[Illustration:  Sketch 33.]

The German Government, therefore, could not be secure of its intention to pass great bodies through the Belgian Plain until Liege was grasped, and it was determined to grasp Liege long before the mobilization of the German forces was completed.  For this purpose only a comparatively small force, rapidly gathered, was available.  It was placed under the command of General von Emmerich, and its first bodies exchanged shots with the Belgian outposts early in the afternoon of Tuesday, August 4, 1914.

The hour and date should always be remembered for the solemnity which attaches to the beginning of any great thing; and the full observer of European affairs, who understands what part religion or superstition plays in the story of Europe, will note this enormously significant detail.  The first Germans to cross the violated frontier accomplished that act upon the same day and at the same hour as that in which their forerunners had crossed the French frontier forty-four years before.

The afternoon wore on to night, with no more than a conflict between outposts.  Just before midnight the cannonade was first heard.  It also was the moment in which the ultimatum delivered to Germany by this country, by a coincidence, expired.[2]

This night attack with guns was only delivered against one sector of the Liege forts, and only with field-pieces.

As to the first of these points, it will be found repeated throughout the whole of the campaign wherever German forces attack a ring of permanent works.  For the German theory in this matter (which experience has now amply supported) is that since modern permanent works of known and restricted position go under to a modern siege train if the fire of the latter be fully concentrated and the largest pieces available, everything should be sacrificed to the putting into the narrowest area of all the projectiles available.  The ring once broken on a sufficient single sector point is broken altogether.

The second point, that only field-pieces as yet were used (which was due to the fact that the siege train was not yet come up), is an important indication of the weakness of the defence—­on all of which the enemy were, of course, thoroughly informed.

There were perhaps 20,000 men in and upon the whole periphery of Liege, a matter of over thirty miles, and what was most serious, no sufficient equipment or preparation of the forts, or, what was more serious still, no sufficient trained body of gunners.

It is almost true to say that the resistance of Liege, such as it was, was effected by rifle fire.