On 23 August, fearing that the town would be completely destroyed, a group of Carolorégian notables, including the burgomaster Émile Devreux, went to meet the general to negotiate.

Under threat of cannon fire, he forced the members of the delegation to sign the "Treaty of Couillet", which stipulated the payment of a hefty war indemnity in money and other assets, to be settled at 6 p.m. that same day.

This growth was also linked to the technological skills of local and foreign entrepreneurs, the support of financial groups, and the exploitation of the working masses,[1] who in 1914 had one of the lowest rates of unionization in Europe.

[nb 1][3] The tensions caused by the international situation in the spring of 1914, and the assassination of Archduke François-Ferdinand of Austria on 28 June and its aftermath, led King Albert I to decide on general mobilization on 31 July 1914.

The brewery "Aux caves de Munich", in the rue du Comptoir, was ransacked by a few rioters.The Germans entered Belgium near Aachen on 4 August.

[nb 3] Over the next few days, several thousand people, mainly families of industrialists and shopkeepers, left Charleroi by train for other Belgian towns or France.

[4] On 20 August, the 3rd and 10th corps of the 5th French army commanded by General Lanrezac arrived in the town, where the population greeted them enthusiastically and awaited the British Expeditionary Force, which they knew was not far off.

[5] However, the next morning, uhlans scouts from Generaloberst von Bülow's 2nd German army arrived in the town under the cover of a thick fog.

They were initially mistaken for British but were eventually recognized by the French soldiers manning the barricade set up on the rue du Pont Neuf, who opened fire.

[12] Since the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, officers of the Imperial German Army had been intensely concerned about how to deal with potential franc-tireurs.

This collective fear, combined with other factors such as alcohol, inexperience, physical and nervous exhaustion and the disorientation caused by fighting in an urban area,[13] meant that they saw the city as a "nest of franc-tireurs",[14] with snipers popping up everywhere.

At around 6.30 am, troops from General Max von Bahrfeldt's 19th Reserve Division, a unit of the 2nd Army, came from Gosselies along the Chaussée de Bruxelles.

After this altercation, the German soldiers turned back and marched up the road towards Bon-Air in Lodelinsart, where, claiming that civilians had been seen near the barricade, they looted and set fire to houses.

It headed towards Dampremy via the Warchat and the Deschassis slag heap and finally arrived, still preceded by civilians used as human shields, at a place called Viaducs by the rue de Heigne.

From the bridge, the French, whose sole mission was to stop the incursions of German cavalry,[6] fired, killing, and wounding soldiers and hostages.

Only the Palais de Justice, the Protestant church, and a few houses around the Jesuit college, which served as an ambulance hospital, were spared.

[20] As the French had already evacuated the area, the German officers thought it would be difficult to take the Ville Basse and the bridges over the Sambre before the end of the day, so they turned east towards Montignies-sur-Sambre.

All this forms one huge inferno where long flames are twisted into madness, where fantastic sprays of sparks shoot out in disproportionately high jets.

In Rue Charles II, the house of a druggist was burning and looked like a huge green Bengal fire in this infernal firework display.

The delegation, with the exception of Louis Smeysters, who was being held hostage, took leave of the General and went to Charleroi town hall accompanied by Lieutenant von Hanneken.

[24][25] In addition to Émile Devreux himself, Louis Lalieu, the dean priest of Charleroi, and Vital Françoisse, director of the ACEC, were held hostage in the mayor's office.

[nb 7] The foodstuffs demanded by the Germans, which were too large for the resources available in an industrial area, were incompletely collected by Alderman Édouard Falony with the help of the surrounding municipalities.

To be supplied: Five automobiles; all weapons and ammunition in the possession of the inhabitants, revolvers, gunpowder, etc., also on the square of the Montignies Town Hall.

[33][34] In all, 250 civilians were killed and 1,300 houses burned in the Charleroi region, not to mention the buildings looted and hundreds of hostages insulted and verbally abused.

[36] Finally, the mayors agreed to jointly and severally owe the banks and Paul Dewandre the sum of ten million francs, payable one year after the agreement, in proportion to the number of inhabitants.

[35] In the German White Paper,[nb 9] a work whose "intention is clearly to provide evidence in support of the accusations of a Belgian Volkskrieg",[37] the battle in the heart of the town of Charleroi occupies very little space.

A soldier belonging to the 78th reserve infantry regiment testified that he had seen a German Dragoon whose eyes had been gouged out by Belgian civilians, whose body was smeared with a flammable liquid, and burned alive.

The lowest layer of the working population is a mixture of Walloons, Flemings [sic], Germans and other foreign immigrants, all influenced by the low Catholic clergy, rotten from lack of any social care, fallen into alcohol and atrophied as a result, the Walloon easily irritable, devious, a dangerous enemy at the back of the army.