Landwehr Infantry, lays down that “For the future it is forbidden to use army carts for the transport of things which have nothing whatever to do with the service of the Army. At some period these carts, which travel empty with our Army, will be required for the transport of war material. They are now actually loaded with all sorts of things, none of which have anything to do with military supplies or equipment.”[336] This systematic pillage went on day after day. “The _Station Square_,” states a refugee from Louvain[337] who traversed the city again on August 29th, “was transformed into a vast goods-depôt, where bottles of wine were the most prominent feature. Officers and men were eating and drinking in the middle of the ruins, without appearing to be in the least incommoded by the appalling stench of the corpses which still lay in the _Boulevard_. Along the _Boulevard de Diest_ I saw Landsturm soldiers taking from the houses anything that suited their fancy, and then setting the house alight, and this under their officers’ eyes.” On September 2nd there was a fresh outbreak of plunder and arson in the _Rue Léopold_ and the _Rue Marie-Thérèse_.[338] As late as September 5th--ten days after the original catastrophe--the Germans were pillaging houses in the _Rue de la Station_ and loading the loot on carts.[339] Householders who returned when all was over found the destruction complete. “I found my parents’ house sacked,” states one.[340] “A great deal of the furniture was smashed, the contents of cupboards and drawers were scattered about the rooms.... In my sister’s house the looking-glasses on the ground floor were broken. On the bedding of the glass the imprint of the rifle-butts was clearly visible.”--“Inside our house,” states another,[341] “everything is upside down.... The floors are strewn with flowers and with silver plate not belonging to our house, the writing room is filled with buckets and basins, in which they had cooled the bottles of champagne.... There was straw everywhere--in short, the place was like a barn. To crown everything, my father was not allowed to sleep in his own house.... When the Germans at last quitted our residence, it was necessary to cleanse and disinfect everything. The lowest stable was cleaner than our bedrooms, where scraps from the gourmandising and pieces of meat lay rotting in every corner amid half-smoked cigars, candle ends, broken plates, and hay brought from I don’t know where.”