New York Times Current History

Appendix I.

No. 1.

AT RHEIMS.

M. Henry Jadart, Librarian of the City of Rheims and Curator of the Museum of that city, was present at the bombardments of the 4th and the 19th of September. He was well placed to enlighten us on the destruction accomplished at the time.

He was kind enough to send us the communication which we publish below. From the testimony of M. Jadart, it will appear how many monumental constructions at Rheims were mutilated or destroyed, and how these attest, not less than the ruins of the cathedral, the vandalism of the German armies:

Friday, Sept. 4.--The bombardment, which took place suddenly from half-past 9 till quarter-past 10 in the morning, caused some accidents to the cathedral, more or less notable from the point of view of art, (some stained glass more or less ancient, some slight scratches to the statues;) at the Church of Saint-Remi (ancient stained glass, tapestry of the sixteenth century, pictures of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, altar screen, statues, south portal, and vault of transept) and at the Museum of Fine Arts, Rue Chanzy, 8, (salle Henry Vasnier broken in by a shell, about twenty modern pictures damaged.) Besides, among the houses struck, the Gothic house, 57 Rue de Vesle, suffered mutilation in the sculpture of a fireplace--it was entirely demolished by the bombardment and fire of Sept. 19.

Saturday, Sept. 19.--This was the day of the great destruction by the bombs and the fires caused in the cathedral, the ancient residence of the Archbishop, in the houses of the Place Royale, and the Ceres quarter. On the afternoon of this day and during the night from Saturday to Sunday, flames consumed the most precious collections of the city, at the Archbishop's palace and in private houses, an inventory of which it will never be possible to prepare.

The top of the cathedral burned after the scaffolding of the northern tower of the great portal had taken fire, toward 3 o'clock in the afternoon. The statues and sculptures of this side of the same portal were licked by the flames and scorched through and through. The eight bells in this tower also were caught by the flames, and the whole thing fell down near the cross aisle of the transept. The spire of the Belfry of the Angel, at the apse, fell, and with it disappeared the leaden heads which decorated its base. In the interior the sculptures and the walls of the edifice were damaged by fire in the straw which had been strewn about for the German wounded; the great eighteenth century tympanums of the lateral doors, west side, were damaged likewise. The thirteenth century stained glass suffered shocks from the air and were perforated, in the rose windows as also in the high windows of the nave. The pictures in the transept were spared, but the choir stalls (eighteenth century work) were consumed--at the left on entering.

Of the adjacent palace all the buildings were attacked by the flames and are now nothing but ruined walls, save the chapel of the thirteenth century, of which the main part subsists intact, and the lower hall of the King's Lodge, under the Hall of Anointment, (of the end of the fifteenth century.) The anointment rooms on the ground floor, reconstructed in the seventeenth century, contained a great number of historical portraits and furniture of various periods, which were all a prey to the flames. It was the same in the apartments of the Archbishops, which also contained numerous pictures and different views of the city, transported from the Hotel de Ville and intended for the formation of a historical museum of Rheims. Precious furniture, bronzes of great value--like the foot of the candelabra of Saint Remi and the candelabra of the Abbaye d'Igny--were also in these apartments, of which nothing is left but the walls. The archaeological collections of the city were consumed in the upper apartments, as also a whole museum, organized and classified to represent the ethnography of la Champagne by a thousand objects tracing back the ancient industries, the trades, the arts, and usages of this province. Finally, the rich library founded by Cardinal Gousset, offering superb editions and assembled in a vast paneled hall, was totally burned up in the modern building constructed for it at the expense of the State.

After the disasters to the arts at the cathedral and the palace, we must note also the mansions and private houses, remarkable through their architecture and their decoration, that were demolished, burned, and annihilated. No. 1 Rue du Marc, Renaissance mansion--damage to the sculptured ceiling and the sculptures of the court. Two pavilions of the Place Royale, creations of the eighteenth century, are now only calcined walls. The same fate overtook the Gothic house, 57 Rue de Vesle, (of which mention was made above;) the house, 40 Rue de l'Universite, built in the eighteenth century; the house next to the Ecu de Rheims, of the same period; the mansion at 12 Rue la Grue, which was decorated with carved lintels and forged iron banisters; the mansion at 19 Rue Eugene-Destenque, in the style of the Henri IV. period, having a great stone fireplace and decorative paintings in one gallery. Finally, in the Rue des Trois-Raisinets, the remains of the monastery of the Franciscans, with a cloister, and the framework of a granary of the Middle Ages.

These notes are really only observations to be completed later with the aid of descriptions of ancient date, but they offer sure information of the lamentable losses suffered by our unfortunate city during the first month of its bombardment.

Paris, Jan. 20, 1915.

No. 2.

THE FIXED IDEA.

From M. Auguste Dorchain we receive this striking observation:

The idea of destroying the cathedral haunted them for a hundred years, at least. Three dates, three texts, three proofs:

April, 1814, Jean-Joseph Goerres, an illustrious professor, the pious author of a "Christian Mysticism," in four volumes, wrote, in the Rheinische Merkur:

"Reduce to ashes that basilica of Rheims where Klodovig was anointed, where that Empire of the Franks was born--the false brothers of the noble Teutons; burn that cathedral!..."

Sept. 5, 1914, we read in the Berliner Blatt:

"The western group of our armies in France has already passed the second line of defensive forts, except Rheims, whose royal splendor, which dates back to the time of the white lilies, will not fail to crumble to dust, soon, under the fire of our mortars."

Jan. 1, 1915. In the artistic and literary supplement of the Berlin Lokal-Anzeiger M. Rudolf Herzog sings an ode "in honor of the destruction of the Cathedral of Rheims":

"The bells sound no more in the cathedral with two towers. Finished is the benediction!... With lead, O Rheims, we have shut your house of idolatry!"

A lyric cry of the heart, when the national wish, a century old, is at last accomplished.

No comment on these three texts--it suffices to bring them together.

AUGUSTE DORCHAIN.

Feb. 20, 1915.

No. 4.

LETTER OF M. L'ABBE DOURLENT.

M. l'Abbe Dourlent, Curate Archpresbyter of the Cathedral of Senlis, was one of the principal witnesses of the drama. So he has had to speak of it several times. But up to now we had no written deposition from him over his signature. Here is the document which comes from this priest. It attests his courage and sincerity at the same time.

Diocese of Beauvais, Archpresbytery and Parish of Senlis, (Oise.)

SENLIS, Jan. 8, 1915.

Monsieur: You do me the honor to ask for my testimony as to the actions of the enemy at Senlis at the time of the occupation, on the 2d of September.

I beg to send you my attestation, and express my confusion and regret at not having been able to do so sooner.

On the 2d of September an engagement took place between the French and German troops on the plain of Senlis from 10 o'clock till about half-past 2, and it was ended by the bombardment of our beautiful cathedral and a part of the city. The enemy entered the city about half-past 3 and were received at the end of the Faubourg St. Martin by a fusillade directed against them by delayed soldiers and a company armed with machine guns, charged with arresting the pursuit of the French Army, which was bending back toward Paris.

Immediately the superior officer, who was conversing with M. Odent, the Mayor of Senlis, accused the civilians of having fired on the German Army, and rendered him responsible for it. Then began the burning of the whole Rue de la Republique. This untruth was immediately spread about, and two hours after the affray a General said at Villers-Saint-Frambourg what another General said next morning at Nanteuil-le-Haudouin: That Senlis was burned because the civilians had fired on the German Army. The thirty-seven hostages brought to Chamant heard the same statement.

To this testimony I will add my own, which will only confirm what is said above: As soon as the enemy arrived soldiers of the cyclist corps obliged me to conduct them to the top of the belfry of our cathedral, from which they pretended that they had been shot at. Their inspection revealed nothing of what they thought to find, for I alone had the key and I had confided it to no one. Some moments later I was consigned to the Hotel du Grand-Cerf as a hostage. The German General Staff had gone to Chamant. Some hours later I accosted a superior officer and asked him what I should do, seeing no one of whom I could inquire the reason for my arrest. "Remain here, where you will at least be in safety. Poor curate! Poor Senlis! But, then, why did you receive us as you did? The civilians shot at us, and we were fired at from the tower of your church. So Senlis is condemned. You see that street in flames? (and, in fact, the Rue de la Republique was burning everywhere, 114 houses in ruins) well, this night the city itself will be entirely burned down. We have the order to make of Senlis a French Louvain. At Louvain the Belgians shot at us from their houses, from their belfries--Louvain no longer exists. Tomorrow it will be the same with your place. We admit fighting among soldiers, that is war; but we are pitiless with civilians. Paris and the whole of France need a terrible example which shall remind them that warfare by civilians is a crime that cannot be too severely punished."

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