Embourg and Chaudfontaine dominate the deep and winding valleys of the Ourthe and the Vesdre. Pontisse, Flemalle, and Barchon, commanding the Meuse, are on broken ground. This last-named fort, with Evegnee and Fleron, holds the most important strategic position in the Herve country, facing the German frontier, in a land cut up by meadows planted with trees and by little woods, traversed by many vales, not very deep, but winding. [Sidenote: War conditions changed.] It is known that in the Brialmont project the intervening spaces were to be defended and fortified with siege artillery. To tell the truth, the eminent military engineer, in the pamphlets where he set out the project, only allowed for a small mobile garrison, but he confessed later that the difficulties which he knew he would meet with in the Belgian Parliament over the credits for the fortifications made him underestimate the number of men required. Besides which, the conditions of war have been greatly modified during the twenty-five years which have passed, owing to the increased power of siege guns. So that it may be laid down that 80,000, if not 100,000, men were needed to properly defend the entrenched camp of Liege. [Sidenote: Troops in the forts.] As for the forts, they were each occupied by a battery of artillery (250 men) and three companies (120 men), a total of 370 men. About 4,500 artillerymen for the twelve forts. General Leman was shut up in Loncin, one of the chief forts, which commanded the road towards Waremme and Brussels. He had sent away all his General Staff with the division, in spite of the supplications of his officers, who begged to be allowed to share his fate. He continued to direct the longest resistance possible. The enemy was anxious to cut all the communications between the forts, but soldiers volunteered for carrying messages to the different commanders. Several succeeded, but many were killed, for the investment became steadily tightened. Indeed, certain gaps, where the ground was most broken, could not be swept by the guns from the forts, and, under cover of the night, troops ensconced themselves there comfortably. Moreover, the Germans, having received reinforcements and heavy artillery, undertook the siege systematically, first of Barchon, which it was unable to take by storm any more than Boncelles, but which it subjected to a formidable deluge of shells. Barchon could only reply haphazard to heavy guns the position of which it could not tell. It was, indeed, deprived of its observation posts, and was in the position of a blind man desperately parrying the blows of an adversary who could see where to strike. [Sidenote: Fort Barchon taken.] The struggle was not for long, and the fort, reduced to impotence, left a wide breach through which the invader scrambled. Through there he could also introduce his heavy siege guns, howitzers of 28, and even pieces of 42 cms. [Sidenote: Forty-two centimetre guns.]