Next morning, 22nd August, five thousand French troops, mostly Turcos, arrived from the west, but they were too late and too few to save the fortress. It was a black, dread day for the Allies. The skies were darkened by an eclipse of the sun, and the people of Namur were in a state of panic. German aeroplanes flew over the place and dropped bombs, which killed many of the inhabitants and fired their houses. The heavens thundered, the great guns roared, and Namur fell.
When the commander, General Michel, saw that he could no longer hold out, he tried to call in the troops from the forts and march them westward, in the hope that they might join their comrades beneath the shelter of the forts at Antwerp. Traitors or spies, however, cut his telephone wires, and he was only able to rally a portion of them for the retreat. Two Belgian regiments hacked a way through the Germans who blocked their road, and managed to join the French and reach Rouen; where they took ship to Ostend, and then joined the main Belgian army at Antwerp.
On Sunday afternoon, 23rd August, the Germans marched into Namur singing their national songs and shouting in triumph. Next day von Buelow entered, and with him was the new Governor of Belgium, Field-Marshal von der Goltz, who was described by one of the townsfolk as "an elderly gentleman covered with orders, buttoned in an overcoat up to his nose, above which gleamed a pair of enormous glasses."
The Belgians made their last stand between the forts to the north-west of the city. They held out until the morning of Tuesday, 25th August, when they left their trenches and moved into the woods on the north bank of the Sambre. Here they were surrounded, and were obliged to surrender. Only about 12,000 out of the 26,000 men who attempted to hold the fortress escaped. Large quantities of guns and stores had to be abandoned, and these fell into the hands of the Germans.
I have already told you that Namur was considered so strong that it could defy attack for a long time. It fell, as we have seen, very rapidly. The first shot was fired on the evening of 20th August; by the next night five or six forts had fallen; on the 23rd the Germans entered the city, and two days later every fort was in ruins.