[Footnote 184: The Austrian Switzerland, north of Italy and east of Switzerland. Its capital is Innsbrück, on the Inn.] [Footnote 185: Belgian West Africa, mainly drained by the Congo and covering an area of some 800,000 square miles. It was explored by H. M. Stanley on behalf of Leopold, King of the Belgians, and became his property with the consent of the Great Powers. In 1889 Leopold bequeathed it to Belgium, and it was taken over by that country in 1908.] CHAPTER XXII. HOW LIÉGE WON THE LEGION OF HONOUR. On the next page you will see a map of Belgium. I want you to examine it carefully. You will notice that Belgium's real line of defence on the south and east is the river Meuse. After the war of 1870-71 the great military engineer, Brialmont,[186] was called upon to fortify the Meuse valley in such a way that an enemy advancing from the south or east might at least be delayed until other nations could come to the help of Belgium. He had already made Antwerp the chief citadel of the country. In the neighbourhood of Liége the Meuse runs in a deep wide trench between masses of upland. On the north lies a tableland which extends for fifty miles to the neighbourhood of Louvain. On the east and south is the hill country of the Ardennes, a land of ridges and forests seamed by swiftly running streams, and sinking eastwards to the plains of the Rhine. The tableland to the north is flat, and is covered with fields of beetroot and cereals. An invader can cross it with ease. But the hill region to the east and south is too rough and broken for large armies to traverse without considerable difficulty. From the map you can readily see that the easy road from Germany into Belgium lies between the northern limit of the Ardennes and the Dutch frontier. Here stands Liége, and Brialmont naturally chose it as the site of a great fortress which should bar the way from Germany. [Illustration: Map illustrating the War in Belgium (Aug. 9-20).]