Liège had been besieged by six composite brigades and a cavalry corps and on 10 August, OHL had hoped to begin the advance to the French border three days later but that the siege delayed the march until 17 August. In 1934, the British historian Charles Cruttwell, wrote of "brave Belgian resistance" at Liège, which surprised the Germans but did not interfere with their plans and that demolitions of railway tunnels and bridges were a more serious cause of delay. Sewell Tyng wrote in 1935 that the southward advance of the German armies had begun on 14 August, after all of the forts on the right bank had fallen. The eleven-day siege had been a "bitter disappointment" to the German commanders; there had been failures of co-ordination, which had led to several incidents of German infantry firing on each other. Liaison between the infantry and their commanders was inadequate; attacking before the super-heavy artillery was ready had caused a disproportionate number of casualties. Tyng wrote that the delay imposed on the Germans was about although various authorities had claimed anything from no delay to five days. In 2001, Hew Strachan wrote that the German advance had been delayed by because the concentration of German active corps had taken until 13 August. Liège was awarded the French in 1914. The effect of German and Austrian super-heavy artillery on French and Belgian fortresses in 1914 led to a loss of confidence in fortifications; much of the artillery of fortress complexes in France and Russia was removed to reinforce field armies. At the Battle of Verdun in 1916, the resilience of French forts proved to have been underestimated. Casualties In 2009 Herwig wrote that the Belgian army had at Liège and that by 8 August the German attackers had suffered Other sources give Belgian killed or wounded and Subsequent operations On 5 August the 4th Division at the Fortified Position of Namur, received notice from Belgian cavalry that they were in contact with German cavalry to the north of the fortress. More German troops appeared to the south-west on 7 August. OHL had, on the same day, ordered the 2nd Army units assembled near the Belgian border, to advance and send mixed brigades from the IX, VII and X corps to Liège immediately. Large numbers of German troops did not arrive in the vicinity of Namur until too late to forestall the arrival