In possession of the old town a resolute attempt was made by the enemy to force the passage. Two divisions of cavalry, one of them the cavalry of the Prussian Guard, 8,000 strong, with several battalions of jaegers, and maxim companies engaged in this operation. While infantry lined the positions on the east bank, and artillery opened a bombardment from the citadel and cliffs, the cavalry dashed across the bridge en masse, opening a way for the jaegers. In the steep streets and from behind garden walls in the new town an obstinate battle raged. It was determined by the onset of a division of French chasseurs, who drove the Germans in flight down to the margin of the river. The bridge became a mass of struggling fugitives, stumbling over fallen horses and men. To save themselves, those cut off threw themselves into the water. Many in the confusion were drowned.
From Namur the French remained masters of the west bank, and at Namur the Belgians still possessed an important bridge-head. The Allied forces too held their positions from Namur across the country through Gembloux and Louvain to beyond Diest. But behind this dyke opposed by the Allies the grey-green flood of invasion was steadily rising making ready to burst through, and with apparently irresistible mass and momentum to cover with its devastation the rich fields of Belgium and the fair land of France.
On the face of things it looked as though the enemy had been taught caution. In front of the Allied lines stretched a No-man’s Land 10 to 15 miles in breadth. No Germans were met with nearer than Ramillies. In the intervening desolation, amid the hideous squalor of war, occasional terrified peasants, old men or widowed women, fled into hiding places at the distant approach of strangers, friend or foe.
Brussels had begun to regain breath. Though theatres, picture-houses, and other places of public entertainment were closed, and the busy traffic of the boulevards had shrunk to a rare and occasional vehicle, the shops, closely shuttered during the first days of the Terror, had reopened, and cafés were thronged with crowds eagerly debating the latest news.
When, on Monday, August 17, the Government removed from Brussels to Antwerp, it was realised that grave events were impending. All had been in readiness for removal for some days. At the Palais de Justice the courts and registries were closed and seals placed on the doors. Measures had been taken for the protection of the nation’s priceless art treasures, and to meet all emergencies. The Government issued a reassuring proclamation, exhorting the public to confidence, and expressing the resolve at all costs to safeguard the country’s freedom. Despite the deep anxiety of the moment, the public spirit remained firm. There was no trace either of disorder or of panic.
It was known that so long as the forts at Liége continued to fight the German advance could not begin. Notwithstanding the efforts of the Germans to cover their preparations with the closest veil of secrecy, the Belgian Government was kept well informed. Liége had become for its remaining inhabitants a prison. As a precaution the invaders had divided up the city by street barricades. Every approach to the place was closely patrolled. At night the only sounds were the heavy footfall of Prussian patrols, along streets where ruined houses showed the gaps made by shell fire, or over quays past bridges whose débris was heaped in the rivers. Many houses were doorless, but all were dark and silent. Nevertheless, news leaked through the German lines, and when on August 18, having silenced all but two of the forts, the German advance began, neither the Belgian Government nor the Belgian commanders were left in any uncertainty. The spirit and resource which had baffled all the energy of Spain, still baffled all the power of Prussianised Germany.
A strange spectacle was presented by that seemingly countless and endless host as it defiled along every main road leading to the north-west. No words can adequately picture the movement of an army, or rather a combination of armies, totalling nearly three-quarters of a million of men. The effect is too vast, and it might well be asked what human power could withstand such a multitude welded by an enormous labour of organisation into a machine of destruction and death. Onward it flowed, like the tide sweeping through the channels of a shore, ready to burst upon obstacles in angry breakers, but breakers of fire. Lines of lances moved among its forest of bayonets. Endless trains of guns and automobiles, field kitchens, field bakeries, huge wagons bearing pontoons and drawn by long teams of horses, ponderous caissons, camp equipment, portable smithies, rumbled successively past. The dust rose from the hot roads and floated over the deserted and trampled fields. Sabres and bayonets flashed back the August sunlight. And for hour after hour the mass rolled on, seemingly without end.
Not since the days of Attila has Western Europe been offered such a spectacle; nor has it been paralleled since the Gothic hordes rolled through the Alps on to the plain of northern Italy. The Goths were barbarians. These, their descendants, had the resources of civilisation, but applied to the same hopes and aspirations—dominion and the vision of material riches; inspired by the same belief in their own unconquerable prowess; impelled by the same conviction of their inborn right as the earth’s most valiant to possess and to rule the sunny lands held by cowards and degenerates. It is a profound mistake to assume that the philosophy of a Treitschke is anything new. It is as ancient as Germany. Ever since the wild swamps, and sandy plains and gloomy forests of central Europe became the home of a prolific people, who win from them a hard and penurious livelihood, that people have dreamed of the countries to the west and south where the beauties of art speak of the resources of the soil, and where no dark and frozen winter binds the year.
Twelve army corps traversed the Belgian plain. A corps of the German army is made up on a war footing to 63,000 men. The total of this vast host could not therefore have been far short of 700,000 even allowing for losses. Commonly, an army corps is spoken of as though it were inconsiderable. An army corps, however, is a complete army, and a huge body of men.
Though it might look complex, and was indeed a triumph of machinery, the plan of the advance was simple. The right flank was covered by an overwhelming mass of cavalry. It was estimated that there were 65,000 out of the 83,000 sabres of the German army in that truly formidable column. The rest advanced in three main columns heading for the roads between Brussels and Namur. It was the intention to push right on to the French frontier before the French could assemble there in sufficient strength to stem the onset. A host of this magnitude would take two days and a night to pass any given point. The distance between the van and the rear was half the breadth of Belgium.