As might be expected, troops capable of such enormities were, as combatants, of little value. Well disciplined soldiers could not be driven to such excesses. Though their greater numbers, when reinforced, enabled the invaders to make headway against the native troops, yet in every encounter between anything like equal forces they were always decisively defeated, and without exception suffered losses out of all proportion to those they were able to inflict.
It was after an encounter having these results that, on August 25, a body of these demoralised ruffians burned Louvain. They sallied out of that place with the object of driving the Belgians from Aerschot and beyond the Dyle. They were repulsed, and chased back almost to the outskirts of Louvain, sustaining on the way, as usual, a galling fire on both flanks. It has been suggested that the officer in command,[E] whose competence is sufficiently measured by the adventure, gave the order to sack and destroy the town in order to disguise the indiscipline of his troops. The motive assigned is not easy to accept. According to the statement for which the Belgian Government made itself responsible—a statement based on evidence which inquiry has not left open to doubt:—
The German armed guard at the entrance to the town mistook the nature of this incursion, and fired on their routed fellow-countrymen, taking them for Belgians. In spite of all denials from the authorities, the Germans, in order to cover their mistake, pretended that it was the inhabitants who had fired on them, whereas the inhabitants, including the police, had all been disarmed more than a week before.
Without inquiry and without listening to any protest, the German commander announced that the town would immediately be destroyed. The inhabitants were ordered to leave their dwellings; part of the men were made prisoners; the women and children put into trains of which the destination is unknown.
Soldiers, furnished with bombs, set fire to all parts of the town. The splendid church of St. Pierre, the University buildings, the Library, and the scientific establishments were delivered to the flames. Several notable citizens were shot.
The town of 45,000 inhabitants, the intellectual metropolis of the Low Countries since the fifteenth century, is now no more than a heap of ashes.
Such is the brief official statement. It was, however, but the palest reflection of the facts. How scrupulously restrained the Belgian Government were in framing it, is shown from the accounts given by eye-witnesses of the tragedy.
One of these, a Dutchman who owed his escape to the possession of papers proving his nationality, and afterwards reached Breda, told his experiences:—
On Tuesday, the 25th, many troops left the town. We had a few soldiers in our house. At six o’clock, when everything was ready for dinner, alarm signals sounded, and the soldiers rushed through the streets, shots whistled through the air, cries and groans arose on all sides; but we did not dare leave our house, and took refuge in the cellar, where we stayed through long and fearful hours. Our shelter was lighted up by the reflection from the burning houses. The firing continued unceasingly, and we feared that at any moment our house would be burnt over our heads. At break of day I crawled from the cellar to the street door, and saw nothing but a raging sea of fire.
At nine o’clock the shooting diminished, and we resolved to make a dash to the station. Abandoning our home and all our goods except what we could carry, and taking all the money we had, we rushed out. What we saw on our way to the station is hardly describable. Everything was burning, the streets were covered with bodies shot dead and half-burnt. Everywhere proclamations had been posted, summoning every man to assist in quenching the flames, and the women and children to stay inside the houses. The station was crowded with fugitives, and I was just trying to show an officer my legitimation papers when the soldiers separated me from my wife and children.
All protests were useless, and a lot of us were marched off to a big shed in the goods yard, from where we could see the finest buildings of the city, the most beautiful historical monuments, being burned down.
Shortly afterwards German soldiers drove before them 300 men and lads to the corner of the Boulevard van Tienen and the Maria Theresa-street, opposite the Café Vermalen. There they were shot. The sight filled us with horror. The Burgomaster, two magistrates, the Rector of the University, and all police officials had been shot already.
With our hands bound behind our backs we were then marched off by the soldiers, still without having seen our wives or children. We went through the Juste de Litshstreet, along the Diester Boulevard, across the Vaart and up the hill.
From the Mont Cesar we had a full view of the burning town, St. Peter in flames, while the troops incessantly sent shot after shot into the unfortunate town. We came through the village of Herent—one single heap of ruins—where another troop of prisoners, including half-a-dozen priests, joined us. Suddenly, about ten o’clock, evidently as the result of some false alarm, we were ordered to kneel down, and the soldiers stood behind us with their rifles ready to fire, using us as a shield. But fortunately for us nothing happened.
After a delay of half an hour, our march was continued. No conversation was allowed, and the soldiers continually maltreated us. One soldier struck me with all his might with the heavy butt-end of his rifle. I could hardly walk any further, but I had to. We were choked with thirst, but the Germans wasted their drinking water without offering us a drop.
At seven o’clock we arrived at Camperhout, en route for Malines. We saw many half-burnt bodies—men, women, and children. Frightened to death and half-starved, we were locked up in the church, and there later joined by another troop of prisoners from the surrounding villages.
At ten o’clock the church was lighted up by burning houses. Again shots whistled through the air, followed by cries and groans.
At five o’clock next morning, all the priests were taken out by the soldiers and shot, together with eight Belgian soldiers, six cyclists, and two gamekeepers. Then the officer told us that we could go back to Louvain. This we did, but only to be recaptured by other soldiers, who brought us back to Camperhout. From there we marched to Malines, not by the high road, but along the river. Some of the party fell into the water, but all were rescued. After thirty-six hours of ceaseless excitement and danger we arrived at Malines, where we were able to buy some food, and from there I escaped to Holland. I still do not know where my wife and children are.[F]
Another witness was Mr. Gerald Morgan, an American resident at Brussels. His narrative, given after his eventual arrival in England by way of Louvain, was published in the Daily Telegraph on September 3. He made a tour over the German line of march, and found their wounded scattered through every town and village not yet destroyed. In the absence of any German field hospitals, these men were left in any buildings available to be removed as far as possible back to Germany in returning supply wagons, ’buses or motor-cars. To calculate their number was very difficult. Mr. Morgan goes on to say:—
After this I returned to Brussels, and we Americans in Brussels then decided that it was time we shook the soil of the country from our feet. We found that we could return to England on a troop-train, viâ Louvain, Liége, and Aix-la-Chapelle, and thence over the Dutch border. A question arose as to how long the train would stop at Louvain, but on the following morning the German staff office at the railway station said, “You won’t stop at Louvain, as Louvain was being destroyed.” We left at three o’clock, the train stopping with abominable jerks every few minutes, like a German soldier saluting. We began to see signs of destruction in the outlying villages shortly before we reached Louvain. Houses in the villages were in flames.
An hour before sunset we entered Louvain, and found the city a smoking furnace. The railway station was crowded with troops, drunk with loot and liquor, and rapine as well. From house to house, acting under orders, groups of soldiers were carrying lighted straw, placing it in the basement, and then passing it on to the next. It was not one’s idea of a general conflagration, for each house burnt separately—hundreds of individual bonfires—while the sparks shot up like thousands of shooting stars into the still night air. It was exactly like a display of fireworks or Bengal lights, and set pieces, at a grand display in Coney Island.
Meanwhile, through the station arch we saw German justice being administered. In a square outside, where the cabs stand, an officer stood, and the soldiers drove the citizens of Louvain into his presence, like so many unwilling cattle on a market day. Some of the men, after a few words between the officer and the escorts, were marched off under fixed bayonets behind the railway station. Then we heard volleys, and the soldiers returned. Then the train moved out, and the last we saw of the doomed city was an immense red glare in the gathering darkness. My impressions after Louvain were just as if I had read and dreamt of one of Zola’s novels.
Weighing this evidence, it is not possible to resist the conclusion that the atrocity of Louvain was planned and carried out deliberately and in cold blood, and it is difficult to avoid the suspicion that the trivial conflict between the German armed guard and their retreating troops, a conflict which apparently hurt nobody on either side, was prearranged in order to afford a colourable excuse. It has been alleged that the troops forming the guard were drunk, and that they had just turned out on the alarm being sounded, after a debauch following the sack of a brewery. There is no present proof that the sack of the brewery had anything to do with the affair, or that the connection was anything more than an afterthought.
The inference of a plan is strengthened, not only by the method with which, as Mr. Morgan shows, the destruction and its accompanying “military executions” were completed, but by the provocation which had previously been offered to the inhabitants, but offered, as it proved, without the evidently expected effect.