Attack on Lieja: the massacre in Herve From the first night of the German advance in Belgium, Belgian snipers (or franctireurs) fired as best they could, from ditches and buildings, to the German soldiers who occupied with so much confidence and apparent ease the villages of east Belgium. The persistence of those shots aroused the fury of the occupation troops, who considered that, having defeated an army in open combat, they should no longer harass them. The Commander-in-Chief of the 2nd German Army, General Erich Ludendorff, recalled later that the first night of the war he was awakened by “a few quick and energetic shots, some of which were aimed at our home”. That would happen in the small Belgian town of Herve, a small town of about 5,000 souls. The commune of Herve was invaded at the early afternoon of August 4, 1914 by the 14th German Infantry Brigade, which had arrived on the national highway from Aix-la-Chapelle. British historian John Terraine comments that “Herv...