This is a revival of the deeds of antiquity. The ancients also reduced the able-bodied inhabitants to slavery, employing them in agriculture or the mines. It only remains for the Germans to sell us at auction, as Julius Cæsar did in the case of the 53,000 Belgians captured at Atuatuca (_De Bello Gallico_, ii. 33). They sent not only "francs-tireurs" into Germany. They made prisoners also in localities where nothing had happened. Thus they took all the inhabitants of the non-active civic guard of Tervueren. The list bore 135 names; as many of the men had left the commune, the Germans completed the number by taking the first civilians who came to hand; for they had to have 135 prisoners from Tervueren to exhibit in Germany. On several occasions it happened, during the period of the great massacres, from the 20th to the 27th August, that bands of prisoners taken into Germany were not accepted and were sent back to Belgium. Such was the case with numerous prisoners from Louvain, who were taken back to Brussels, then taken to near Malines, and there left in the open country; the same was done with several hundreds of men, women, children, and old folk from Rotselaer, Wesemael, and Gelrode. Here, in a few words, is their Odyssey. To begin with, they were expelled from their houses, that these might be burned, on the 25th and 26th August. Then they were driven by the troops as far as Louvain, and there crammed by force into cattle-trucks, which in two days conveyed them to Germany. There they were witnesses of a violent dispute of which they were the object, and finally, after they had been given a little food in the railway station, they were put back into their trucks. They reached Brussels on the 31st August, where they were restored to liberty; that is, they were told: "Get out of here, and be off with you." And there were these unhappy folk, turned out of the railway station, dejected, bewildered, their glances vacant, almost dead with drowsiness and fatigue, the men supporting the old people, the women carrying the children. The people of Brussels who saw this lamentable procession go by will never as long as they live forget the impression of misery which they received. Assistance was organized immediately, and our poor compatriots were given shelter in the various public establishments of Saint-Josse-ten-Noode. They remained there several weeks before daring to return "home."