In its downward course the Meuse flows out
of the Liege trench to expand through what is termed the Dutch
Flats.
Liege, at the outbreak of the war, was a place of great wealth and
extreme poverty--a Liege artisan considered himself in prosperity
on $5 a week. It was of the first strategic importance to Belgium.
Its situation was that of a natural fortress, barring the advance
of a German army.
The defenses of Liege were hardly worth an enemy's gunfire before
1890. They had consisted of a single fort on the Meuse right bank,
and the citadel crowning the heights of the old town. But subsequently
the Belgian Chamber voted the necessary sums for fortifying Liege
and Namur on the latest principles. From the plans submitted, the
one finally decided upon was that of the famous Belgian military
engineer Henri Alexis Brialmont. His design was a circle of detached
forts, already approved by German engineers as best securing a
city within from bombardment. With regard to Liege and Namur
particularly, Brialmont held that his plan would make passages of
the Meuse at those places impregnable to an enemy.
When the German army stood before Liege on this fourth day of August,
in 1914, the circumference of the detached forts was thirty-one miles
with about two or three miles between them, and at an average of
five miles from the city. Each fort was constructed on a new model
to withstand the highest range and power of offensive artillery
forecast in the last decade of the nineteenth century.
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