Siege of Antwerp.
Belgian troops retreat to Ostend.
The territory left to the Belgians.
We have seen that, with the fall of Liège the German armies swept through Belgium on their way to Paris. Brussels was abandoned as the capital, and the Government moved hastily to Antwerp, where a portion of the Belgian army also gathered to defend the city. The remainder of the Belgian forces, under the leadership of their gallant King, opposed as stoutly as their numbers would permit the advance of the Germans. Battles were fought at Alost and Termonde in which the Germans were, for the time, repulsed, but their ever-increasing reinforcements enabled them to advance despite the efforts of the Belgians to check them. Ghent was captured on September 5 and the Belgians, in an effort to stay the German advance on Antwerp, opened the dikes and let in the waters of the North Sea. Termonde fell on September 13, and seven days later the German armies began the siege of Antwerp. The military authorities in command of the city had taken whatever measures were possible for defense. A body of British marines was hurried to the beleaguered city and preparations were made for a long siege. The Germans brought up guns of heavy caliber, with which they bombarded the city at long range. After a brave defense of two weeks, during which the inhabitants endured many hardships, it was plain that further resistance was useless, and the city was surrendered on October 10. The Belgian troops in the city, and many of the noncombatants escaped. The Belgian troops retreated to Ostend, which they reached on October 11 and 12, after having been greatly harassed by the pursuing Germans. On the 13th, Ostend was evacuated, and was occupied by the Germans, and Bruges on the following day. The German forces now controlled the whole of Belgium, with the exception of the northwest corner, north of Ypres, to the coast of the Channel. This little slip of territory they held throughout the entire war, and at what a cost! But the heroic defense of this territory by the Belgians saved the French coast cities and prevented the Germans from breaking through the line which extended now from the North Sea to Belgium.
THE LAST DITCH IN BELGIUM
ARNO DOSCH
The Yser the Belgian's last ditch.
A little piece of the Low Countries, so small I walked across it in two hours, was all that remained of Belgium in the last days of October. A tide-water stream, the Yser, ebbed and flowed through the sunken fields, and there King Albert with his remnant of an army stopped the German military machine in its advance on Calais. If he and his forty thousand men had been crushed back ten miles farther they would have been fighting on French soil. The Yser was the last ditch in Belgium.