aptly be termed the Pittsburg of Belgium. The city lies in a deep,
broad cut of the River Meuse, at its junction with the combined
channels of the Ourthe and Vesdre. It stretches across both sides,
being connected by numerous bridges, while parallel lines of railway
follow the course of the main stream. The trunk line from Germany
into Belgium crosses the Meuse at Liege. For the most part the
old city of lofty houses clings to a cliffside on the left bank,
crowned by an ancient citadel of no modern defensive value. Whatever
picturesqueness Liege may have possessed is effaced by the squalid
and dilapidated condition of its poorer quarters. To the north
broad fertile plains extend into central Belgium, southward on the
opposite bank of the Meuse, the Ardennes present a hilly forest,
stream-watered region. In its downward course the Meuse flows out
of the Liege trench to expand through what is termed the Dutch
Flats.

Liege, at the outbreak of the war, was a place of great wealth and
extreme poverty--a Liege artisan considered himself in prosperity
on $5 a week. It was of the first strategic importance to Belgium.
Its situation was that of a natural fortress, barring the advance
of a German army.

The defenses of Liege were hardly worth an enemy's gunfire before
1890. They had consisted of a single fort on the Meuse right bank,
and the citadel crowning the heights of the old town. But subsequently
the Belgian Chamber voted the necessary sums for fortifying Liege
and Namur on the latest principles. From the plans submitted, the
one finally decided upon was that of the famous Belgian military
engineer Henri Alexis Brialmont. His design was a circle of detached
forts, already approved by German engineers as best securing a