2th August. Burgomaster, Priest and
Schoolmaster shot, and houses burnt to the ground. We resume our march."
Another, "Villers-en-Fagne, village in flames. The population had
notified the French of the approach of the grenadiers; thereupon the
hussars set fire to the village, the Parish Priest and others being
shot."

Others enter into details of the executions. "_Leffe._ We shoot everyone
who fires on our men. We put three, one behind the other, and a Marburg
rifleman kills them outright with a single shot. It is war to the
knife."

Another expresses something other than enthusiasm for such work.
"Considering that the King (of the Belgians) has given orders to defend
the country by all possible means, we have been ordered to shoot every
male inhabitant. At Dinant more than 100 were collected in a crowd and
shot. A dreadful Sunday." Another, an aesthete, writes as follows:
"During the night many more civilians were shot, so many that we were
able to count over 200. Women and children, with lamps in their hands,
were compelled to witness the horrible sight. We afterwards ate our
rice among the dead bodies. Sadly beautiful." He adds (in shorthand)
"Captain Hermann was drunk."

Again another: "_Dinant._ We have been firing on everyone who showed
himself, or on those thrown out of the houses, men or women. The bodies
lie in the streets, in heaps a yard deep."

A Saxon officer writes: "My company is at Bouvignes. Our men behave like
vandals: everything is upset; the sight of the slaughtered inhabitants
defies all description; not a house is left standing. We have dragged
out of every corner all survivors, one after another, men, women, and
children, found in a burning cloister, and have shot them 'en masse.'"

The following depositions on the massacres at Nomeny are made by
prisoners, one a Bavarian officer in the Reserve, the other a private in
the same regiment. The lieutenant says: "I gathered the impression that
it was impossible for the officers at Nomeny to prevent such acts. As
far as I can judge, the crimes committed there, which horrified all the
soldiers who were at Nomeny later on, must be put down to the acts of
unnatural brutes." The soldier says, "At five o'clock regimental orders
were received to kill every male inhabitant of Nomeny, and to raze
everything to the ground; we forced our way into the houses." Here is a
more detailed account of a massacre near Blamont. "All the villagers
fled: it was terribl