about 1,500 prisoners confined, including some infants.  No food was given, only some water.  Next day they were taken through Wespelaer and back to Louvain.  On the way from Rotselaer to Wespelaer fifty bodies were seen, some naked and carbonized and unrecognizable.  When they arrived at Louvain the Fish Market, the Place Marguerite, the cathedral, and many other buildings were on fire.  In the evening about 100 men, women, and children were put in horse trucks from which the dung had not been removed, and at 6 the next morning left for Cologne.

The wife of this witness was also taken prisoner with her husband and her maid, but was separated from him, and she saw other ladies made to walk before the soldiers with their hands above their heads.  One, an old lady of 85, (name given,) was dragged from her cellar and taken with them to the station.  They were kept there all night, but set free in the morning, Thursday, but shortly afterward sent to Tirlemont on foot.  A number of corpses were seen on the way.  The prisoners, of whom there are said to have been thousands, were not allowed even to have water to drink, although there were streams on the way from which the soldiers drank.  Witness was given some milk at a farm, but as she raised it to her lips it was taken away from her.

A priest was taken on Friday morning Aug. 28, and placed at the head of a number of refugees from Wygmael.  He was led through Louvain, abused and ill-treated, and placed with some thousands of other people in the riding school in the Rue du Manege.  The glass roof broke in the night from the heat of burning buildings around.  Next day the prisoners were marched through the country with an armed guard.  Burned farms and burned corpses were seen on the way.  The prisoners were finally separated into three groups, and the younger men marched through Herent and Bueken to Campenhout, and ultimately reached the Belgian lines about midnight on Saturday, Aug. 29.  All the houses in Herent, a village of about 5,000 inhabitants, had been burned.

The massacre of civilians at Louvain was not confined to its citizens.  Large crowds of people were brought into Louvain from the surrounding districts, not only from Aerschot and Gelrode as above mentioned, but also from other places.  For example, a witness describes how many women and children were taken in carts to Louvain, and there placed in a stable.  Of the hundreds of people thus taken from the various villages and brought to Louvain as prisoners, some were massacred there, others were forced to march along with citizens of Louvain through various places, some being ultimately sent on the 29th to the Belgian lines at Malines, others were taken in trucks to Cologne as described below, others were released.  An account of the massacre of some of these unfortunate civilian prisoners given by two witnesses may be quoted: