No sooner, however, had the march of the German main forces southward from Brussels begun, than the Belgians sallied forth. They were well-informed of the enemy’s movements, and were fully aware that, acting in conjunction with the contingent moving from Liége direct to the Sambre, that moving by way of Brussels could not in any event turn back.
This sortie, made so soon—it took place on August 23—took the German troops in Malines by surprise. They were just beginning to make themselves comfortable after their fatigues, when the Belgian army burst in upon them. No effectual resistance was possible. The invaders were driven, a battered rout, as far as Vilvorde, a northern suburb of Brussels. There most of the 10,000 German troops forming the garrison of Brussels were drawn up to cover the retreat. Malines remained in the hands of the Belgians.
Realising from this defeat that they had a tough proposition in front of them, the Germans hurried additional troops into the country. Meanwhile the Belgians had again seized Aerschot, Termonde and Alost. The German force threatening Ghent had to be withdrawn, and the invaders found themselves in danger of being cooped up in the capital.
This situation throws light on the atrocities which almost immediately followed, and on the question of whether these atrocities were accidents of hasty indiscipline or were, in fact, military measures carried out according to a settled plan.
A glance at the map of Belgium will show that the towns of Jodoigne, Louvain, Malines, Termonde, and Alost form round Brussels an arc, rather more than a semi-circle. The middle point of that arc is the point nearest to Antwerp, that is to say, Malines.
Now these towns as well as Aerschot were destroyed with the exceptions of Malines and Alost. Though Malines was three times severely bombarded by the Germans, and in the succeeding struggles changed hands as many times over, it was, while deplorably damaged, not destroyed. Neither was Alost. Why? Because Malines was needed as a point d’appui against Antwerp, and Alost as a half-way position on the road to Ghent. Alost was also the scene of repeated struggles. It is beyond argument to suggest that this destruction of some places and not of others can have been haphazard.
When we look further into the military situation the question passes beyond all doubt. Entrenched at Antwerp the as yet undefeated Belgian main army remained a serious menace. In fact, the Germans both at Berlin and at Brussels were well aware that, so long as that state of things continued, their hold upon the country was, not only precarious, but, in the event of a reverse in France, to the last degree dangerous. For, in possession of Antwerp and the seaboard provinces, the Belgians might, in conjunction with the Allies, at once close the only door of escape, and force at Aix-la-Chapelle what is, in effect, the main door to Germany.
From the invaders’ point of view, therefore, it was essential both to restrict the operations of the Belgian forces and to affirm their own grip on Brussels. And this explains why the threats indulged in to bombard and burn Brussels were merely threats. In a city of 800,000 people, numbers of whom, doubtless, secretly possessed arms, a rising on the part of the population, with a native army of nearly 100,000 men only a few miles away, meant a risk of the garrison of Brussels and even of the occupying troops altogether having to defend themselves against extermination, for the hatred they had inspired was unspeakable.
The plan resolved upon, it was carried out without mercy. Owing to its ancient renown, and the world-wide interest of its buildings and monuments, the destruction of Louvain has most shocked civilised peoples. The loss is a loss to the world, but as regards its utter inhumanity, the razing of the other towns, not to speak of the villages surrounding them, was equally pitiless and savage. In these murders the German soldiery spared neither age nor sex, and wreaked upon the most helpless their most indescribable and debased barbarities. It has been said that for every Belgian soldier killed in action, they slew three unarmed men, women, or children.
In the devastated districts the bodies of murdered peasants lay unburied in ditches by the roadside. The corpses of children, stiff in death, clung in their last attitude of terror to the corpses of their mutilated mothers. Others lay amid the roofless ruins of their homes. There were instances in which women were stripped, outraged by brutal soldiery, hanged from the branches of trees, and disembowelled in mockery of their final agony. Those who could escaped into the woods, where they hid without food or shelter. Numbers died of starvation and exposure. To destroy the last chance of life for these fugitives, and to avoid the trouble of hunting them out, corpses of murdered people were thrown into wells in order to poison the water.[D]