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Until such time, then, as history has granted them the justice of perspective, I can only refer to them as "the fight at Sempst" or "the first engagement at Alost" or "the battle of Vilvorde" or "the taking of Termonde."
He says the Prince of Orange is with 1,600 men in the park and palace at Brussels; 5,000 men are close at hand under Prince Frederick of Orange, at Vilvorde, and two bodies of 10,000 each are marching upon the same point. The troops at the palace have twelve guns. All the troops show a good disposition. The first deputation from Brussels was rather insolent.
Malines, with its historic buildings and its famous cathedral, lies on one side of this line and the village of Vilvorde on the other, five miles separating them. On the 25th the Belgians, believing the Brussels garrison to have been seriously weakened and the German communications poorly guarded, moved out in force from the shelter of the Antwerp forts and assumed a vigorous offensive.
The assertion that the Belgians are lacking in courage is as untruthful as it is cruel. Ask the Germans who charged up the fire-swept slopes of Liége those of them left alive if the Belgians are cowards. Ask those who saw the fields of Aerschot and Vilvorde and Termonde and Malines strewn with Belgian dead.
How about the little girl, two years old, who was shot while in her mother's arms by a Uhlan and whose funeral I attended at Heyst-op-den-Berg? How about the old man near Vilvorde who was hung by his hands from the rafters of his house and roasted to death by a bonfire being built under him?" The general seemed taken aback by the exactness of my information.
About 6 p.m. on the 15th he ordered his divisions and brigades to concentrate at Vilvorde, Brussels, Ninove, Grammont, Ath, Braine-le-Comte, Hal, and Nivelles the first four of which were somewhat remote, while the others were chosen with a view to defending the roads leading northwards from Mons.
The same day Van Straeten, and Casambrot shared the fate of their illustrious friends, in the castle of Vilvorde; with many others whose names only find a place in the local chronicles of the times. Egmont and Horn met their fate with the firmness expected from their well-proved courage. These judicial murders excited in the Netherlands an agitation without bounds.
Up to the beginning of October, the Belgians, and specially the people of Brussels, had been kept in a state of suspense by the three sorties of the Belgian army, which left the shelter of the Antwerp forts to advance towards Vilvorde and Louvain, a few miles from the capital.
A friend of mine saw children throw up their hands in terror and fall down on their knees before a squad of German Uhlans who suddenly dashed into a village near Vilvorde. The incident does not prove that Uhlans are in the habit of acting atrociously; it does prove the popular fear of them.
Therefore, in accordance with the Belgian's instructions, he left the house and at noon carried his valise to the Rue Gretry, where he found his friend awaiting him in a closed car, which quickly moved off out of the city by the Laeken road. Travelling by way of Vilvorde they were within an hour in old-world Malines, famous for its magnificent cathedral and its musical carillon.
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