The Bombardment of Rheims
In several ways the city of Rheims is celebrated. Some know her only
through her cathedral, where were crowned all but six of the kings of
France, and where the stained-glass windows, with those in the
cathedrals of Chartres and Burgos, Spain, are the most beautiful in all
the world. Children know Rheims through the wicked magpie which
the archbishop excommunicated, and to their elders, if they are rich,
Rheims is the place from which comes all their champagne.
On September 4th the Germans entered Rheims, and occupied it
until the 12th, when they retreated across the Vesle to the hills north
of the city.
On the 18th the French forces, having entered Rheims, the Germans
bombarded the city with field-guns and howitzers.
Rheims is fifty-six miles from Paris, but, though I started at an early
hour, so many bridges had been destroyed that I did not reach the
city until three o'clock in the afternoon. At that hour the French
artillery, to the east at Nogent and immediately outside the northern
edge of the town, were firing on the German positions, and the
Germans were replying, their shells falling in the heart of the city.
The proportion of those that struck the cathedral or houses within a
hundred yards of it to those falling on other buildings was about six to
one. So what damage the cathedral suffered was from blows
delivered not by accident but with intent. As the priests put it, firing on
the church was "exprès."
The cathedral dominates not only the city but the countryside. It rises
from the plain as Gibraltar rises from the sea, as the pyramids rise
from the desert. And at a distance of six miles, as you approach from
Paris along the valley of the Marne, it has more the appearance of a
fortress than a church. But when you stand in the square beneath
and look up, it is entirely ecclesiastic, of noble and magnificent
proportions, in design inspired, much too sublime for the kings it has
crowned, and almost worthy of the king in whose honor, seven
hundred years ago, it was reared. It has been called "perhaps the
most beautiful structure produced in the Middle Ages." On the west
façade, rising tier upon tier, are five hundred and sixty statues and
carvings. The statues are of angels, martyrs, patriarchs, apostles, the
vices and virtues, the Virgin and Child. In the centre of these is the
famous rose window; on either side giant towers.
At my feet down the steps leading to the three portals were pools of
blood. There was a priest in the square, a young man with white hair
and with a face as strong as one of those of the saints carved in
stone, and as gentle. He was curé doyen of the Church of St.
Jacques, M. Chanoine Frezet, and he explained the pools of blood.
After the Germans retreated, the priests had carried the German
wounded up the steps into the nave of the cathedral and for them
had spread straw upon the stone flagging.
The curé guided me to the side door, unlocked it, and led the way into
the cathedral. It is built in the form of a crucifix, and so vast is the
edifice that many chapels are lost in it, and the lower half is in a
shadow. But from high above the stained windows of the thirteenth
century, or what was left of them, was cast a glow so gorgeous, so
wonderful, so pure that it seemed to come direct from the other world.
From north and south the windows shed a radiance of deep blue, like
the blue of the sky by moonlight on the coldest night of winter, and
from the west the great rose window glowed with the warmth and
beauty of a thousand rubies. Beneath it, bathed in crimson light,
where for generations French men and women have knelt in prayer,
where Joan of Arc helped place the crown on Charles VII, was piled
three feet of dirty straw, and on the straw were gray-coated Germans,
covered with the mud of the fields, caked with blood, white and
haggard from the loss of it, from the lack of sleep, rest, and food. The
entire west end of the cathedral looked like a stable, and in the blue
and purple rays from the gorgeous windows the wounded were as
unreal as ghosts. Already two of them had passed into the world of
ghosts. They had not died from their wounds, but from a shell sent by
their own people.
It had come screaming into this backwater of war, and, tearing out
leaded window-panes as you would destroy cobwebs, had burst
among those who already had paid the penalty. And so two of them,
done with pack-drill, goose-step, half rations and forced marches, lay
under the straw the priests had heaped upon them. The toes of their
boots were pointed grotesquely upward. Their gray hands were
clasped rigidly as though in prayer.
Half hidden in the straw, the others were as silent and almost as still.
Since they had been dropped upon the stone floor they had not
moved, but lay in twisted, unnatural attitudes. Only their eyes showed
that they lived. These were turned beseechingly upon the French
Red Cross doctors, kneeling waist-high in the straw and unreeling
long white bandages. The wounded watched them drawing slowly
nearer, until they came, fighting off death, clinging to life as
shipwrecked sailors cling to a raft and watch the boats pulling toward
them.
A young German officer, his smart cavalry cloak torn and slashed,
and filthy with dried mud and blood and with his eyes in bandages,
groped toward a pail of water, feeling his way with his foot, his arms
outstretched, clutching the air. To guide him a priest took his arm, and
the officer turned and stumbled against him. Thinking the priest was
one of his own men, he swore at him, and then, to learn if he wore
shoulder-straps, ran his fingers over the priest's shoulders, and,
finding a silk cassock, said quickly in French: "Pardon me, my father;
I am blind."
As the young curé guided me through the wrecked cathedral his
indignation and his fear of being unjust waged a fine battle. "Every
summer," he said, "thousands of your fellow countrymen visit the
cathedral. They come again and again. They love these beautiful
windows. They will not permit them to be destroyed. Will you tell them
what you saw?"
It is no pleasure to tell what I saw. Shells had torn out some of the
windows, the entire sash, glass, and stone frame--all was gone; only
a jagged hole was left. On the floor lay broken carvings, pieces of
stone from flying buttresses outside that had been hurled through the
embrasures, tangled masses of leaden window-sashes, like twisted
coils of barbed wire, and great brass candelabra. The steel ropes that
supported them had been shot away, and they had plunged to the
flagging below, carrying with them their scarlet silk tassels heavy with
the dust of centuries. And everywhere was broken glass. Not one of
the famous blue windows was intact. None had been totally
destroyed, but each had been shattered, and through the apertures
the sun blazed blatantly.
We walked upon glass more precious than precious stones. It was
beyond price. No one can replace it. Seven hundred years ago the
secret of the glass died. Diamonds can be bought anywhere, pearls
can be matched, but not the stained glass of Rheims. And under our
feet, with straw and caked blood, it lay crushed into tiny fragments.
When you held a piece of it between your eye and the sun it glowed
with a light that never was on land or sea.
War is only waste. The German Emperor thinks it is thousands of
men in flashing breastplates at manoeuvres, galloping past him,
shouting "Hoch der Kaiser!" Until this year that is all of war he has
ever seen.
I have seen a lot of it, and real war is his high-born officer with his
eyes shot out, his peasant soldiers with their toes sticking stiffly
through the straw, and the windows of Rheims, that for centuries with
their beauty glorified the Lord, swept into a dust heap.
Outside the cathedral I found the bombardment of the city was still
going forward and that the French batteries to the north and east
were answering gun for gun. How people will act under unusual
conditions no one can guess. Many of the citizens of Rheims were
abandoning their homes and running through the streets leading
west, trembling, weeping, incoherent with terror, carrying nothing with
them. Others were continuing the routine of life with anxious faces but
making no other sign. The great majority had moved to the west of
the city to the Paris gate, and for miles lined the road, but had taken
little or nothing with them, apparently intending to return at nightfall.
They were all of the poorer class. The houses of the rich were closed,
as were all the shops, except a few cafés and those that offered for
sale bread, meat, and medicine.
During the morning the bombardment destroyed many houses. One
to each block was the average, except around the cathedral, where
two hotels that face it and the Palace of Justice had been pounded
but not destroyed. Other shops and residences facing the cathedral
had been ripped open from roof to cellar. In one a fire was burning
briskly, and firemen were playing on it with hose. I was their only
audience. A sight that at other times would have collected half of
Rheims and blocked traffic, in the excitement of the bombardment
failed to attract. The Germans were using howitzers. Where shells hit
in the street they tore up the Belgian blocks for a radius of five yards,
and made a hole as though a water-main had burst. When they hit a
house, that house had to be rebuilt. Before they struck it was possible
to follow the direction of the shells by the sound. It was like the
jangling of many telegraph-wires.
A hundred yards north of the cathedral I saw a house hit at the third
story. The roof was of gray slate, high and sloping, with tall chimneys.
When the shell exploded the roof and chimneys disappeared. You did
not see them sink and tumble; they merely vanished. They had been
a part of the sky-line of Rheims; then a shell removed them and
another roof fifteen feet lower down became the sky-line.
I walked to the edge of the city, to the northeast, but at the outskirts
all the streets were barricaded with carts and paving-stones, and
when I wanted to pass forward to the French batteries the officers in
charge of the barricades refused permission. At this end of the town,
held in reserve in case of a German advance, the streets were
packed with infantry. The men were going from shop to shop trying to
find one the Germans had not emptied. Tobacco was what they
sought.
They told me they had been all the way to Belgium and back, but I
never have seen men more fit. Where Germans are haggard and
show need of food and sleep, the French were hard and moved
quickly and were smiling.
One reason for this is that even if the commissariat is slow they are
fed by their own people, and when in Belgium by the Allies. But when
the Germans pass the people hide everything eatable and bolt the
doors. And so, when the German supply wagons fail to come up the
men starve.
I went in search of the American consul, William Bardel. Everybody
seemed to know him, and all men spoke well of him. They liked him
because he stuck to his post, but the mayor had sent for him, and I
could find neither him nor the mayor.
When I left the cathedral I had told my chauffeur to wait near by it, not
believing the Germans would continue to make it their point of attack.
He waited until two houses within a hundred yards of him were
knocked down, and then went away from there, leaving word with the
sentry that I could find him outside the gate to Paris. When I found
him he was well outside and refused to return, saying he would sleep
in his car.
On the way back I met a steady stream of women and old men
fleeing before the shells. Their state was very pitiful. Some of them
seemed quite dazed with fear and ran, dodging, from one sidewalk to
the other, and as shells burst above them prayed aloud and crossed
themselves. Others were busy behind the counters of their shops
serving customers, and others stood in doorways holding in their
hands their knitting. Frenchwomen of a certain class always knit. If
they were waiting to be electrocuted they would continue knitting.
The bombardment had grown sharper and the rumble of guns was
uninterrupted, growling like thunder after a summer storm or as the
shells passed shrieking and then bursting with jarring detonations.
Underfoot the pavements were inch-deep with fallen glass, and as
you walked it tinkled musically. With inborn sense of order, some of
the housewives abandoned their knitting and calmly swept up the
glass into neat piles. Habit is often so much stronger than fear. So is
curiosity. All the boys and many young men and maidens were in the
middle of the street watching to see where the shells struck and on
the lookout for aeroplanes. When about five o'clock one sailed over
the city, no one knew whether it was German or French, but every
one followed it, apparently intending if it launched a bomb to be in at
the death.
I found all the hotels closed and on their doors I pounded in vain, and
was planning to go back to my car when I stumbled upon the Hôtel
du Nord. It was open and the proprietress, who was knitting, told me
the table-d'hôte dinner was ready. Not wishing to miss dinner, I halted
an aged citizen who was fleeing from the city and asked him to carry
a note to the American consul inviting him to dine. But the aged man
said the consulate was close to where the shells were falling and that
to approach it was as much as his life was worth. I asked him how
much his life was worth in money, and he said two francs.
He did not find the consul, and I shared the table d'hôte with three
tearful old French ladies, each of whom had husband or son at the
front. That would seem to have been enough without being shelled at
home. It is a commonplace, but it is nevertheless true that in war it is
the women who suffer. The proprietress walked around the table, still
knitting, and told us tales of German officers who until the day before
had occupied her hotel, and her anecdotes were not intended to
make German officers popular.
The bombardment ceased at eight o'clock, but at four the next
morning it woke me, and as I departed for Paris salvoes of French
artillery were returning the German fire.
Before leaving I revisited the cathedral to see if during the night it had
been further mutilated. Around it shells were still falling, and the
square in front was deserted. In the rain the roofless houses,
shattered windows, and broken carvings that littered the street
presented a picture of melancholy and useless desolation. Around
three sides of the square not a building was intact. But facing the
wreckage the bronze statue of Joan of Arc sat on her bronze charger,
uninjured and untouched. In her right hand, lifted high above her as
though defying the German shells, some one overnight had lashed
the flag of France.
The next morning the newspapers announced that the cathedral was
in flames, and I returned to Rheims. The papers also gave the two
official excuses offered by the Germans for the destruction of the
church. One was that the French batteries were so placed that in
replying to them it was impossible to avoid shelling the city.
I know where the French batteries were, and if the German guns
aimed at them by error missed them and hit the cathedral, the
German marksmanship is deteriorating. To find the range the artillery
sends what in the American army are called brace shots--one aimed
at a point beyond the mark and one short of it. From the explosions of
these two shells the gunner is able to determine how far he is off the
target and accordingly regulates his sights. Not more, at the most,
than three of these experimental brace shots should be necessary,
and, as one of each brace is purposely aimed to fall short of the
target, only three German shells, or, as there were two French
positions, six German shells should have fallen beyond the batteries
and into the city. And yet for four days the city was bombarded!
To make sure, I asked French, English, and American army officers
what margin of error they thought excusable after the range was
determined. They all agreed that after his range was found an artillery
officer who missed it by from fifty to one hundred yards ought to be
court-martialled. The Germans "missed" by one mile.
The other excuse given by the Germans for the destruction of the
cathedral was that the towers had been used by the French for
military purposes. On arriving at Rheims the question I first asked
was whether this was true. The abbé Chinot, curé of the chapel of the
cathedral, assured me most solemnly and earnestly it was not. The
French and the German staffs, he said, had mutually agreed that on
the towers of the cathedral no quick-firing guns should be placed, and
by both sides this agreement was observed. After entering Rheims
the French, to protect the innocent citizens against bombs dropped
by German air-ships, for two nights placed a search-light on the
towers, but, fearing this might be considered a breach of agreement
as to the mitrailleuses, the abbé Chinot ordered the search-light
withdrawn. Five days later, during which time the towers were not
occupied and the cathedral had been converted into a hospital for the
German wounded and Red Cross flags were hanging from both
towers, the Germans opened fire upon it. Had it been the search-light
to which the Germans objected, they would have fired upon it when it
was in evidence, not five days after it had disappeared.
When, with the abbé Chinot, I spent the day in what is left of the
cathedral, the Germans still were shelling it. Two shells fell within
twenty-five yards of us. It was at that time that the photographs that
illustrate this chapter were taken.
The fire started in this way. For some months the northeast tower of
the cathedral had been under repair and surrounded by scaffolding.
On September 19th a shell set fire to the outer roof of the cathedral,
which is of lead and oak. The fire spread to the scaffolding and from
the scaffolding to the wooden beams of the portals, hundred of years
old. The abbé Chinot, young/alert, and daring, ran out upon the
scaffolding and tried to cut the cords that bound it.
In other parts of the city the fire department was engaged with fire lit
by the bombardment, and unaided, the flames gained upon him.
Seeing this, he called for volunteers, and, under the direction of the
Archbishop of Rheims, they carried on stretchers from the burning
building the wounded Germans. The rescuing parties were not a
minute too soon. Already from the roofs molten lead, as deadly as
bullets, was falling among the wounded. The blazing doors had
turned the straw on which they lay into a prairie fire.
Splashed by the molten lead and threatened by falling timbers, the
priests, at the risk of their lives and limbs, carried out the wounded
Germans, sixty in all.
But, after bearing them to safety, their charges were confronted with a
new danger. Inflamed by the sight of their own dead, four hundred
citizens having been killed by the bombardment, and by the loss of
their cathedral, the people of Rheims who were gathered about the
burning building called for the lives of the German prisoners. "They
are barbarians," they cried. "Kill them!" Archbishop Landreaux and
Abbé Chinot placed themselves in front of the wounded.
"Before you kill them," they cried, "you must first kill us."
This is not highly colored fiction, but fact. It is more than fact. It is
history, for the picture of the venerable archbishop, with his cathedral
blazing behind him, facing a mob of his own people in defence of their
enemies, will always live in the annals of this war and in the annals of
the church.
There were other features of this fire and bombardment which the
Catholic Church will not allow to be forgotten. The leaden roofs were
destroyed, the oak timbers that for several hundred years had
supported them were destroyed, stone statues and flying buttresses
weighing many tons were smashed into atoms, but not a single
crucifix was touched, not one waxen or wooden image of the Virgin
disturbed, not one painting of the Holy Family marred.
I saw the Gobelin tapestries, more precious than spun gold, intact,
while sparks fell about them, and lying beneath them were iron bolts
twisted by fire, broken rooftrees and beams still smouldering.
But the special Providence that saved the altars was not omnipotent.
The windows that were the glory of the cathedral were wrecked.
Through some the shells had passed, others the explosions had
blown into tiny fragments. Where, on my first visit, I saw in the stained
glass gaping holes, now the whole window had been torn from the
walls. Statues of saints and crusader and cherubim lay in mangled
fragments. The great bells, each of which is as large as the Liberty
Bell in Philadelphia, that for hundreds of years for Rheims have
sounded the angelus, were torn from their oak girders and melted into
black masses of silver and copper, without shape and without sound.
Never have I looked upon a picture of such pathos, of such wanton
and wicked destruction.
The towers still stand, the walls still stand, for beneath the roofs of
lead the roof of stone remained, but what is intact is a pitiful, distorted
mass where once were exquisite and noble features. It is like the face
of a beautiful saint scarred with vitriol.
Two days before, when I walked through the cathedral, the scene
was the same as when kings were crowned. You stood where Joan
of Arc received the homage of France. When I returned I walked
upon charred ashes, broken stone, and shattered glass. Where once
the light was dim and holy, now through great breaches in the walls
rain splashed. The spirit of the place was gone.
Outside the cathedral, in the direction from which the shells came, for
three city blocks every house was destroyed. The palace of the
archbishop was gutted, the chapel and the robing-room of the kings
were cellars filled with rubbish. Of them only crumbling walls remain.
And on the south and west the façades of the cathedral and flying
buttresses and statues of kings, angels, and saints were mangled
and shapeless.
I walked over the district that had been destroyed by these accidental
shots, and it stretched from the northeastern outskirts of Rheims in a
straight line to the cathedral. Shells that fell short of the cathedral for
a quarter of a mile destroyed entirely three city blocks. The heart of
this district is the Place Godinot. In every direction at a distance of
a mile from the Place Godinot I passed houses wrecked by shells
--south at the Paris gate, north at the railroad station.
There is no part of Rheims that these shells the Germans claim were
aimed at French batteries did not hit. If Rheims accepts the German
excuse she might suggest to them that the next time they bombard, if
they aim at the city they may hit the batteries.
The Germans claim also that the damage done was from fires, not
shells. But that is not the case; destruction by fire was slight. Houses
wrecked by shells where there was no fire outnumbered those that
were burned ten to one. In no house was there probably any other
fire than that in the kitchen stove, and that had been smothered by
falling masonry and tiles.
Outside the wrecked area were many shops belonging to American
firms, but each of them had escaped injury. They were filled with
American typewriters, sewing-machines, and cameras. A number of
cafés bearing the sign "American Bar" testified to the nationality and
tastes of many tourists.
I found our consul, William Bardel, at the consulate. He is a fine type
of the German-American citizen, and, since the war began, with his
wife and son has held the fort and tactfully looked after the interests
of both Americans and Germans. On both sides of him shells had
damaged the houses immediately adjoining. The one across the
street had been destroyed and two neighbors killed.
The street in front of the consulate is a mass of fallen stone, and the
morning I called on Mr. Bardel a shell had hit his neighbor's chestnut-
tree, filled his garden with chestnut burrs, and blown out the glass of
his windows. He was patching the holes with brown wrapping-paper,
but was chiefly concerned because in his own garden the dahlias
were broken. During the first part of the bombardment, when firing
became too hot for him, he had retreated with his family to the corner
of the street, where are the cellars of the Roderers, the champagne
people. There are worse places in which to hide in than a champagne
cellar.
Mr. Bardel has lived six years in Rheims and estimated the damage
done to property by shells at thirty millions of dollars, and said that
unless the seat of military operations was removed the champagne
crop for this year would be entirely wasted. It promised to be an
especially good year. The seasons were propitious, being dry when
sun was needed and wet when rain was needed, but unless the
grapes were gathered by the end of September the crops would be
lost.
Of interest to Broadway is the fact that in Rheims, or rather in her
cellars, are stored nearly fifty million bottles of champagne belonging
to six of the best-known houses. Should shells reach these bottles,
the high price of living in the lobster palaces will be proportionately
increased.
Except for Red Cross volunteers seeking among the ruins for
wounded, I found that part of the city that had suffered completely
deserted. Shells still were falling and houses as yet intact, and those
partly destroyed were empty. You saw pitiful attempts to save the
pieces. In places, as though evictions were going forward, chairs,
pictures, cooking-pans, bedding were piled in heaps. There was none
to guard them; certainly there was no one so unfeeling as to disturb
them.
I saw neither looting nor any effort to guard against it. In their
common danger and horror the citizens of Rheims of all classes
seemed drawn closely together. The manner of all was subdued and
gentle, like those who stand at an open grave.
The shells played the most inconceivable pranks. In some streets the
houses and shops along one side were entirely wiped out and on the
other untouched. In the Rue du Cardinal du Lorraine every house
was gone. Where they once stood were cellars filled with powdered
stone. Tall chimneys that one would have thought a strong wind
might dislodge were holding themselves erect, while the surrounding
walls, three feet thick, had been crumpled into rubbish.
In some houses a shell had removed one room only, and as neatly
as though it were the work of masons and carpenters. It was as
though the shell had a grievance against the lodger in that particular
room. The waste was appalling.
Among the ruins I saw good paintings in rags and in gardens statues
covered with the moss of centuries smashed. In many places, still on
the pedestal, you would see a headless Venus, or a flying Mercury
chopped off at the waist.
Long streamers of ivy that during a century had crept higher and
higher up the wall of some noble mansion, until they were part of it,
still clung to it, although it was divided into a thousand fragments. Of
one house all that was left standing was a slice of the front wall just
wide enough to bear a sign reading: "This house is for sale; elegantly
furnished." Nothing else of that house remained.
In some streets of the destroyed area I met not one living person.
The noise made by my feet kicking the broken glass was the only
sound. The silence, the gaping holes in the sidewalk, the ghastly
tributes to the power of the shells, and the complete desolation, made
more desolate by the bright sunshine, gave you a curious feeling that
the end of the world had come and you were the only survivor.
This-impression was aided by the sight of many rare and valuable
articles with no one guarding them. They were things of price that one
may not carry into the next world but which in this are kept under lock
and key.
In the Rue de l'Université, at my leisure, I could have ransacked shop
after shop or from the shattered drawing-rooms filled my pockets.
Shopkeepers had gone without waiting to lock their doors, and in
houses the fronts of which were down you could see that, in order to
save their lives, the inmates had fled at a moment's warning.
In one street a high wall extended an entire block, but in the centre a
howitzer shell had made a breach as large as a barn door. Through
this I had a view of an old and beautiful garden, on which oasis
nothing had been disturbed. Hanging from the walls, on diamond-
shaped lattices, roses were still in bloom, and along the gravel walks
flowers of every color raised their petals to the sunshine. On the
terrace was spread a tea-service of silver and on the grass were
children's toys--hoops, tennis-balls, and flat on its back, staring up
wide-eyed at the shells, a large, fashionably dressed doll.
In another house everything was destroyed except the mantel over
the fireplace in the drawing-room. On this stood a terra-cotta statuette
of Harlequin. It is one you have often seen. The legs are wide apart,
the arms folded, the head thrown back in an ecstasy of laughter. It
looked exactly as though it were laughing at the wreckage with which
it was surrounded. No one could have placed it where it was after the
house fell, for the approach to it was still on fire. Of all the fantastic
tricks played by the bursting shells it was the most curious.