Meanwhile, upon the north of the river Meuse, cavalry and armed motor-cars were similarly preparing the way for the general advance when the northern forts of Liége should be dominated; and on this same Wednesday, August 12th, the most advanced bodies of the invader lay in a line roughly north and south from the neighbourhood of Diest along the Gethe and thence towards Huy. Of the outrages committed upon the civilian inhabitants in all these country-sides, the Government of which was neutral, and the territory of which was by the public law of Europe free not only from such novel crimes but from legitimate acts of war, I shall not speak, just as I shall not allude, save where they happen to have military importance, to the future increase of similar abominations which marked the progress of the campaign. For my only object in these pages is to lay before the reader a commentary which will explain the general strategy of the war. [Illustration: Sketch 35.] While this advance line of cavalry was engaging in unimportant minor actions, or rather skirmishes (grossly exaggerated in the news of those days), the attack on the northern forts of Liége, upon which everything now depended, was opened. It was upon Thursday, August 13th, that the 280 mm. howitzers opened upon Loncin. Other of the remaining forts were bombarded; but, as in the case of Fléron a week before, we need not consider the subsidiary operations, because everything depended upon the fort of Loncin, which, as the accompanying diagram shows, commanded the railway line westward from Liége. General Leman himself was within that work, the batteries against which were now operating from _within_ the ring--that is, from the city itself, or in what soldiers technically call "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.]