"Von Emmich."
And yet the poor inhabitants of Vise had been outraged and shot by the Kaiser"s unrestrained savages! In all those villages lying across the rippling Ourthe and the broad Meuse, the treatment of the inoffensive civilians had been ruthless and merciless. Removal from the face of the earth--a favourite phrase of the Germans themselves--was, from the first, the invader"s idea of how best to deal with the unarmed, unoffending villagers, the only crime of whose hard-working people was that they had fallen in the path of the blasphemous Prussian militarism.
A private who was reading the proclamation remarked to Edmond:
"What trickery--eh? I hear that the Uhlans yesterday shot the Burgomaster of Esneux, over yonder, and propped his body against a wall all day as a warning--because he had carried a revolver. Thirty men were afterwards shot in the Place without any trial whatever, and women and children were outraged and bayoneted and their bodies flung into the river. Our women, they say, are being treated infamously, and all the possessions of the villagers are being destroyed. May G.o.d curse those Germans!"
"Yes," replied the _sous-officier_, and as he turned away with a sigh a red light behind the hill gradually appeared, and then quickly grew brighter. "There is another village on fire, over there. I suppose the Uhlans will drive our people to reprisals so that excuse for further cruelty may be found."
"And yet they post up this proclamation!" cried the man in Flemish, and with the point of his bayonet he succeeded in tearing holes in the notice, and eventually mutilated and obliterated it, saying:
"Death to the Alboches! Death to the Kaiser"s murderers and brigands!
After all, the Emperor who makes war upon women and children is only a brigand, just like those in Sicily. Surely a prize should be offered for his head!"
Just as the man spoke they both saw, in the distance, sudden little red flashes, which told that the troops were vomiting death upon the enemy again, so they dashed back to their ditch, while in the trees above them could already be heard the "phit" of the enemy"s bullets as they struck the branches.
Ere a few moments the order was given to fire, and quickly Edmond"s pom-pom again began its regular spitting of death, whilst on the flank their invisible batteries also opened fire with destructive shrapnel.
The night grew darker, and the moon became, for a time, obscured behind a bank of swiftly-drifting cloud. In the distance the fires lit up the battle scene with a red, sinister glare, while, far away upon the hills on the right, could be seen moving ma.s.ses of Belgian soldiers, a Dantean vision of h.e.l.l, and whilst the men lay in their shallow ditch firing away with monotonous regularity, bullets were whistling past, striking the trees, or flattening themselves with m.u.f.fled noise in the earth.
The fight was a hot one. In front were the millions of the Kaiser, oncoming like a great irresistible tide, yet the gallant little Belgian army, which for years had been jeered at by every Frenchman, soldier or civilian, as a comic-opera force, were defending their country in a manner so patriotic and desperate that it held the whole world in surprise.
Confronted by a big and arrogant Empire, which for years had laid its cunningly-devised plots for their destruction, the Belgian army stood undaunted, and meant to strive on and defend their soil until France and Great Britain could come to their aid.
That the Germans should never take Belgium had been resolved in the hearts of all King Albert"s subjects, while His Majesty himself, in the uniform of a private of infantry, was daily in the trenches, and often spoke quiet, homely words of encouragement to private and general alike.
The whole army knew how, two days before, he had been in the trenches at Herstal, and had given private soldiers cigarettes with his own hands. In some cases he had not, at first, been recognised, dressed in a shabby, dusty uniform, just like themselves.
But he was a king--a king eventually without a country--and his name will for ever go down in history as a wonderful example of self-denial, personal bravery, and of human sympathy with his crushed and desolated nation.
Suddenly, while Edmond was commanding his gun, a shrapnel burst just behind him. A bullet struck his water-bottle, and a splinter pa.s.sing through it the water ran out down his leg. But at the same moment another bullet struck in the head a man to whom he was giving an order and he fell heavily forward on his face--dead.
In a moment the place seemed swept by lead. Two or three sh.e.l.ls fell in quick succession, the enemy having apparently advanced to a long copse just across the river-bank.
"The brutes have occupied Esneux again, I believe," remarked a man close by.
Away on the crest of one of the hills a small but very bright light showed. It was flashing in Morse code. A signaller quite near read it aloud.
"The enemy!" he shouted. "The message is in German!"
Yet they still plugged away with their rifles, undaunted at the enemy"s advance. The forts were speaking more frequently now, and continually the very earth trembled beneath the great crashes of modern artillery of the Brailmont system of defence.
Along that dark line of low hills was seen constant flashing in the blackness; storm clouds had arisen to obscure the moon, and rain was now threatening. The whole sky was now a deep, angry red, with patches of crimson heightening and dying down--the reflections of the inferno of war. The noise was deafening, and on every hand the gallant defenders were sustaining heavy losses.
Of a sudden, before indeed they were aware of it, the whole edge of the wood became lit up by an intense white brilliance, so dazzling that one could not discern anything in front. A thousand headlights of motor-cars seemed to be there focussed into one. The Germans had turned one of their great field searchlights upon them, and a second later sh.e.l.ls fell and burst in all directions in the vicinity.
Handicapped by want of such modern appliances, the Belgians were unable to retaliate. They could only remain there, in the actual zone of the enemy"s pitiless fire. Dozens of brave men fell shattered or dead amid that awful whirlwind of bullets and fragments of steel, as slowly the long ray of intense light moved along the line, searching for its prey, followed by the enemy"s artillery which never failed to keep up a pitiless, relentless fire, with wonderful accuracy for a night engagement.
From end to end swept that white line of brilliancy; then slowly--very slowly--it came back again, causing the men to lie flat upon their stomachs and wait in breathless anxiety until it had pa.s.sed. Time after time that long, shallow trench which was, after all, only a ditch, for no opportunity had been afforded for military engineering--was swept by both light and fire from end to end, and each time Edmond"s comrades were being placed _hors de combat_. That the situation was critical, he knew. Yet not a single man stood dismayed. Their Mausers crackled with just the same regularity, and, thanks to the fine spirit of his men, his pom-pom continued to rain lead upon the trenches of Von Emmich"s walls of men across the river.
At last the "retire" was sounded. The position had by this time become quite untenable. Edmond Valentin bit his nether lip. The same order always. They retired, but never advanced. For them, the Teuton tide seemed utterly overwhelming. Yet their spirit was never broken. The Belgian is ever an optimist.
Surely Belgium would never fall beneath the Kaiser"s rule, to be ground under his iron heel and smashed by that "mailed fist" which had so long been the favourite joke of the great caricaturists of Europe.
Impossible!
With alacrity the Maxim was dismounted, and with calm orderliness the retirement was commenced at a moment when that annoying searchlight had turned its attention to the right flank, and the great white beam lay full upon it.
They were to withdraw towards Liege, first retiring into the wood.
"_Wat sullen wy doen_?" (what is to be done?) asked one of Edmond"s men in Flemish--the thickset man who had read the proclamation.
"Our general knows best, my comrade," Edmond rea.s.sured him in his own language. "This may be only a strategic move. We shall sweep them off our soil before long--depend upon it."
"_Gy hebt gelyk_," (You are right), muttered the man, panting beneath his load--the barrel of the Maxim strapped across his shoulder.
"_Ik stem geheel met U_!" (I quite agree with you), murmured another of the men in his soft, musical Flemish. "We will never surrender to those brigands! Never, while there is breath left in us. They are a.s.sa.s.sins, not soldiers!"
They marched forward along the wide, dark, dusty road, safe from the enemy"s fire at that point because of the rising ground between them and the winding, peaceful valley of the Ourthe.
In their faces stood Liege, five miles distant. They were moving forward, still in high spirits. Many of the men were whistling to themselves as they marched, st.u.r.dy and undaunted. The Eighth Cha.s.seurs was one of the first regiments of King Albert, all men of splendid bravery, and of finer physique than the average Belgian.
From Liege came still the continuous boom of artillery, for the forts untaken were keeping up a regular fire, and the enemy, it was known, were sustaining terrible losses both night and day.
The forts, built in a ring in the environs of the city, were safe enough. But not so the town. The Germans, aided by their swarms of spies in the place, had made a dozen attempts to take it during the past forty-eight hours, but had always been repulsed.
They had resorted to every ruse. One party of Germans had dressed themselves in British uniforms--whence they obtained them n.o.body has ever known--and on entering the town were at once welcomed enthusiastically as allies. But, fortunately, the ruse was discovered when one was overheard to speak in German, and all were promptly shot.
Then another party appeared as Belgian Red Cross men, and they, on being discovered to be enemies, shared a similar fate: they were shot in the Place c.o.c.kerill. The Germans had requested an armistice for twenty-four hours to bury their dead. This, however, was refused, because it was well known that the big Krupp howitzers--"the German surprise to Europe"--were being brought up, each drawn by forty horses, and that the cessation of hostilities asked for was really craved in order to gain time to get these ponderous engines of destruction into position.
As they were marching, the moon again shone out over the doomed city of Liege, when of a sudden Edmond saw over it, in the sky, three black points which immediately changed into a light cloud, and soon flames were rising from the town. The Germans were now firing petrol-sh.e.l.ls upon the place!
They gained a small village called Angleur, a quaint little whitewashed place, over which shot and sh.e.l.l had swept for the past three days, until the villagers now took no notice. Here generous hearts offered comfort to the tired soldiers, jugs of fresh milk and bread were brought out though it was the middle of the night.
But they had no time to accept those gifts.
Presently they met some terrified people--men, women, and children-- fleeing from outside Liege, carrying bundles, all they could save from their wrecked homes.
"The Germans are in the wood!" they cried.
Before them lay a blazing village.
Edmond"s captain gave an order to halt, and they drew up. Then they saw the disappearance into the red furnace of entire companies, and soon afterwards the stretchers and ambulance corps following each other in quick succession told them of the splendid heroism of their glorious defenders.
Again they went forward, every man"s mouth hard-set and determined, yet in some cases with a grim joke upon their lips, for they resolved to defend the lives of their dearly-loved ones, and to account for as many of the enemy as they could.
"For G.o.d and Belgium?" shouted one man, a stout private from Malines, who had lost his shako and his kit.
Then they all ran to death with but little hope left in them. Such an ill.u.s.tration of bravery had been rare in this present century.
The remembrance of the Almighty, shouted by that fat private, had an effect upon the religious men in the ranks, officers and privates alike, and in that red glare of war, with blood showing in the very sky, they dashed on with renewed hope and a spirit of splendid patriotism unbroken.