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Updated: June 12, 2025
Athlone with a part of this body invested Dinant, while Coehorn with the remainder advanced to Givet. He forthwith began to batter and bombard the place, which in three hours was on fire, and by four in the afternoon wholly destroyed, with the great magazine it contained. Then the two generals joining their forces returned to Namur without interruption.
The forces of France also had been fighting to protect their retreat southward in these August days of 1914. After the passages of the Sambre were forced, during the great Mons-Charleroi battle, the Fifth French Army was placed in very perilous straits by the failure of the Fourth Army, under General Langle, to hold the Belgian river town of Givet.
He gave to Givet a stone bridge over the Meuse, and at Sedan the widow Madame Rousseau received from him the sum of sixty thousand francs for the re-establishment of the factory destroyed by fire. Indeed, I cannot begin to enumerate all the benefits, both public and private, which the First Consul and Madame Bonaparte scattered along their route.
"There are two who have escaped from Givet," replied he: "how they escaped no one can imagine; but," continued he, again looking at O'Brien, "avec les braves, il n'y a rien d'impossible." "That is true," replied O'Brien; "I have taken one, the other cannot be far off. You had better look for him."
Thirty-five thousand foot and twelve thousand horse had, by the middle of July, advanced through the province of Namur, and were assembled at Givet under the Duke of Savoy, who, as Governor-General of the Netherlands, held the chief command.
He stepped to the door of his tent and spoke to the sentinel on duty just outside: "Ask Lieutenant Armand to step this way at once." As General Givet turned from giving this command, Captain Bassil suddenly uttered a loud cry and leaped upon the commander. "At least you shall never live to thwart our plans!" he cried, as he sprang.
The woman laughed at the idea, observing, "What had he to fear from a pauvre enfant like me?" "Yet this pauvre enfant escaped from Givet," replied O'Brien. "These Englishmen are devils from their birth." The last room showed to O'Brien suited him, and he chose it the woman not presuming to contradict a gendarme. As soon as they came down again, O'Brien ordered me to bed, and went upstairs with me.
I asked him whether he intended to make known his plan to any of the other prisoners; he replied in the negative, saying, that there were so many of them who could not be trusted, that he would trust no one. We had been now about two months in Givet, when a Steel's List was sent to a lieutenant, who was confined there. The lieutenant came up to O'Brien, and asked him his Christian name.
The practicability of escape from Givet seemed to me impossible. The yard of the fortress was surrounded by a high wall; the buildings appropriated for the prisoners were built with lean-to roofs on one side, and at each side of the square was a sentry looking down upon us. We had no parole, and but little communication with the towns-people.
Peter, we must shift our quarters to-night, for I have been to every cabaret in the village, and I cannot go there any more without suspicion, although I am a gendarme." We remained there till the evening, and then set off, still returning towards Givet.
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