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Updated: May 9, 2025
The city contains a population of twenty-six thousand, and is beautifully located at the junction of the Meuse and Sambre Rivers. The train stopped here but an hour; and the students roamed through some of the principal streets, which, however, were too much like those of places they had visited before to excite any especial interest.
"At Grandrengs," said Pièrre. "They call it in the dispatch the 'action of the Sambre, because Kleber came up there and Kleber being a great man, and Pièrre Canot a little one, you understand, the glory attaches to the place where the bullion epaulets are found just as the old King of Prussia used to say, 'Dieu est toujours a coté de gros bataillons."
During the morning the Germans thrust a force into the southern angle of the Sambre and Meuse. Here the Belgian infantry offered a vigorous resistance. It was hoped that the French at Dinant would hasten to their relief. But Dinant was for the second time within a few days the scene of conflict. Some 6,000 French Turcos and artillery did arrive, but too late to be of use in helping to save Namur.
Then when I looked back I saw that the Prussians had spread out into a long line, so as to head me off from the Charleroi road. I could not turn back, but at least I could edge toward the north. I knew that the whole face of the country was covered with our flying troops, and that sooner or later I must come upon some of them. But one thing I had forgotten the Sambre.
The Sambre turned so industriously to and fro among his little hills, that it was past six before we drew near the lock at Quartes. There were some children on the tow-path, with whom the Cigarette fell into a chaffing talk as they ran along beside us. It was in vain that I warned him.
The Gauls of Vermandois and those of Artois also rise in rebellion. Together they all march against the Romans! Oh, it was a great and terrible battle, that battle of the Sambre!" cried the unknown traveler with exaltation. "The Gallic army awaited Cæsar on the left bank of the river.
While continuing their defensive efforts through Saturday, August 22, 1914, there floated to them a distant rumble from the eastward. Opinions differed as to whether it was the German guns bombarding Namur, or a battle in progress on the Sambre. For the most part British officers and men had but a vague idea of their position, or the progress of the fighting in the vicinity.
"To be sure," said the little fellow, who, I now perceived, wore the dress of a "tambour;" "and is it a disgrace to be the first to face the enemy?" "And the first to turn his back to him, comrade," cried another. "Not always not always" said the little fellow, regardless of the laugh against him. "Had it been so, I had not gained the battle of Grandrengs on the Sambre."
On the right, the Third and Fourth French armies under Ruffey and Langle de Cary had advanced from the Meuse to attack the Germans across the Semois. They were severely checked and withdrew behind the Meuse, while an unsuspected army of Saxons under Von Hausen attacked the right flank of the Fifth French army under Lanrezac which lay along the Sambre with its right flank resting on the Meuse.
It was upon Saturday, the 15th of August, that the great bulk of the two main German armies set aside for passage through the Belgian Plain began to use the now liberated railway, and the week between that date and the first great shock upon the Sambre is merely a record of the almost uninterrupted advance, concentration, and supply of something not far short of half a million men coming forward in a huge tide over, above, and round on to, the line Namur-Charleroi-Mons, which was their ultimate objective, and upon which the Anglo-French body perhaps half as numerous had determined to stand.
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