“reverse”—­that is, from the side upon which no fort is expected to stand, the side which is expected to defend and not to be attacked from.  Whether Loncin held out the full forty-eight hours, or only forty, or only thirty-six, we do not know; but that moral factor to which I have already alluded, and which must be fully weighed in war, was again strengthened by the nature of such a resistance.  For nearly all that garrison was dead and its commander found unconscious when the complete destruction of the work by the high explosive shells permitted the enemy to enter.

[Illustration:  Sketch 36.]

It was upon Saturday, the 15th of August, that the great bulk of the two main German armies set aside for passage through the Belgian Plain began to use the now liberated railway, and the week between that date and the first great shock upon the Sambre is merely a record of the almost uninterrupted advance, concentration, and supply of something not far short of half a million men coming forward in a huge tide over, above, and round on to, the line Namur-Charleroi-Mons, which was their ultimate objective, and upon which the Anglo-French body—­perhaps half as numerous—­had determined to stand.

[Illustration:  Sketch 37.]

The story of that very rapid advance is merely one of succeeding dates.  By the 17th the front was at Tirlemont, by the 19th it was across the Dyle and running thence south to Wavre (the first army), the second army continuing south of this with a little east in it to a point in front of Namur.  On the 20th there was enacted a scene of no military importance (save that it cost the invaders about a day), but of some moral value, because it strongly impressed the opinion in this country and powerfully affected the imagination of Europe as a whole:  I mean the triumphal march through Brussels.

Far more important than this display was the opening on the evening of the same day, Thursday, August 20th, of the first fire against the eastern defences of Namur.  This fire was directed upon that evening against the two and a half miles of trench between the forts of Cognelee and Marchovelette, and in the morning of Friday, the 21st, the trenches were given up, and the German infantry was within the ring of forts north of the city.  The point of Namur, as we shall see in a moment, was twofold.  First, its fortifications, so long as they held out, commanded the crossings both of the Sambre and of the Meuse within the angle of which the French defensive lay; secondly, its fortified zone formed the support whereupon the whole French right reposed.  It was this unexpected collapse of the Belgian defence of Namur which, coupled with the unexpected magnitude of the forces Germany had been able to bring through the Belgian plain, determined what was to follow.

Once Namur was entered, the reduction of the forts was not of immediate importance, though it was immediately and successfully achieved.  For the German business was not here, as at Liege, to grasp a railway within the zone of the fortifications, but to destroy the buttress upon which the French depended for their defensive position, and to prevent the French from holding the crossings over the two rivers Sambre and Meuse at their junction.