The depositions which relate to Louvain are numerous, and are believed by the committee to present a true and fairly complete picture of the events of the 25th and 26th of August and subsequent days.  We find no grounds for thinking that the inhabitants fired upon the German Army on the evening of the 25th of August.  Eyewitnesses worthy of credence detail exactly when, where, and how the firing commenced.  Such firing was by Germans on Germans.  No impartial tribunal could, in our opinion, come to any other conclusion.

On the evening of the 25th firing could be heard in the direction of Herent, some three kilometers from Louvain.  An alarm was sounded in the city.  There was disorder and confusion, and at 8 o’clock horses attached to baggage wagons stampeded in the street and rifle fire commenced.  This was in the Rue de la Station and came from the German police guard, (21 in number,) who, seeing the troops arrive in disorder, thought it was the enemy.  Then the corps of incendiaries got to work.  They had broad belts with the words “Gott mit uns,” and their equipment consisted of a hatchet, a syringe, a small shovel, and a revolver.  Fires blazed up in the direction of the Law Courts, St. Martin’s Barracks, and later in the Place de la Station.  Meanwhile an incessant fusillade was kept up on the windows of the houses.  In their efforts to escape the flames the inhabitants climbed the walls.

“My mother and servants,” says a witness, “had to do the same and took refuge at Monsieur A.’s, whose cellars are vaulted and afforded a better protection than mine.  A little later we withdrew to Monsieur A.’s stables, where about thirty people who had got there by climbing the walls were to be found.  Some of these poor wretches had to climb twenty walls.  A ring came at the bell.  We opened the door.  Several civilians flung themselves under the porch.  The Germans were firing upon them from the street.  Every moment new fires were lighting up, accompanied by explosions.  In the middle of the night I heard a knock at the outer door of the stable which led into a little street, and heard a woman’s voice crying for help.  I opened the door, and just as I was going to let her in a rifle shot fired from the street by a German soldier rang out and the woman fell dead at my feet.  About 9 in the morning things got quieter, and we took the opportunity of venturing into the street.  A German who was carrying a silver pyx and a number of boxes of cigars told us we were to go to the station, where trains would be waiting for us.  When we got to the Place de la Station we saw in the square seven or eight dead bodies of murdered civilians.  Not a single house in the place was standing.  A whole row of houses behind the station at Blauwput was burned.  After being driven hither and thither interminably by officers, who treated us roughly and insulted us throughout, we were divided.”

The prisoners were then distributed between different bodies of troops and marched in the direction of Herent.  Seventy-seven inhabitants of Louvain, including a number of people of good position, (the names of several are given,) were thus taken to Herent.