Of those four thousand more than twelve hundred were then without food from day to day except such as the Germans gave them.

There were almost no able-bodied male adults left.
Some had fled, some were behind bars as prisoners of the Germans, and a great many were dead.

Estimates of the number of male inhabitants who had been killed by the graycoats for offenses against the inflexible code set up by the Germans in eastern Belgium varied.

A cautious native whispered that nine hundred of his fellow townsmen were "up there"-- by that meaning the trenches on the hills back of the town.

A German officer, newly arrived on the spot and apparently sincere in his efforts to alleviate the misery of the survivors, told us that, judging by what data he had been able to gather, between four and six hundred men and youths of Dinant had fallen in the house-to-house conflicts between Germans and civilians, or in the wholesale executions which followed the subjugation of the place and the capture of such ununiformed belligerents as were left.
In this instance subjugation meant annihilation.