"As line after line of the German infantry advanced we simply mowed them down. It was terribly easy, monsieur, and I turned to a brother officer of mine more than once and said, 'Voilà![197] they are coming on again, in a dense, close formation. They must be mad!' They made no attempt at deploying, but came on, line after line, almost shoulder to shoulder, until, as we shot them down, the fallen were heaped one on top of the other in an awful barricade of dead and wounded men that threatened to mask our guns and cause us trouble. I thought of Napoleon's saying, if he said it, 'It is magnificent, but it is not war.' No, it was slaughter--just slaughter!... "But, would you believe it, this wall of dead and dying actually enabled these wonderful Germans to creep closer, and actually charge up the glacis! They got no farther than half-way, for our Maxims and rifles swept them back. Of course, we had our own losses, but they were slight compared with the carnage inflicted upon our enemies." * * * * * On Thursday, 6th August, most of the forts were still holding out; but the Germans had brought up two more army corps from the south and south-east, and it was now clear that the garrison of Liége was too small in numbers to hold the forts and the intervals between them. At nightfall, though the forts remained intact, bodies of German troops pushed through the spaces between the two forts which look south-east towards the German frontier. On the morning of the 7th it was discovered that a considerable force of Germans had got within the ring of forts, and was in the town of Liége itself. Nevertheless, until the forts were silenced the roads and railways which they commanded could not be used, and the German advance was, therefore, held up. General von Emmich,[198] who was in command of the German forces, now brought up 8.4-inch howitzers, and probably one or two still heavier mortars, and began a furious cannonade of the forts. These guns fired shells which burst with such terrible power that they crashed through twelve feet of concrete, and crushed the sides of the forts as though they were sand castles on the seashore. They howled through the air, exploded with a terrific thunderclap, and then gigantic clouds of dust and smoke arose above the trembling ground. Nothing could resist them; the forts of Liége were doomed as soon as the Germans brought up their siege guns. Yet, terrible as the cannonade was, the garrisons of the forts stuck to their guns with marvellous courage. Here is a passage from the diary of an officer who served in one of the forts during that awful time:--