A General Sketch of the European War eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 216 pages of information about A General Sketch of the European War.

A General Sketch of the European War eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 216 pages of information about A General Sketch of the European War.

With the dawn of August 5th, and in the first four hours of daylight, a German infantry attack upon the same south-eastern forts which had been subjected to the first artillery fire in the night developed, and after some loss withdrew, but shortly after the first of the forts, that of Fleron, was silenced.  The accompanying sketch map will show how wide a gap was left henceforward in the defences.  Further, Fleron was the strongest of the works upon this side of the river.  Seeing that, in any case, even if there had been a sufficient number of trained gunners in the forts, and a sufficient equipment and full preparation of the works for a siege (both of which were lacking), the absence of sufficient men to hold the gaps between would in any case have been fatal to the defence.  With such a new gap as this open by the fall of Fleron, the defence was hopeless, even if it were only to be counted in hours.

[Illustration:  Sketch 34.]

It is high praise of the Belgian people and character to point out that, after the fall of Fleron, for forty-eight full hours such a gap was still contested by men, a great part of whom were little better than civilian in training, and who, had they been all tried regulars, would have been far too few for their task.  General Leman, who commanded them, knew well in those early hours of Wednesday, the 5th, that the end had already come.  He also knew the value of even a few hours’ hopeless resistance, not perhaps to the material side of the Allied strategy, but to the support of those moral forces lacking which men are impotent in maintaining a challenge.  Not only all that Wednesday, the 5th, but all the Thursday, the 6th, he maintained a line against the pressure of the invaders with his imperfect and insufficient troops.

During those forty-eight hours, the big howitzer, which is the type of the heavy German siege train—­the 225 mm.—­was brought up, and it is possible that a couple of the still larger Austrian pieces of 280 mm. (what we call in this country the 11-inch), which are constructed with flat treadles to their wheels to fire from mats laid on any reasonably hard surface (such as a roadway), had been brought up as well.  At any rate, in the course of the Thursday, the fort next westward from Fleron, Chaudefontaine, was smashed.  The gap was now quite untenable, and the first body of German cavalry entered the city.  The incident has been reported as a coup de main, with the object of capturing the Belgian general.  Its importance to the military story is simply that it proved the way to be open.  In the afternoon and evening of the day, the Belgians were retiring into the heart of the city, and it is typical of the whole business that the great railway bridge upon which the main communications depended was left intact for the Germans to use.

With the morning of Friday, the 7th August, the first bodies of German infantry entered the town.  The forts on the north and two remaining western forts upon the south of the river were still untaken, and until a large breach should be made in the northern forts at least, the railway communication of the German advance into the Belgian plain was still impeded.  Great masses of the enemy, and, in proportion to those masses, still greater masses of advance stores were brought in.

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A General Sketch of the European War from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.