But “reprisals” against the civil population had already begun. The firing from German soldiers in the houses upon German soldiers in the street was answered by a general assault of the latter upon all houses within their reach. “They broke the house-doors,” states a Belgian woman,[222] “with the butt-ends of their rifles.... They shot through the gratings of the cellars.”--“In the _Hôtel-de-Ville_,” states von Manteuffel,[223] “I saw the Company stationed there on the ground floor, standing at the windows and answering the fire of the inhabitants. In front of the _Hôtel-de-Ville_, on the entrance steps, I also saw soldiers firing in reply to the inhabitants’ fire in the direction of their houses.”--“Personally I was under the distinct impression,” states a staff officer,[224] “that we were fired at from the Hôtel Maria Theresa with machine-guns.” (This is quite probable, and merely proves that those who fired were German soldiers.) “The fire from machine-guns lasted from four to five minutes, and was immediately answered by our troops, who finally stormed the house and set it on fire.”--“The order was passed up from the rear that we should fire into the houses,” states an infantryman who had just detrained and was marching with his unit into the town.[225] “Thereupon we shot into the house-fronts on either side of us. To what extent the fire was answered I cannot say, the noise and confusion were too great.”--“We now dispersed towards both sides,” states a lance-corporal in the same battalion,[226] “and fired into the upper windows.... How long the firing lasted I cannot say.... We now began shooting into the ground-floor windows too, as well as tearing down a certain number of the shutters. I made my way into the house from which the shot had come, with a few others who had forced open the door. We could find no one in the house. In the room from which the shot had come there was, however, a petroleum lamp, lying overturned on the table and still smouldering....” [Illustration: 21. CAPELLE-AU-BOIS: THE CHURCH] [Illustration: 22. LOUVAIN: NEAR THE CHURCH OF ST. PIERRE] These assaults on houses passed over inevitably into wholesale incendiarism. “The German troops,” as the Editors of the German White Book remark in their summarising report on the events at Louvain, “had to resort to energetic counter-measures. In accordance with the threats, the inhabitants who had taken part in the attack were shot, and the houses from which shots had been fired were set on fire. The spreading of the fire to other houses also and the destruction of some streets could not be avoided. In this way the Cathedral” (_i. e._, the Collegiate Church of St. Pierre) “also caught fire....”