Battle of Liège, 5–16 August The Battle of Liège was the primary engagement in the German invasion of Belgium and the first battle of World War I. The attack on the city began on 5 August and lasted until 16 August, when the last fort was surrendered. The German invasion led the British to declare war and the length of the siege may have delayed the German invasion of France by Railways needed by the German armies in eastern Belgium were closed during the early part of the siege and by the morning of 17 August, the German 1st, 2nd and 3rd armies were free to resume their advance to the French frontier, yet German troops only appeared in strength before Namur on 20 August. The Belgian field army withdrew from the Gete towards Antwerp from and Brussels was captured unopposed on 20 August. The siege of Liège had lasted for eleven days, rather than the two days anticipated by the Germans. Belgian military operations in the east of the country had delayed German plans, which some writers claimed had been advantageous to the Franco-British forces in northern France and in Belgium. Wolfgang Förster wrote that the German timetable of deployment had required its armies to reach a line from Thionville to Sedan and Mons by the 22nd day of mobilisation (23 August), which was achieved ahead of schedule. In , a four-day delay was claimed. John Buchan wrote that "The triumph was moral – an advertisement to the world that the ancient faiths of country and duty could still nerve the arm for battle, and that the German idol, for all its splendour, had feet of clay." In 2007, Foley called the neutralisation of the Belgian defences at Liège sufficient to enable the German right wing to squeeze through, a small bump in the road for the Germans, who had mobilised in two weeks and were ready to invade France by 20 August.
Battle of Halen, 12 August 1914 The Battle of Halen (Haelen) was fought by mounted and dismounted
cavalry and other forces on 12 August 1914 between German forces, led by
Georg von der Marwitz and Belgian forces, led by Lieutenant-General
Léon de Witte. To block a German advance towards
Hasselt and
Diest, the Cavalry Division commanded by de Witte, was sent to guard the bridge over the river Gete at Halen. During an evening meeting, the Belgian general staff directed de Witte to fight a dismounted action in an attempt to nullify the German numerical advantage. From communication intercepts, the Belgian Headquarters discovered that the Germans were heading in force towards de Witte and sent the 4th Infantry Brigade to reinforce the Cavalry Division. The battle began around when a German scouting party, advancing from
Herk-de-Stad, was engaged with small-arms fire by Belgian troops. About soldiers attempted to set up a fortified position in the old brewery in Halen but were driven out of the building when the Germans brought up field artillery. Belgian engineers had blown the bridge over the Gete but the structure only partly collapsed, which left the Germans an opportunity to send about 1,000 troops into the centre of Halen. The main Belgian defence line was to the west of Halen, on terrain which was partially overlooked by the Germans. The relatively easy capture of Halen made the Germans confident and led to several ill-conceived attempts to capture the Belgian position with
sabre and
lance attacks. Towards the end of the day the Germans were forced to retire towards their main columns east of Halen. The battle was a victory for the Belgian army but was strategically indecisive. The Germans went on to besiege the fortified cities of
Namur,
Liège and
Antwerp, which had formed the basis of the Belgian defensive system, intended to delay an invader until foreign troops could intervene, according to the Treaty of London. The Germans suffered casualties of and Belgian casualties were and
Siege of Namur, 20–24 August Namur was defended by a ring of modern fortresses, known as the fortified position of Namur () and guarded by the Belgian 4th Division. When the siege began on 20 August, the Germans reversed the tactics used at Liège, by waiting until the siege train arrived from Liège and bombarding the forts before attacking with infantry. French troops sent to relieve the city were defeated at the Battle of Charleroi and only a few managed to participate in the fighting for Namur. The forts were destroyed in the bombardment, much of the Belgian 4th Division withdrew to the south, and the Belgian fortress troops were forced to surrender on 24 August. The Belgians had held the German advance for several days longer than the Germans had anticipated, which allowed Belgium and France more time to mobilise. The Belgian army had of whom from the 4th Division, which was moved to
Le Havre and then by sea to
Ostend on 27 August, from where it re-joined the field army at
Antwerp. , the German official history recorded the taking of and French prisoners and twelve field guns, and of whom killed.
Battles of Charleroi and Mons, 21–23 August The Battle of Charleroi was fought on 21 August 1914, between French and German forces and was part of the Battle of the Frontiers. The French were planning an attack across the river Sambre, when the Germans attacked and the French Fifth army was forced into a retreat, which prevented the German army from enveloping and destroying the French. After another defensive action in the Battle of St. Quentin, the French were pushed to within miles of Paris. The British attempted to hold the line of the Mons–Condé Canal on the left flank of the French Fifth army against the German 1st Army and inflicted disproportionate casualties, before retreating when some units were overrun and the French Fifth Army on the right flank withdrew in the aftermath of the battle further east at Charleroi. Both sides had tactical success at Mons, the British had withstood the German First Army for prevented the French Fifth Army from being outflanked and then retired in good order. For the Germans the battle had been a tactical defeat and a strategic success. The First Army had been delayed and suffered many casualties but had forced the crossing of the Mons–Condé Canal and begun to advance into France.
Siege of Antwerp, 28 September – 10 October At the fortified city of Antwerp, German troops besieged a garrison of Belgian fortress troops, the Belgian field army and the British Royal Naval Division. The city was ringed by forts, known as the
National Redoubt and was invested to the south and east by German forces, which began a bombardment of the Belgian fortifications with heavy and super-heavy artillery on 28 September. The Belgian garrison had no hope of victory without relief and despite the arrival of the Royal Naval Division beginning on 3 October the Germans penetrated the outer ring of forts. The German advance began to compress a corridor from the west of the city along the Dutch border to the coast. The Belgians at Antwerp had used the strip to maintain contact with the rest of unoccupied Belgium and the Belgian field army commenced a withdrawal westwards towards the coast. On 9 October, the remaining garrison surrendered, the Germans occupied the city, and some British and Belgian troops escaped north to the Netherlands, where they were interned for the duration of the war. A large amount of ammunition and many of the at Antwerp were captured intact by the Germans. The men of the Belgian field army escaped westwards, with most of the Royal Naval Division. British casualties were and prisoner. The operations to save Antwerp failed, but detained German troops when they were needed for operations against Ypres and the coast. Ostend and Zeebrugge were captured by the Germans unopposed. The troops from Antwerp advanced to positions along the Yser river and fought in the Battle of the Yser, which thwarted the final German attempt to turn the Allied northern flank.
Peripheral operations, August–October Belgian resistance and German fear of
Francs-tireurs, led the Germans to implement a policy of
schrecklichkeit (frightfulness) against Belgian civilians during the invasion. Massacres, executions, hostage taking, and the burning of towns and villages took place and became known as
the Rape of Belgium. After the Battle of the Sambre, the French Fifth Army and the BEF retreated and on 25 August, General Fournier was ordered to defend the fortress, which was surrounded on 27 August by the VII Reserve Corps, which had two divisions and eventually received some of the German super-heavy artillery, brought from the sieges in Belgium. Maubeuge was defended by fourteen forts, with a garrison of Territorials, and British, and Belgian stragglers, and blocked the main Cologne–Paris rail line. Only the line from Trier to Liege, Brussels, Valenciennes, and Cambrai was open and had to carry supplies southward to the armies on the Aisne and transport troops of the 6th Army northwards. On 29 August the Germans began bombarding the forts around Maubeuge. On 5 September, four of the forts were stormed by German infantry, creating a gap in the defences. On 7 September the garrison surrendered. The Germans took and captured After the capture of Maubeuge the line from Cologne–Paris line was of limited use between Diedenhofen and Luxembourg, until the bridge at Namur was repaired. The Battle of the Marne began as the Maubeuge forts were stormed; during the Battle of the Aisne, one of the VII Reserve Corps divisions arrived in time to join the German 7th Army, which closed a dangerous gap in the German line. While the BEF and the French armies conducted the
Great Retreat into France small detachments of the Belgian, Frenchs and British armies conducted operations against German cavalry and
Jägers. On 27 August, a squadron of the
Royal Naval Air Service (RNAS) had flown to Ostend, for air reconnaissance sorties between Bruges, Ghent, and Ypres. British marines landed at Dunkirk on the night of and on 28 September a battalion occupied Lille. The rest of the brigade occupied Cassel on 30 September and scouted the country in motor cars; an RNAS Armoured Car Section was created, by fitting vehicles with bullet-proof steel. On 2 October, the Marine Brigade was moved to Antwerp. The rest of the Naval Division landed at Dunkirk on the night of , and followed the Marines to Antwerp on 6 October. From the 7th Division and the 3rd Cavalry Division landed at Zeebrugge. Naval forces collected at Dover were formed into a separate unit, which became the
Dover Patrol, to operate in the Channel and off the French-Belgian coast.
Race to the Sea, 17 September – 19 October The Race to the Sea took place from about 1914, after the
Battle of the Frontiers (7 August–13 September) and the German advance into
France, which had been stopped at the
First Battle of the Marne and was followed by the
First Battle of the Aisne a Franco-British counter-offensive. The term described reciprocal attempts by the Franco-British and German armies to envelop the northern flank of the opposing army through
Picardy,
Artois and
Flanders, rather than an attempt to advance northwards to the sea. Troops were moved from the French-German border by both sides, to the western flank to prevent opposing outflanking moves and then to counter-outflank the opponent. At the battles of Picardy and Albert in late September, the French Second and German 6th armies fought meeting engagements from the Oise north to the Somme but neither was able to envelop the northern flank of the opponent. French and German armies were moved from the east for further outflanking attempts to the north and the BEF made a camouflaged move from the Aisne front on the night of , with no movement by day, which with rainy weather grounding aircraft, deceived the Germans. On the BEF began to assemble around Abbeville, ready to begin an offensive around the German northern flank, towards the Belgian and Allied troops in Flanders. French and German efforts to outflank each other were frustrated, during the
Battle of Arras in early October and the battles of
La Bassée,
Armentières and
Messines. The "race" ended on the
North Sea coast of Belgium around 19 October, when the last open area from Diksmuide to the North Sea was occupied by Belgian troops, who had been withdrawn from the siege of Antwerp The British held a line from La Bassée to Passchendaele, the French from Passchendaele to Diksmuide and the Belgian army from Diksmuide to Nieuwpoort. The
outflanking attempts had resulted in a number of
encounter battles but neither side was able to gain a
decisive victory.
Battle of the Yser, 16 October – 2 November The Battle of the Yser took place in October 1914 along a long stretch of the Yser river and Yperlee canal in Belgium. On 15 October troops ended their retreat from Antwerp and took post between Nieuwpoort and French
Fusiliers Marins at Diksmuide, which marked the end of the "Race to the Sea". Both sides conducted offensives and when the attacks by the Tenth Army and the BEF to Lille was defeated in early October, more French troops were sent to the north and formed the ("Army Detachment of Belgium") under the command of General
Victor d'Urbal. Falkenhayn assembled a new 4th Army from the III Reserve Corps, available since the fall of Antwerp and four new reserve corps, which had been raised in Germany in August and were deficient in training, weapons, equipment and leadership. The 4th Army offensive along the coast to St. Omer, began with operations against the Belgians, to drive them back from the Yser. On 16 October King Albert ordered that retreating soldiers were to be shot and officers who shirked would be court-martialled. The Belgian army was exhausted, water was so close to the land surface that trenches could only be dug deep and the field artillery was short of ammunition and had worn guns. A German offensive began on 18 October and by 22 October had gained a foothold across the Yser at Tervaete. By the end of 23 October the Belgians had been driven back from the riverbank and next day the Germans had a bridgehead wide. The French 42nd Division was used to reinforce the Belgians who had fallen back to a railway embankment from Diksmuide to Nieuwpoort which was above sea level. By 26 October the position of the Belgian army had deteriorated to the point that another withdrawal was contemplated. King Albert rejected withdrawal and next day sluice gates at Nieuwpoort were opened to begin the flooding of the coastal plain. A German attack on 30 October crossed the embankment at Ramscappelle but was forced back during a counter-attack late on 31 October and on 2 November Diksmuide was captured.
First Battle of Ypres, 19 October – 22 November The First Battle of Ypres (part of the First Battle of Flanders) began on 19 October with attacks by the German 6th and 4th armies at the same time that the BEF attacked towards Menin and Roulers. On 21 October, attacks by the 4th Army reserve corps were repulsed in a costly battle and on German attacks were conducted to the north, on the Yser by the 4th Army and to the south by the 6th Army. French attacks by the new Eighth Army were made towards Roulers and Thourout, which diverted German troops from British and Belgian positions. A new German attack was planned in which the 4th and 6th armies would pin Allied troops while a new formation, with six new divisions and more than guns took over the boundary of the two German armies, to attack north-west between Messines and Gheluvelt. The British I Corps was dug in astride the Menin road, with dismounted British cavalry further south. German attacks took ground on the Menin road on 29 October and drove back the British cavalry next day, from Zandvoorde and Hollebeke to a line from Ypres. Three French battalions released from the Yser front by the inundation of the ground around the Yser, were sent south and on 31 October the British defence of Gheluvelt began to collapse, until a battalion counter-attacked and drove back the German troops from the crossroads. German attacks south of the Menin road took small areas but Messines ridge had been consolidated by the British garrison and was not captured. By 1 November, the BEF was close to exhaustion and battalions had fewer than left; of their establishment. The French XIV Corps was moved north from the Tenth Army and the French IX Corps attacked southwards towards Becelaere, which relieved the pressure on both British flanks. German attacks began to diminish on 3 November, by when had lost A French offensive was planned for 6 November towards Langemarck and Messines, to widen the Ypres salient but German attacks began again on 5 November in the same area until 8 November, then again on The main attack on 10 November was made by the 4th Army between Langemarck and Diksmuide, in which Diksmuide was lost by the Franco-Belgian garrison. Next day to the south, the British were subjected to an unprecedented bombardment between Messines and Polygon Wood and then an attack by Prussian Guard, which broke into British positions along the Menin road, before being forced back by counter-attacks. From mid-October to early November the German Fourth Army lost the Sixth Army lost ==Atrocities==