Battle of Dinant (10h 30min, aug 15, 1914 y – 6h 7min, aug 23, 1914 y)

Description:

On 15 August 1914, German troops captured the Citadel of Dinant which overlooked the town; the citadel was recaptured by a French counter-attack during the afternoon. French troops spent the next few days fortifying the Meuse crossings and exchanging fire with German troops on the east bank.

A German raiding-party drove into Dinant on the night of 21/22 August but the attack degenerated into a fiasco, in which Germans may have fired at each other. Rather than assume that the small-arms fire had come from the French on the west bank, the Germans blamed Belgian civilians, killing seven and burning down 15 to 20 houses in reprisal. The raiders ran away, with 19 dead and 117 wounded. On 23 August, the Germans attacked Dinant again, under the impression that the town was full of francs-tireurs (free shooters; terrorists to the Germans) and massacred 674 unarmed Belgian civilians, while fighting the French, who were dug in along the west bank and on the east end of the bridge

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