It was known that so long as the forts at Liége continued to fight the German advance could not begin. Notwithstanding the efforts of the Germans to cover their preparations with the closest veil of secrecy, the Belgian Government was kept well informed. Liége had become for its remaining inhabitants a prison. As a precaution the invaders had divided up the city by street barricades. Every approach to the place was closely patrolled. At night the only sounds were the heavy footfall of Prussian patrols, along streets where ruined houses showed the gaps made by shell fire, or over quays past bridges whose _débris_ was heaped in the rivers. Many houses were doorless, but all were dark and silent. Nevertheless, news leaked through the German lines, and when on August 18, having silenced all but two of the forts, the German advance began, neither the Belgian Government nor the Belgian commanders were left in any uncertainty. The spirit and resource which had baffled all the energy of Spain, still baffled all the power of Prussianised Germany. A strange spectacle was presented by that seemingly countless and endless host as it defiled along every main road leading to the north-west. No words can adequately picture the movement of an army, or rather a combination of armies, totalling nearly three-quarters of a million of men. The effect is too vast, and it might well be asked what human power could withstand such a multitude welded by an enormous labour of organisation into a machine of destruction and death. Onward it flowed, like the tide sweeping through the channels of a shore, ready to burst upon obstacles in angry breakers, but breakers of fire. Lines of lances moved among its forest of bayonets. Endless trains of guns and automobiles, field kitchens, field bakeries, huge wagons bearing pontoons and drawn by long teams of horses, ponderous caissons, camp equipment, portable smithies, rumbled successively past. The dust rose from the hot roads and floated over the deserted and trampled fields. Sabres and bayonets flashed back the August sunlight. And for hour after hour the mass rolled on, seemingly without end.