Numerous corpses of civilians covered the street and squares. On the route from Louvain to Tirlemont alone one witness testifies having seen more than fifty of them. On the threshholds of houses were found burned corpses of people who, surprised in their cellars by the fire, had tried to escape and fell into the heap of live embers. The suburbs of Louvain have been completely annihilated.
A group of seventy-five persons, among whom were several notables of the city, such as Father Coloboet and a Spanish priest, and also an American priest, were conducted during the morning of Wednesday, Aug. 26, to the square in front of the station. The men were brutally separated from their wives and children, and after having received the most abominable treatment, and after repeated threats of being shot, they were driven in front of the German troops as far as the village of Campenhout. They were locked in the church during the night. The following day at 4 o'clock a German officer came to inform them that they might all confess themselves, and that they would be shot half an hour later. But at 4:30 o'clock they were allowed to go, and shortly afterward they were again arrested by a German brigade, which forced them to march in front of them to Malines. Answering a question on the part of one of the prisoners, a German officer told them that they were going to taste some of the Belgian grapeshot before Antwerp. At last they were liberated on Thursday afternoon at the entrance of Malines.
Further testimony shows that several thousand male inhabitants of Louvain who had escaped the shooting and burning were sent toward Germany. We do not at this writing know for what purpose.
The fire continued for several days. An eye-witness, who on Aug. 30 left Louvain, describes the state of the city as follows:
"From Weert St. Georges," he says, "I have seen nothing except burned towns and crazed villagers lifting to each comer their arms as a mark of submission. From each house was hanging a white flag, even from those that had been set on fire, and rags of them were found hanging from the ruins.
At Weert St. Georges I inquired from the inhabitants the cause of the German reprisals. They all assured me that absolutely none of the inhabitants had fired; that all arms had been previously given up, and that the Germans had taken vengeance on the population because a Belgian soldier of the Gendarme Corps had killed a Uhlan.
The population which remained in Louvain took refuge in the suburb of Heverle, where they are all piled up, the population having been driven from the town by the troops and by the fire.
The fire in Louvain began a little above the American College, and the city is entirely destroyed, with the exception of the Town Hall (Hôtel de Ville) and the depot. Today the fire continued, and the Germans—far from trying to stop it—seem rather to maintain it by throwing straw into the fire, as I have myself seen in the streets behind the Hôtel de Ville. The cathedral and the theatres have been destroyed and have fallen in, also the library. The town resembles an old city in ruins, in the midst of which drunken soldiers are circulating, carrying bottles of wine and liquor; the officers themselves being installed in armchairs, sitting around tables and drinking like their own men.
In the streets dead horses are decaying, horses which are already inflated, and the smell of the fire and of the decaying animals is such that it has followed me for a long time."
The commission up to this writing has been unable to obtain any information regarding the fate of the Burgomaster of Louvain, nor regarding the prominent persons taken for hostages.