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.

In all that follows, until we reach the date of Monday, August 24th, I
propose to consider no more than the fortunes of the troops who passed
through Belgium to attack the French armies upon the Sambre and the
Meuse, with the British contingent that had come to their aid. And my
reasons for thus segregating and dealing later with contemporary
events in the south will appear in the sequel.

This reservation made--an important one in the scheme of this book--I
return to what I have called the preliminaries, the advance through
Belgium.

We have already seen that the reduction of the northern forts of Liege
was the prime necessity to that advance.

We have also seen that meanwhile it was possible and advisable to
accumulate stores for the advance as far forward as could be managed,
and that it was also possible, with caution, to bring certain