found that the actual
damage done to the city by the bombardment was comparatively slight.

During the last days of Antwerp's reign of terror fully 300,000
fugitives sought shelter in Bergen-op-Zoom about twenty-five miles
northward across the Dutch frontier. Most of these were in a condition
almost indescribable, ragged, travel-worn, shoeless, and bespattered and
hungry. Few had money; valuables or other resources. All they owned they
carried on their backs or in bundles. The little Dutch town of
Bergen-op-Zoom with but 15,000 inhabitants was swamped; but the
Hollanders did their best to meet this terrible pressure and its
citizens went without bread themselves to feed the refugees. Slowly some
sort of order was organized out of the chaos and when the Dutch
Government was able to establish refugee camps under military
supervision the worst was over. A majority of this vast army was by
degrees distributed in the surrounding territory where tent
accommodations had been completed. The good Hollanders provided for the
children with especial care and sympathy. They supplied milk for the
babies and children generally. Devoted priests comforted many; but
military organization prevailed over all. Among the thousands of these
poor refugees that crossed the frontier at Maastricht and besieged the
doors of the Belgian consul there was no railing or declaiming against
the horror of their situation. The pathos of lonely, staring, apathetic
endurance was tragic beyond expression.

CHAPTER XXVII

YSER BATTLES--ATTACK ON YPRES

A large part of the Belgian forces with some of the English marines were
forced across the Dutch border, where they were promptly disarmed and
interned, while the remnants of these forces retreated toward the west
by way of St. Nicolas and reached Ostend on October 11 and 12, 1914,
with greatly reduced numbers. Many were cut off and captured by the
German forces, which entered Ghent on October 12, and pressed on to
Ypres in one direction and to Lille in another. Next day, the
thirteenth, they approached Ostend, forcing these Belgians who had
managed to get through, to evacuate.

Bruges was occupied by the German forces on October 14, 1914, and other
detachments appeared in Thielt, Daume, and Esschen on the same day, thus
getting under their control the entire Kingdom of Belgium, with the
exception of the northwestern corner, north of Ypres, to the coast of
the channel. For Ostend, too, had fallen