The men stopped their horses, dismounted, and returned the fire from behind their animals. This went on for about a quarter of an hour. Every one was alarmed by this shooting; other soldiers came racing in from the station, and others ran to and fro near that building crying, "A surprise attack!" Some, thinking that the attack came from the advancing Belgians, rushed to the place where the fighting took place, others misunderstood the cry, believed that the citizens assaulted them, and began to shoot at these, and at the houses.
Before those on the Naamsche Vest found out their mistake, the shooting was going on in the greater part of the town, and the excited men, who at first had been shooting at each other, soon joined the rest. Some wounded troopers were taken to one of the convents on the Vest, but a couple of hours later they were suddenly fetched away again.
The whole evening and the next day the Germans went on shooting people and firing houses. It is worth recording that the library was already set on fire that same evening of the fray on the Naamsche Vest; it was burning at eight o'clock.
On Thursday everyone, even the persons staying in the Institution and hospitals, were ordered to leave the town, as it was to be shelled. They seemed to have no pity even on the wretched wounded men. Only the male and female nurses remained with these, of their own free will, determined to die with them if necessary.
The inhabitants were driven to the station, where the husbands were cruelly separated from their wives and several persons were shot. Other men were escorted to a place behind the station, and their wives and children were told that those men were going to be shot. The poor things heard indeed the click-clack of the rifles and thought that their dear ones were dead. However, many returned later, and their "shooting" seems to have been a mere sham.
Great crowds walked the long way to Tirlemont. They were constantly threatened by German soldiers, who aimed their rifles at them; passing officers commanded from time to time that some should stay behind, and others were shot. Especially did the clerics amongst the refugees suffer a great deal; many were not only scandalously scoffed at, but also maliciously injured. The greater part of the Germans showed a strong anti-Catholic bias, in particular against the clergy, whom they accused of having incited the people against them.
This is only a short record of the destruction of Louvain, the truthfulness of which will be firmly and fully established after the war by extensive, accurately drawn up declarations.
Louvain had been destroyed because a crowd of wanton soldiers, who were garrisoned there, who hated the Belgians, and who had been kept within bounds with difficulty, seized on their own stupid mistake to give rein to their passions.
Their commanding officer was the worthy head of such a mob, a heartless creature, who did not show the slightest remorse for the destruction of those magnificent libraries, set on fire by his order.
It has been alleged that civilians had been shooting from the Halls, but when a committee examined the remains in the building with the consent of the military, they found there the carcase of a German horse. They were ordered to stop their investigations immediately, for that horse was evidence ... that German military men had been billeted on the building, and thus no civilians could have been there. This will also be published later in the reports.