The Fortified Position of
Liège (PFL)
The Fortress of Liège, with a pre-war population of 164,000, is located 25 to 30 kilometers from the German frontier. Looking down on the city in August 1914 from the hills which surround her, one could see an ideal battleground for modern armies. The river Meuse runs through the city center, from North to Southeast, towards the city of Namur and France beyond. To the south, along its banks, lay massive steel and iron works, coal mines, and arms factories; everything required of a modern army.
Above all, Liège and its fortifications were poised like a dagger at the vital railroad line which ran from Germany to Brussels, and finally to Paris, the city that all German soldiers who marched East in August 1914 dreamed about. To get there, they would have to go through Liège.
The Valley of the Meuse divided two distinct topographical features. The approach from Aix-La-Chapelle crossed the northern Ardennes, a rocky, wooded region traversed by the deep valleys of the Ourthe and Vesdre rivers. The terrain was broken, difficult to maneuver across, and easily defended. North of Liège at the town of Visé, by the Dutch border, the land was flatter. This was the East bank of the Meuse. Across the Meuse on the West side were rolling plains with no large rivers or heavy woods. Once an army passed through to the West bank and silenced the guns of the forts, the Belgian plains lay wide open, and France was just a short march away.
The city of Liège was situated at the foot of the hills which rose to its East and West. The Meuse ran through its center. The tributary of the Ourthe entered the Meuse at the southern end of the city. Steep, curving streets and stairways wound up towards the plateaus. Several strategic road and railway bridges crossed the Meuse inside the city limits. The bridges, of course, would play a large part in any battle, since they maintained communication between the East and West banks. (Strangely, only one bridge was partly destroyed by the retreating Belgians). The railway bridge, the Pont du Val-Benoît, remained intact, but essentially useless since the tunnels in the mountains to the east of the city had been blocked or destroyed.
The key element in the defense of Liège would be her line of 19th Century fortifications, built by General Henri Alexis Brialmont.
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