military importance of this delay. During that fortnight the mobilisation of the French had been completed without interruption. At the end of it the British Expeditionary Force had been landed at Boulogne. The calculated advantages of secret preparation which had inspired the ultimata launched from Berlin were nullified. The first principle of German strategy had failed.
Important as a subsidiary means of communication, the floating bridges across the Meuse were in no sense adequate for the supply of such a force as it was intended to send through Belgium to defeat the armies of France and Great Britain and to seize Paris. Command of the railways was indispensable. But without a reduction of the forts at Liége that was out of the question.
The forts at Liége held out until August 19. The larger works were each triangular in formation, armed with both heavy and quick-firing guns mounted in steel revolving turrets. Three of these turrets were of the disappearing type. On the discharge of the guns a turret of this type falls out of sight automatically. By means of telescopic and reflector sights, the guns can be “laid” for the next shot while the turret is hidden from outside view.
To storm the forts, as had been proved, was not practicable. They had to be broken up by the shells of the huge ordnance brought along for the purpose, and mounted on massive concrete beds.
One by one the forts were broken up. They offered, however, an unyielding resistance. Their garrisons knew that they were called upon to sell their lives for the Belgian fatherland. None deserted their posts of duty. There have been many acts of heroism in this war. The defenders of the forts at Liége deserve an honoured place in the memories of an emancipated Europe.