King Philip of the Belgians traveled to the Walloon city of Dinant Saturday to commemorate the 674 civilians who were slaughtered here by German troops at the beginning of the First World War.
After the invasion of Belgium by the German Imperial Army in August of 1914, French and Belgian troops stopped the German troops for seven days at the Meuse River at Dinant. From 15 tot 22 August the invaders fought the French and Belgians, with the civilian population caught in the middle. One of the French wounded was a certain Lieutenant Charles de Gaulle, who after the Second World War became president of France.
When the Germans conquered Dinant, they summarily executed 674 inhabitants, including children and women, partly as retaliation for locals shooting at German soldiers who were repairing the Meuse River bridge. The town was pillaged and some 80 percent of its buildings destroyed. The massacre formed part of the German strategy of intimidating the population of the occupied territories. Within a month, some 5000 thousand Belgian and French civilians were killed by the Germans at numerous similar occasions.
King Philip inaugurated a new carillon in the Notre Dame Church and unveiled a new monument to the killed civilians in the gardens of a public building.
[First World War: The Capture and Punishment of Dinant, 1914]
© Royalblog
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