CHAPTER XII LlfeCE RESISTS 'T^HE German attack upon Liege began on -'■ August 4. It was made by three German divisions, multiplied by ready imagination to army corps, and it failed disastrously. Here for the first time the world heard of the German assaults in massed formation which from the Meuse to the Marne were to be a terrible detail in successive en- gagements. On August 7 German troops pene- trated between the forts and took the city, but some of the forts held out, continued to resist until the great howitzers, the first surprise of the German General Staff, reduced them to dust with their open- ing salvos. But as the costly frontal attacks continued the world began to grasp the fact that the operations about Liege were of major importance and that the Germans were counting little the price of blood its capture demanded. It is then necessary to recall the part in the general scheme of German offensive and Franco-Belgian defensive that the line of the Meuse River played and for the position of which the Germans were making such a sustained and costly fight. <3