Told in gallant deeds

by Marie Belloc Lowndes

This German commander, angered by a report, which seems to have been quite false, that some of the inhabitants of the town had fired when they saw their dread enemy approaching, ordered his soldiers to set fire, deliberately and systematically, to the houses and public buildings of a town which, to all lovers of the beautiful and to every scholar in the old and the new world, had become a shrine, a place of joyful pilgrimage.

Till this summer there actually remained at Louvain a fragment of what had once been Cæsar’s Castle, and this survival of Roman days was of special interest to English people, for Edward III and his queen lived in the Castle for a winter. That great Emperor, Charles V, and his sister also, were scholars at Louvain, their teacher there being a priest who afterwards became Pope Adrian VI.

Heroic deeds were performed by some of the citizens of Louvain. Take the case of Dr. Noyons, who happened at the time to be Principal of the Medical Faculty of the University. On the very day the German Army approached the town, he suddenly learned that a hundred wounded were to be brought in. Beds were hurriedly got ready, and Dr. Noyons and his wife, as well as a large staff, were in attendance. This was at mid-day, and the wounded kept arriving all the afternoon.

At seven o’clock the firing of the town began! By eight o’clock the famous library was in flames!

Dr. Noyons’ own house, though it contained a number of wounded and had the Red Cross flag on the door, was now set on fire. But all night long the professor and his wife went on attending on the wounded, and when, the next morning, they were informed they must leave the town, in order that it might be razed to the ground by big guns, this noble-hearted couple at once decided to remain with those of the wounded (many of them Germans) who were too much injured to be moved.

Helped by a few trusted assistants, they carried their unhappy patients into the cellars of the hospital, and then they remained waiting for two days for a bombardment which fortunately never came. At the end of that time, this brave steadfast pair—a hero and heroine of a rare and splendid type—brought the wounded up again to the wards, and calmly continued to look after them.

Quite as awful as the fate of Louvain was that of the pretty town of Termonde. But there also splendid deeds of heroism were performed by quite simple folk.

Four times early in the War was unhappy Termonde bombarded, and twice it was deliberately set ablaze. But there were wounded there all through, and the Burgomaster and his two daughters never left the town. The two girls—the elder seventeen, and her sister a year younger—stayed at their posts as voluntary nurses, brave and fearless, thinking of nothing but their duty to the wounded.

The name of Termonde will now be for ever associated with the wicked and brutal conduct of the German Army. But before this last invasion of Belgium, Termonde was famed as having been the scene of all sorts of romantic incidents. Louis XIV, the stateliest of the great French kings, was very nearly drowned there, for the country round the town, like that of Holland, can be flooded at will. When the Sun King (as Louis XIV was nicknamed) was told that Marlborough was about to besiege Termonde, he observed: “He will have to bring an army of ducks to take it!” But Marlborough had the good luck to be there at a time of terrible drought, and so the brave garrison had to surrender.

Malines, or Mechlin as we ought to call it, was also the scene of one of the fiercest fights, and suffered greatly from the enemy. The beautiful little town was splendidly defended by the brave Belgians, but after two days’ battle they had to retire. Mechlin is famous, not only for its exquisite lace, but also for its peal of bells, and this, grievous to say, was destroyed by a German shell. Robert Browning, in a poem which I expect many of you know by heart, “How they brought the good news from Ghent to Aix,” wrote: