Driving in the Belgian cavalry outposts along the frontier, the troops from Aix, three army corps under the command of General von Emmich, pushed forward to secure on the one hand a passage over the Meuse before effective opposition could be offered, and on the other to surprise Liége. The 9th corps was detached to seize Visé and the bridge at that place; the 10th marched by way of Verviers with the object of occupying the country to the south and approaching Liége along the level ground between the Vesdre and the Ourthe; the 7th corps followed the direct road from Aix to Liége.
On crossing the frontier, General von Emmich, in command of these troops, distributed to the civilian population a proclamation declaring the pacific intention of the invaders and promising protection for person and property if no hostility was shown. This proclamation, it is evident, had been drawn up and printed in anticipation of Belgian compliance, and no time had been afforded for amending it.
Since the Belgian Government had only on July 31 ordered a partial mobilisation, no considerable force, it was supposed, would be met with south of the Meuse, nor was Liége likely in so short a time to have been made ready for defence. The invading forces consequently brought forward no heavy siege guns. Their equipment in siege artillery was apparently limited to the twelve 5·9 howitzers, four to each army corps, which represented their ordinary field outfit. During the greater part of their advance, the 7th corps met with nothing more formidable than a weak screen of cavalry.
But the Belgian Government had taken prompt and energetic measures. The German troops sent to occupy Visé found on arrival there that, though the Belgians had evacuated the main part of the town lying on the south bank of the river, they had already blown up the bridge, and were prepared from the suburb on the opposite bank seriously to dispute the passage.
The Meuse at this point is fully 300 yards wide. Some sixty yards of the bridge had been destroyed. It was necessary, therefore, for the Germans to construct pontoon bridges, and to cover this operation by shelling the Belgians out of their positions.
From well-covered entrenchments and loop-holed houses on the north bank, however, the Belgians kept up a galling fire, and, although out-weighted in the artillery duel, used their guns to good effect in hampering the German engineers. Repeatedly, when on the point of completion, the pontoon bridges were smashed by Belgian shells. The Belgians successfully contested the passage of the river for three days.
It was when this combat was at its hottest, on August 5, that a detachment of German cavalry was fired upon from the windows of some houses on the south bank. Exasperated by the difficulties met with, and their heavy casualties, the invaders forthwith drove out the inhabitants and fired the town. Many of the men, as they came out of the houses, were indiscriminately shot. The women and children were driven before the German troops with marked barbarity. Visé was reduced to ruins.
On the same day, the village of Argenteau, two miles up the river on the same bank, was similarly destroyed and its population decimated. There can be little doubt that this was an act of terrorism intended at once to conceal the attempt to bridge the river at that point, and to dispirit any defence of Liége.
To the Belgians the three days’ struggle for the passage of the Meuse was of the utmost consequence. It gave General Leman the time necessary to prepare Liége for that resistance which has become, and will remain, one of the most famous episodes in European history.
Intrepid and resourceful, General Leman had thrown himself into Liége with the 3rd division of the Belgian army, and a mixed brigade of such troops as could be hastily got together. This force, of not more than 25,000 men, was reinforced by the civic guard, of the city and district, but it was still far short of the 50,000 troops needed to make up a complete garrison.