While the fighting was going on for the passages of the Sambre, another part of the southern contingent, which was formed by the army apparently of General von Bülow, moved on to attack Charleroi, and yet another part, an army corps and a cavalry division, appeared before Mons. The opening attack upon Mons, however, was what, in common parlance, is called a “blind,” intended to screen the advance behind it of the northern contingent, the army of General von Kluck, consisting of the pick of the Prussian troops. For it is known now that that commander had marched south from Brussels having in his pocket an Army Order issued by the German Emperor from headquarters at Aix-la-Chapelle, under date August 19, which contained the following passage:-- It is my royal and imperial command that you concentrate your energies for the immediate present upon one single purpose, and that is that you address all your skill and all the valour of my soldiers to exterminate first the treacherous English and to walk over General French’s contemptible army. What happened, therefore, on the arrival of these troops on that Sunday, August 23, was, briefly told, this. While the British troops holding Mons were resisting the opening attack on that place, an attack they readily defeated, the onslaught suddenly developed in great weight and fury. In face of it, the necessity arose of withdrawing the troops forming the British salient into line with the rest of the army. This, in the face of such an attack by overwhelming numbers, was a most difficult and dangerous operation. It was carried out, however, with remarkable coolness and courage. Though the British suffered heavy losses, the masses thrown up against them failed to break their formations. The attack thereupon developed all along the British line. Throughout that day, and far into the succeeding night, the German officers and men did their utmost faithfully to carry out the royal and imperial orders, and it is not too much to say that German arrogance met with the sharpest shock it had until then experienced. In the front of the British positions German dead lay in masses, and, after their custom, they left their wounded for the most part to perish. The unerring marksmanship of the British infantry was as unexpected as it was deadly; unshaken by the terrific artillery fire, the British troops met the attacks thrown upon then in mass formation with a withering hail of lead. Where, with an intensity of contempt and hate the onslaught succeeded momentarily in getting close in, the British dashed into it with the bayonet, and “the valour of my soldiers” wilted under the slaughter. Again and again the German rank and file were led or driven by their officers upon the British positions, again and again to be ripped into bloody confusion. They had come up against the unconquerable.