It was when this combat was at its hottest, on August 5, that a detachment of German cavalry was fired upon from the windows of some houses on the south bank. Exasperated by the difficulties met with, and their heavy casualties, the invaders forthwith drove out the inhabitants and fired the town. Many of the men, as they came out of the houses, were indiscriminately shot. The women and children were driven before the German troops with marked barbarity. Visé was reduced to ruins. On the same day, the village of Argenteau, two miles up the river on the same bank, was similarly destroyed and its population decimated. There can be little doubt that this was an act of terrorism intended at once to conceal the attempt to bridge the river at that point, and to dispirit any defence of Liége. To the Belgians the three days’ struggle for the passage of the Meuse was of the utmost consequence. It gave General Leman the time necessary to prepare Liége for that resistance which has become, and will remain, one of the most famous episodes in European history. Intrepid and resourceful, General Leman had thrown himself into Liége with the 3rd division of the Belgian army, and a mixed brigade of such troops as could be hastily got together. This force, of not more than 25,000 men, was reinforced by the civic guard, of the city and district, but it was still far short of the 50,000 troops needed to make up a complete garrison. Thousands of the civilian inhabitants were willingly employed along the south and south-eastern suburbs in hastily digging trenches, across the sectors between the forts. The troops blew up buildings likely to afford cover for an attack; tore up and blocked the roads; laid wire entanglements; mined the bridges across the Meuse, the Vesdre, and the Ourthe; prepared landmines; placed quick-firing guns at points of vantage, and installed searchlights and field telephones. All this had to be done with the greatest possible expedition. The completeness and rapidity with which the work was carried out formed a surprising feat of skilful organisation. When the advanced posts of the 7th German army corps came into touch with the outworks of the defence they found that nothing short of an assault in force would suffice. The prompt and effective fire of the forts within range proved that Liége was ready and on the alert. The German plan provided for a simultaneous attack from the north, the south-east and the south-west, and if it had been carried out it is difficult to see how the fortress could have resisted even the first onset. The plan, however, miscarried.