"Brussels is filled with refugees from surrounding towns, despite the large numbers who left the city for Ghent and Ostend during the last few days," said a correspondent, writing from Ghent on August 20.
"The plight of most of the refugees is pitiable. Many are camped in the public square whose homes in the suburbs have been fired by the Prussians. The roads leading into Brussels have been crowded all day with all kinds of conveyances, many drawn by dogs and others by girls, women and aged peasants.
"Most of these people have lost everything. Few of them have any money. The peasant is considered lucky who succeeded in saving a single horse or a cow.
"Military men characterize the German force which is moving across Belgium as overwhelming, saying it consists of at least two or three army corps. The advance of this huge force is covered over the entire thirty-mile front by a screen of cavalry. The Germans had no difficulty in taking Louvain, which was virtually undefended.
"In the high wooded country between Louvain and Brussels the Germans found an excellent defensive position. Having occupied Louvain, the Kaiser's troops pushed forward with great celerity, the cavalry opening out in fan-shaped formation, spreading across country.
"At one point they ran into a strong force of Belgian artillery, which punished them severely. Later in the day a Belgian scouting force reached Louvain and found it unoccupied, but received imperative orders to fall back, because of the danger of being outflanked and annihilated."
ALLIES MEET THE INVADERS
By August 20 the Germans were in touch with the French army that had advanced into Belgium and occupied the line Dinant-Charleroi-Mons, the right of the French resting on Dinant and the left on Mons, where they were reinforced by the British expeditionary force under Field Marshal French. There was a heavy engagement at Charleroi, and a four days' battle was begun at Mons August 23. Slowly but surely the Franco-British army was forced back across the French border, to take up a new position on the line, Noyon-Chant-La Fere, which constituted the second line of the French defense.
The German right, opposing the British, was under command of General von Kluck; General von Buelow and General von Hausen commanded the German center opposing the Franco-Belgian forces between the Sambre and Namur and the Meuse. The Grand Duke Albrecht of Wuerttemberg operated between Charleroi and the French border fortress of Maubeuge. The German Crown Prince led an army farther east, advancing toward the Meuse. The Crown Prince of Bavaria commanded the German forces farther south toward Nancy, and General von Heeringen was engaged in repulsing French attacks on Alsace-Lorraine, in the region of the Vosges mountains, where the French had met with early successes.
Meanwhile on August 18 the town of Aerschot had been the scene of a bloody engagement and was occupied and partly destroyed by the Germans. The occupation of Brussels followed on August 20-21 and the German line of communications was kept open by a line of occupied towns.