NAMUR (see 19.159*). In 1914 the pop. numbered 32,453. The manufacture of glass and glassware had been recently established. An athletic sports ground was laid out and a fine open-air theatre built before the World War in the park on the citadel hill. The Germans entered Namur on the evening of Aug. 23 1914, deliberately set fire to the town in five places, and gave way to looting. All the houses in the Place d'Armes and its vicinity were burned and the H6tel de Ville destroyed; and between Aug. 23 and 25, 75 civilians were shot without motive. A war contribution of 50,000,000 fr. was levied and Namur became a cavalry headquarters and base.
THE SIEGE OF 1914
In the defence scheme of Belgium, Namur, with Liege and the small intermediate fort of Huy, had the role of barring the line of the Meuse against attack from the East. It had in addition to secure the left flank of the field army in case of an invasion by the French, and, further, as against eastern invasion, it supported the right flank of an army disposed on the line of the Gelte to resist an enemy who might have mastered Liege. The last named was the case which actually arose in Aug. 1914 and led to the attempt being made to hold Namur in spite of the disheartening experience of the power of the German heavy artillery which the Belgians had just suffered at Liege.
The permanent defences of Namur at the outbreak of war in 1914 consisted in a ring of nine forts catalogued here in clock- wise, or E. S. W. N., order three (Maizeret, Andoy, Dave) in the great bend of the Meuse E. of the towns, two (St. Heribert and Malonne) in the angle of the Meuse and Sambre S. of it; two (Suarlee and Emines) on the open N.W. front astride the Gembloux road; two on the N.E. front covering the Tirlemont road (Fort Cognelee) and the St. Frond road (Fort Marchoue- lette) respectively. In each of the intervals between fort and fort, infantry and field artillery positions were constructed on mobilization, and included in the defence system of each interval were two, three or four infantry redoubts. The principal line of defence followed in general the imaginary perimeter of the fort-ring, but in the E., conforming to the requirements of the broken ground, the line of trenches redoubts was drawn back, notably near Fort Maizeret, where it passed at a distance of a mile behind the fort, and also at Fort St. Heribert on the S. front.
Although it was a ring-fortress, of Brialmont's design, similar in all respect to Liege from the technical point of view, the tactics of both attack and defence were very different from those employed in the earlier siege. Not being exposed to surprise, the garrison had ample time to protect the intervals of the forts with trenches, redoubts and wire, as well as to clear the fore- ground. Moreover, at the time of the attack, Namur was, so to speak, a strong salient point on the general line of battle of the field armies and not an isolated stronghold. To right arid left of it, the German offensive was meeting, or about to meet, the French IV. and V. Armies and the British Expeditionary Force. The attack was carried out by those German corps which in the line of battle lay opposite to the fortress, and not by a special force. It was carried out not in two stages as that of Liege had been coup de main on the intervals followed by methodical battering of the forts but in one effort, the in- fantry attack and the siege artillery bombardment being simul- taneous and interdependent. It is therefore, in some respects, the tactical prototype of the Verdun struggle of 1916, with the two important differences that in Aug. 1914 troops had not learned the strength of a trench-network or become familiar with the effects of super-heavy artillery, and that at Verdun the artillery had been removed from the forts, which were treated purely as infantry strongpoints.
The garrison of Namur, under Lt. -General Michel, consisted of the 4th Div. (3 mixed bdes.) , four fortress infantry regiments, the garrison artillery and engineers appropriate, and various
small units, and numbered about 27,000 combatants, reinforced during the defence by one French infantry regiment.
The attacking army consisted of four divs. (later five) (Guard Res. Corps, half VII. Res. Corps, XI. Corps) drawn from the inner wings of the II. and III. Armies, formed as a temporary Army Group under General von Gallwitz, and provided with a siege train which included one battery of 42-cm. and 4 batteries of Austrian 30-5-011. howitzers as well as 2i-cm. howitzers and medium guns.
During the defence of Liege, the Belgian army was concen- trated along the Gelte line, facing E., waiting for the arrival of French and British forces N. of the Sambre. In this position Namur covered its right and Antwerp its left. But when the Germans had made good the passage through Liege and deployed their I. and II. Armies facing the Gelte, they manceuvred to cut off the Belgians from Antwerp, their main base, and the King therefore fell back gradually in that direction, giving up contact with Namur. At the same time the French V. Army was assem- bling in the angle of the Sambre and the Meuse, and thus the Belgian fortress came to occupy the centre of the French northern battle-line. The Germans, meantime, leaving a containing force in front of the positions around Antwerp, initiated the great wheel of their right wing which was to envelop the French or British left. The pivot of this wheel was not, however, Namur but Thionville, and thus Namur had to be tackled by open force during the progress of the wheel. During Aug. 18-19 the left of the German II. Army advanced slowly on Namur from the direction of Huy, clearing out of the woods and villages the very active outpost forces of the garrisons, while the right of the III. Army was still far back in the Ardennes. On Aug. 20 the union of the two portions of von Gallwitz's forces was completed and the XI. Corps stood with its right flank on the Meuse, west of Audenne, and its left about Floree. The ist Guard Res. Div., which had hitherto followed the S. bank of the Meuse, had been switched to the N. bank when the XI. Corps became available, and after a fierce fight with the inhabitants of Audenne stood behind the sister div. (3rd Guard Div.) a few kilometres back of Audenne and E. of Hingeon. The right of the Guard Res. Corps, therefore, instead of reaching the region of Hemptinne, extended (evening Aug. 20) no further north than Pontillas.
This rightward movement, though its immediate cause was the arrival of the XI. Corps, marked the beginning of a change of plan. The original intention was to press the attack home on the E. and S.E. points of Namur. On Aug. 20 this was changed, owing ostensibly to the discovery that siege operations were extremely difficult in the woods and deep valleys of the S.E. front, but really to the arrival of large French forces on the Sambre which constituted a threat to von Gallwitz's exposed right wing, the weight of the attack being shifted to the N.E. and N. front. During Aug. 21, while the 3rd Guard Div. with one bde. of the ist Guard Res. Div. continued to advance in the region of Hingeon and Vezin, and the rest of the ist Guard Res. Div. completed its flank march to Hemptinne, the 38th Div. of the XI. Corps was taken out of the line and formed in reserve at and S. of Audenne. Thus there were two divs. N. and one div. S. of the river with one in reserve on the Meuse itself. Of the siege artillery, however, a considerable portion was and remained S. of the Meuse, for in order to avoid the delays that had been so serious at Liege, von Gallwitz had emplaced his heavy and super-heavy pieces at the very outset of the attack, before the change of plan. Thus the main attack, N. of the river, took the form of an "abbreviated siege" d la Sauer full-force assault on the intervals combined with smothering and ruin of the forts while the operation S. of it rather resembled the second phase of Liege, viz. methodical ruin of the forts in succession by heavy artillery under cover of an infantry screen.
During Aug. 22, while heavy fighting continued in the foreground of Fort Marchouelette, the rightward shift was com-
' These figures indicate the volume and page number of the previous article.
