All day yesterday, in a sanguinary battle, they were trying to force the passage of the Meuse north and south of Dinant. A squadron of French Dragoons was surprised beyond the river and destroyed. There are the wildest reports as to the losses of the Germans. An eye-witness of the attempts upon the Anseremme Bridge described to me the Germans as swept by the guns, as they advanced in their usual columns, and unable to fall as they died, so close and massed were the ranks.
They were repulsed at the time, but they are returning in force. They have began an attack upon the fort across the river at Davre. The armies seem to be advancing north-west into the great angle of the Meuse at Namur, coming into touch with the Belgians and French along the semicircle from Huy to Givet.
In a lonely little village south of Namur to-day, where I shared the deserted street with a few sad-faced women and half a dozen cripples and old men, the landlord said, "This is the 15th: our feast day. I usually have hundreds of tourists; to-day you are alone; we are waiting for the great battle. To-night?—to-morrow? Who knows?" As he spoke, and we waited, the thunderstorms kept rolling up the lime-stone gorges, and we listened, each time thinking this was the beginning.
I slipped down from Namur this morning along the front of the French lines on the Meuse. In all the villages deserted houses; walls pierced for musketry; wire entanglements; and the picturesque windings of the river scarred with trenches, and stirring with hardly-seen troops. It was a curious change to leave our little friends, the dark Belgians, and meet the moving patrols of French Dragoons, large, splendid-looking fellows, bronzed and hardened since I saw them leave Paris but a fortnight ago. But they cannot show more heart than our worn little Belgian comrades, as they held back the overwhelming numbers in those desperate engagements I watched yesterday, at Haelen and Diest.
Where the cliffs on the far side sink to the river the roadside hedges on this bank were lined with smart, keen-looking infantrymen, by hedge and tree and trench, leaning across walls or behind trees, with rifle ready. Hardly an eye turned on us. For on the hills across and to the south the Germans have been sighted. The attack may come anywhere, any time.
We got within a mile of Dinant, well within the entrenched lines; past barriers and fortified bridge ends—where the soldiers lay ready under screens of sheaves. They were naturally suspicious at first of civilian dress, but always courteous. Journals delighted them. One smart dragoon, being shaved under a bough-shelter, musket on knee, received his first wound in jumping up to ask for a newspaper, and to cheer for England.
At last came the final block. "Impossible to proceed; no despatch-carrier even may pass." Infantry were clustered about us, keenly watching the other bank. The shimmer of the light blue cavalry uniform stirred and glittered up the steep lane behind us, hidden and ready to charge and sweep the bridge clear.
As the car raced back along the lines, even those who had chatted on our first passing, or turned to salute, had barely a glance for us. Something was in the air. The most talkative of the captains who had questioned us looked at our passing with only the absent inward look familiar now on the faces of men going into action. The dragoons moved restlessly along the road in quick patrols, carrying news of the enemy sighted in the woods on the opposite bank. The road is exposed in all its length, and the car was so conspicuous that I expected every instant to be fired upon from the trees opposite. A long train of guns wound out of Namur and blocked our entry.
What they awaited may come to-night, or to-morrow. We should hear the guns here if the siege had begun in earnest.
Later.