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The Massacre of the Innocents

Raemaekers, Louis, 1916, Chromolithograph
The Massacre of the Innocents
The Massacre of the Innocents
The Massacre of the Innocents
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Category
Library Item
Item no
32958
Title
The Massacre of the Innocents
Description
"This early cartoon is not one of the most perfect drawings, but the feeling it gives of the irruption of an army into the busy streets of a populous town is psychologically admirable.

The Belgian Report (p. 92) sets out that immediately on the entry of the German army into Dinant on the evening of the 21st of August, the advanced guard began firing into the windows, murdered one or tow persons, entered the cafés, seized the liquor, got drunk, and retired after having set fire to several houses and broken the doors and windows of others. The population as terrorised and stupefied, and shut itself up in its dwellings. It was not, however, until Sunday, August the 23rd, that the inhabitants felt the full force of the German fury. On that day the soldiers of the 108th Regiment invaded the Church of the Premonastrensian Fathers, separated the men from the women, and shot fifty of them. Eighty-four more were murdered in the square and almost all the men of the Faubourg de Ieffe were executed en masses. From the 21st to the 25th , more than 700 inhabitants were killed, others were taken to Germany, and 200 houses alone remained out of 1,400. While a certain number of soldiers were perpetrating this massacre, others pillaged and sacked the houses of the town, and broke open all safes, sometimes blasting them with dynamite. Their work of destruction and theft accomplished, the soldiers set fire to the houses, and the town was soon no more than an immense furnace. - Extract from 'The Destruction of Belgium.' By E. G. Mears. London, 1916."
Artist / maker
Date
1916
Size
34.3 x 23.9 cm
Location
Art and Design Library
Copyright
Louis Raemaekaers' drawings are reproduced by kind permission of the Louis Raemaekers Foundation.