And quite a spell before that, I believe, Julius Caesar found them tough to bend and hard to break.
As for the Germans, checked as they had been in their rush on France by a foe whom they had regarded as too puny to count as a factor in the war, they sacrificed themselves by hundreds and thousands to win breathing space behind standing walls until their great seventeen-inch siege guns could be brought from Essen and mounted by the force of engineers who came for that purpose direct from the Krupp works.
In that portion of the town lying west of the Meuse we counted perhaps ten houses that were leveled flat and perhaps twenty that were now but burnt-out, riddled hulls of houses, as empty and useless as so many shucked pea-pods.

Of the bridges spanning the river, the principal one, a handsome four-span structure of stone ornamented with stone figures of river gods, lay now in shattered fragments, choking the current, where the Belgians themselves had blown it apart.

One more bridge, or perhaps two--I cannot be sure--were closed to traffic because dynamite had made them unsafe; but the remaining bridges, of which I think there were three, showed no signs of rough treatment.

Opposite the great University there was a big, black, ragged scar to show where a block of dwellings had stood.
Liege, to judge from its surface aspect, could not well have been quieter.

Business went on; buyers and sellers filled the side streets and dotted the long stone quays.