withstood a continuous four years' siege, and with Ypres the additional
distinction of having been for a long time the central point in an
extraordinarily narrow salient, surrounded by the enemy practically
on three sides. It is truly an ancient storm centre, unsuccessfully
besieged by the English in the fourteenth century, taken by them in
the fifteenth (perhaps more by intrigue than by fighting), and held
until Joan of Arc turned us out after nine years' occupation. It was
entered by the Germans on the 4th of September, 1870, and again on the
forty-fourth anniversary of that day in 1914. But while after 1870 they
held the city for two years, in 1914 they had to evacuate it after nine
days only. They commenced immediately to shell it, and, according to
the universal opinion in France, to shell particularly the cathedral,
in spite of official assurances that it was not used for observation
purposes, which anyone but a Prussian would have believed. The north
tower, unfortunately, was under repair in 1914, and covered with timber
scaffolding. An incendiary shell set fire to this a week after the
Germans had left the city, and the whole of the roof of the cathedral
was burnt. Later on the vaulting over the transept and the choir was
badly but not irreparably damaged (the statement is made that a number
of Germans--the church being used as a hospital--were killed by a shell
which penetrated the vaulting), and the chevet at the east end is
very badly knocked about. The west end, happily, has not suffered so
much, the direction of firing being generally from Brimont and Nogent
l'Abesse, respectively north and east of the city. One is glad to know
that it was found possible to save a certain amount of the fine stained
glass.
In thinking of the fate of Rheims from the point of view of the French,
it is to be remembered that to them the cathedral stands in much the
same relation as does Westminster Abbey to us. It is not perhaps
the finest, nor the most beautiful, nor the largest of the glorious
churches of France, but it is the one which, more than any other,
represents in itself and its associations the faith and the history and
the life of the country over many centuries and through endless changes
and vicissitudes. Considering the mentality of the Germans--as judged
by the sentiments of their newspapers at the time--it may probably have
been the very consciousness of the special affection of the French for
the cathedral that induced them to make it their special target.
The figures which are given as to the number of shells fired, and
specially the number fired at the cathedral in 1914, and on certain
days in 1917, are almost unbelievable.[37]
[37] Buchan's "History of the War," vol. iii., p. 71, and the "Michelin
Guide to Rheims," p. 20, etc.
The city has, or had before the war, about 115,000 inhabitants and
some 14,000 houses. Of the latter an English visitor in 1918 informed
me that about 2,000 had escaped with little damage and were more or
less habitable, 2,000 more might be said to be still standing, while
the remaining 10,000 were entirely destroyed. (As a comparison it may
be remembered that in the Great Fire of London about 13,000 houses are
said to have been burnt, or destroyed to limit the flames.)
Plate 88 is simply an example of the state of the greater part of the
city, after, of course, the wreckage had been cleared off the roadways
and things in general "tidied up." Plates 89 and 90 show respectively
the west end of the cathedral, with its towers, and the chevet at
the east end seen across a mass of ruined houses. I am afraid that
the glass of the great rose windows was destroyed very early, before
it could be removed, and at the east end much of the tracery of the
windows has been smashed. It is in no way to the credit of the Germans,
either in their intentions or in their shooting, that the damage has
not been immensely greater. One may be permitted to hope that in the
reconstruction of the city, which is proceeding apace, advantage will
be taken of the clearance which has become unavoidable to leave such
space round the building as will allow its magnificence to be more
fully seen than has hitherto been possible.
After having to evacuate the city in 1914, the Germans made a very
determined stand to the north at the Fort of Brimont, six miles
away, as well as on the east at about the same distance, and even
the desperate fighting of April, 1917, failed to move them. For the
greater part of the war the French and Germans were facing each other
on a north and south line a little to the east of the road from Rheims
to Laon. But on their side the enemy succeeded in getting closer to
the city, and the shelling must often have been at very close range,
a condition of affairs more like that at Ypres than at Verdun. At one
time in 1917 the Germans actually got for a day into the northern
cemetery, just outside the city and only a couple of miles from the
cathedral.
The remains of the French front line to the east of the Laon road were
still not cleared away on my visit, the barbed-wire entanglements
hardly visible above the thick growth of rank herbage. The road itself,
running on a slight embankment, in places covers numerous dugouts,
their entrances facing westward.
The end of September, 1918, saw the city freed at last, the Germans
hastily evacuating the forts in their great retreat.
* * * * *
In the great retreat of the Germans in 1914 the Aisne was reached on
the 12th of September, after Soissons had been in enemy occupation
for ten days, during which heavy requisitions were made, although no
pillage is said to have occurred. The first battle of the Aisne, the
end of the German retreat in 1914, continued well into September,
British artillery aiding the French north of Soissons, and Haig's
troops, being farther east, attempting to reach the Chemin des Dames
plateau above Troyon. But the Germans had had time to entrench
themselves in the enormously strong positions afforded by the upper
ground, and all the efforts of the Allies failed to dislodge them.
They remained substantially unmoved until 1917, by which time they
also held a sharp salient between Missy and Chavonne which had carried
them across to the southern bank of the Aisne. By the beginning of
1915 the French held the valleys of Cuffies and Crouy, with the ridge
between them and the western end of the high ground to the east. On the
12th-13th of January they were attacked by greatly superior numbers by
Von Kluck, and, by the misfortune that floods on the Aisne had carried
away their bridges higher up the stream, were cut off from their
supplies, and had to retire south of the river, losing the bridge-head
on the north bank. Soissons itself, however, was not captured, although
the Germans remained within very easy shelling distance of it.
The Aisne winds along a flat valley bottom in great bends, always
bounded on the north by high ground, which rises some 400 to 450 feet
above the river, and is traversed by steep and narrow wooded ravines
very much like Surrey combes, which were occupied and fully utilised
by the enemy. Along the top of the plateau runs from west to east
the road which became so familiar to us as the "Chemin des Dames,"
although this picturesque name did not appear on the maps. The main
road from Soissons to Laon crosses the western end of the plateau close
to the Malmaison Fort; its eastern end passes through Craonne, and
the ground falls quickly down to the level of the Rheims-Laon road at
Corbeny. Every foot of the "Ladies' Road" has been fought over; the
whole plateau is shell-pocked almost as badly as ground beside the
Amiens-Péronne road on the Somme, and the road itself is in many places
no longer distinguishable, the whole area being thickly overgrown with
rank herbage. Plate 91 gives some idea of what the once well-marked
road now looks like where it crosses the Troyon road, the route by
which Haig's troops tried in vain to reach and hold the high ground.
The village of Cerny, close to the crossing, is wiped out, some hint
only of its former position being indicated by the remains of what has
probably been a sugar factory (Plate 92).
In many places on the slopes above the Aisne there are quarries and
natural caves, greatly enlarged and very fully utilised in the German
defence. Plate 93 shows one of these caves at Crouy, a now ruined
village a couple of miles above Soissons on the side of the valley in
which runs the little stream that descends from Laffaux on the north to
the Aisne at Soissons. Beside and across this stream our artillery had
hard fighting in 1914, in the vain attempt to dislodge the enemy from
the high ground above and to the west, at a time when the Germans could
fire twenty shells to one of ours.
The Aisne valley remained in general fairly quiescent from 1914 until
April, 1917, when General Nivelle, after his great success at Verdun,
planned the gigantic blow at the German front from Soissons to the
Argonne, which, in spite of its ultimate success in carrying nearly the
whole of the Chemin des Dames, failed to relieve Rheims,[38] and by
falling so far short of the hoped-for and too optimistically predicted
success helped to cause considerable, although happily only temporary,
discontent in parts of the French Army, which was only cleared away by
the magnificent way in which Pétain showed his men a few months later,
both on the Aisne and at Verdun, that they still remained more than a
match for their opponents.
[38] Captain Tuohy in "The Secret Corps" says that the trial of a spy
known as "Suzette" showed that her machinations played no small part
in preventing Nivelle's success. She is alleged especially to have
given the enemy full details as to the new French tanks, and also full
information where and how it was intended to use them.
The last battle of the Aisne formed the third of the series of great
advances which Ludendorff had made in March and April, 1918. In
each of the first two the Allies had been driven back so far and so
definitely as to enable the Germans to claim overwhelming victory. But
each of them, all the same, had finally found the victorious troops
face to face with undefeated and immovable armies, and found them
also too exhausted to press forward to gain those objectives which had
constituted the real intention of each advance. The third Aisne battle
was destined to have a similar conclusion. The German intentions had
been well concealed, and their enormous concentration of troops had not
been discovered, so that the attack which started suddenly on the 27th
of May swept everybody off the ridge and down to the Aisne at once. The
British 9th Corps (four divisions) were on the French right, brought
there to rest after their hard fighting farther north! They held on at
Craonne for a while, but were hopelessly outnumbered, and had to fall
back with the rest of the troops. The Aisne and the Vesle were lost,
and in three days the Germans had reached the Marne, and held ten miles
of the river between Château Thierry and Dormans. Soissons fell on the
28th and Château Thierry a few days later, but the right, on which was
still our 9th Corps, beside the French Fifth Army and some fine Italian
troops, held back the invaders and succeeded in keeping them at a
distance from Rheims and Epernay. Then followed counter-attacks, which
were sometimes successful, and a month's quiescence, until on the 15th
of July Ludendorff started the _Friedensturm_ which was to have brought
him peace--a German peace--but which ended in his utter ruin.
The Oise and Aisne Canal reaches (and crosses) the Aisne close to the
foot of the road up to Troyon. The canal was no doubt dry during the
war, as it was when I saw it afterwards (Plate 94), the bridge on the
main road, destroyed during the German retreat, having been replaced by
another.
North of the Aisne, from Soissons to Berry-au-Bac, all the villages
except one appeared to be in ruins.
The whole of the country south of the Aisne to the Vesle, and again
south to the Marne, was fought over in 1914, and again in the German
advance in May, 1918, as well as in their final retreat in July and
August. The villages, so far as I saw them, were in ruins--such, for
example, as Fismes (Plate 95)--but were still recognisable as villages
without the necessity, as on the Somme, of a notice-board on the
roadside saying "This was ..."
Soissons itself was never far enough from the German lines to be free
from shell-fire until October, 1917; it has not been, however, nearly
so completely destroyed as Rheims, a reasonable number of houses
remaining habitable in the end of 1918. The Germans entered it again
in May, 1918, and remained in possession for two months, and during
this occupation they had apparently repented of their moderation four
years before, for they pillaged and stole systematically, and destroyed
wantonly what they did not wish to steal.
The beautiful towers and spires of the west front of St. Jean des
Vignes (Plate 96), which were all that remained of the once noble
church, are a good deal damaged. It is stated that this church was
pulled down in 1805 on the demand of the Bishop of Soissons in order
to provide material for the repair of the cathedral, but that the two
towers and spires were spared on the entreaty of the inhabitants.[39]
Certainly only the skeleton of the west end with the towers has been
in existence for a very long time. Apparently there have been other
Huns than the Germans! The cathedral itself (Plate 97) has actually
been cut in half and its one tower (the northern tower had never been
built) knocked to pieces. The cathedral, although a small one, was a
very beautiful structure, and was more or less unique in being arranged
as two churches, one lying east and west, and the other across the
transepts at right angles. The view in Plate 97 was taken in 1920
across what is now a fine open space, but which was, on my pre-war
visits to the city, covered closely with houses and shops, and in 1919
was still a mass of broken walls and stone rubbish. It can be said, at
any rate, that the view of the cathedral--or what is left of it--is
certainly much more complete and effective than it ever had been before.
[39] "Michelin Guide to Soissons," p. 44.
West of Soissons the destruction of villages continues for seven or
eight miles along the valley, as far as Pontarchet, but still farther
west, and to the south in the Compiègne forest, there are very few
signs of fighting.
[Illustration: _PLATE LXXXIX._
RHEIMS CATHEDRAL--WEST END.
_The west front of the Westminster Abbey of France is happily not
irreparably damaged, but the glass of the rose window has gone, and
some of the statues and the carvings are injured. The roof of the
building has gone entirely, and the vaulting is broken through in
places._]
[Illustration: _PLATE XC._
RHEIMS CATHEDRAL--EAST END.
_The east end of the Cathedral is very much more injured than the
west, having been more exposed to the fire from the forts which were
shelling the city._]
[Illustration: _PLATE XCI._
THE CHEMIN DES DAMES.
_The road crossing the photograph from right to left is the Troyon
road up from the Aisne valley. It is still practicable for motors.
What is left of the Chemin des Dames itself, at this place (near
Cerny), starts from the right-hand corner of the view, crosses the
Troyon road, and practically disappears in the wilderness._]
[Illustration: _PLATE XCII._
THE CHEMIN DES DAMES--CERNY.
_All that seemed to be left of the village of Cerny--the remains,
apparently, of a sugar factory--with some water-logged shell-holes._]
XII.--VERDUN, THE MEUSE, AND THE ARGONNE
(PLATES 98 TO 106.)
After the first battle of the Marne, in 1914, the Germans were driven
back to positions encircling Verdun on three sides (north-west,
north-east, and south-east) at a distance of ten to twelve miles. They
succeeded, however, in holding a little salient at St. Mihiel, on the
eastern bank of the Meuse, about twenty miles south of Verdun, and with
it the village of Chauvoncourt, on the west side of the river. This
village was entered by the French in November, 1914, but immediately
blown up (it had been already mined) by the Germans, and regained by
them in a counter-attack. It remained in their hands until 1918, but
they were so tightly held all round by the French that they could make
no use of it as a bridge-head.
The possession of the St. Mihiel Salient, however, gave the Germans
command of a stretch of the main road in the Meuse valley, and enabled
them to cut the only full-gauge railway which still connected Verdun
with the rest of France. This road and railway were therefore, until
the successful American attack of September, 1918, entirely useless
to the city, and its only railway was the narrow-gauge line leading
southwards to the main line at Bar-le-Duc, and the one main road to the
same place _via_ Souilly. The latter came to be known as the "Sacred
Way" (_La Voie Sacrée_), and became the principal line of communication
for men, munitions, and stores. It is stated that thirteen battalions
of infantry were occupied in keeping it in such repair as was possible,
and that 1,700 lorries passed over it daily. In 1919 the northern part
of the Voie Sacrée was still as bumpy for motoring as many of the worst
roads in Flanders.
[Illustration: _PLATE XCIII._
CAVES ABOVE SOISSONS.
_Beside the Laon road, going northwards from Soissons, are a number of
old limestone caves, partly natural and largely artificial, which were
made useful by the Germans in their long occupation of this region._]
[Illustration: _PLATE XCIV._
THE OISE AND AISNE CANAL.
_The dry bed of the Oise and Aisne Canal, with the original bridge
blown up in the German retreat, and the French girder bridge replacing
it._]
[Illustration: _PLATE XCV._
FISMES.
_The townlet of Fismes, on the Vesle, like many other places between
the Aisne and the Marne, has been shelled in turn by French and
Germans. It is practically destroyed, but without being levelled to
the ground and swallowed up by weeds like villages farther north._]
[Illustration: _PLATE XCVI._
SOISSONS--ST. JEAN DES VIGNES.
_Only these two towers, with their beautiful spires, have remained of
this church for more than a century. One of the towers has been so
damaged as to present strange problems to an engineer in the strength
of materials._]
The great attack on Verdun was intended to capture the city in four
days and to clear the way to Paris at one swoop, and the Emperor
(whose presence never seemed to bring good fortune to his troops) was
waiting at Ornes, some eight or ten miles north, to make his triumphal
entry. The attack began with enormous impetuosity on the 21st of
February, 1916, but in four days--with enormous losses on both sides,
but chiefly to the attackers--the Germans were still held some four or
five miles away from their objective on the east side of the river, and
double as far on the west. But nearer the Argonne their positions had
allowed them already to cut the full-gauge railway to St. Menehould by
shell-fire.
A book written by General von Zwehl[40] gives the number of guns used
in this attack as being about 230 in each of three corps. He also
speaks of the "dejection and pessimism" induced in his troops by the
failure of the artillery to make the clear way to the city which had
been predicted and promised.
[40] Reviewed in _The Times_ Literary Supplement of the 7th of April,
1921.
The Douaumont Fort was entered on the 25th, and the Emperor had sent
to Berlin the news that the "key of the last defences of Verdun" was
in German hands. But on the next day Pétain began counter-attacks, and
although during several months the Germans made progress from time
to time, eventually gaining the Vaux Fort and most of the Mort Homme
Ridge, the great attack had, in reality, miscarried from the start.
The city itself, from which all civilians had been evacuated by the
25th of February, was heavily shelled, especially at the commencement
of the attack, but as a city it has not suffered to anything like
the same extent as Rheims, to say nothing of Albert, Lens, or Ypres.
The fighting and the tremendous shelling were always in a zone lying
roughly between four and eight miles from the city; within this zone
the ground is as completely shell-marked, the villages and woods as
completely destroyed, as even on the Somme.
The greatest German advance was reached in June, 1916, Thiaumont Fort
being taken on the 30th of June, when at one point the Germans were
only three miles from the city. Thiaumont was retaken when the French
offensive started in the following October, and on the 2nd of November
Vaux Fort was recovered and the Germans had been driven back nearly to
the lines they had succeeded in occupying on the 24th of February. But
the Mort Homme Ridge was entirely regained only in August, 1917, and it
was still another year before it could be said that Verdun was entirely
"cleared." The final success of the French in driving back the enemy
is attributed by General von Zwehl to the overwhelming superiority of
their artillery, the German heavy guns having been sent elsewhere.
Plate 98, taken from the left bank of the Meuse, shows the broken
bridge at St. Mihiel and the ridge above; the little town lies chiefly
beyond the picture in a hollow on the right. It has been very little
damaged; even the great clock in the church tower is uninjured. It is
easily seen how entirely the ridge, some 300 feet above the river and
filling up an acute bend, enabled the Germans to dominate the road and
railway on the left bank for a long distance. In April, 1915, a French
attack on the north side of the salient took Les Éparges after severe
fighting, but made no further progress. The neighbouring country to the
west of the Meuse is quite unharmed until one comes within a few miles
of the river. The St. Mihiel Salient was attacked from the south by the
Americans and by the French from the north on the 11th of September,
1918, just as the Germans had determined to evacuate it, and it was
finally cleared within a week.
The view from the Pont Ste. Croix at Verdun over the Meuse (Plate 99)
shows a portion of the most destroyed area of the city, in which some
sort of reconstruction had already started. On the opposite side of
the river, however, tall buildings were standing quite uninjured, and
entering the city from the south by the Porte St. Victor one traverses
a long length of street without seeing any serious destruction. The
cathedral (not a very interesting building after many reconstructions)
has been badly damaged as to its vaulting and roof, but the towers
still stand; the Church of St. Saviour has been less fortunate.
[Illustration: _PLATE XCVII._
SOISSONS CATHEDRAL.
_The Cathedral of Soissons, which is so badly damaged that its
reconstruction appears almost hopeless, is one of the oldest, and
architecturally one of the most interesting, of the French Gothic
churches._]
[Illustration: _PLATE XCVIII._
ST. MIHIEL.
_The little salient of St. Mihiel, on the Meuse, twenty miles above
Verdun, was secured by the Germans very early in the war, and gave
them command of the principal road and railway from Verdun. It was
held by them until the very end, when Americans and French together
squeezed them out._]
[Illustration: _PLATE XCIX._
VERDUN.
_A part of the centre of Verdun, on the Meuse. Oddly enough, buildings
just opposite these, on the other side of the river, are almost
untouched. But the fighting at Verdun--with which only the fighting
on the Somme and in Flanders are comparable--was concentrated on the
hilly ground some miles north of the city._]
[Illustration: _PLATE C._
VAUX FORT--NORTH FOSSE.
_The holding of the fort at Vaux, one of those nearest Verdun, by
Major Raynal and his men, was one of the finest episodes of the war.
The Germans were held at bay for three months, but eventually the
defenders were driven down to the underground passages connected to
the North Fosse, and were overpowered after seven days' continuous
fighting._]
Vaux Fort--although we did not hear so much of it in England as of
Douaumont--was the scene of one of the most gallant episodes of the
war. The fort is somewhat less than five miles north-east of the
city; it was completed only in 1911, and is a huge mass of masonry
and reinforced concrete, with many underground works, on an eminence
which dominates the country on the side away from the city and faces
the Douaumont Ridge across a valley in which lies the village of Vaux.
The tops of both Vaux and Douaumont Forts look like a wilderness
of shell-holes in a gravel bed; apparently the concrete has been
covered over with many feet of something in the nature of gravel as
an additional protection. Vaux Fort was held against three months of
incessant attacks by Major Raynal and his men, the last of whom were
finally completely imprisoned within it, but held out and fought hand
to hand in the steep underground passages leading to the northern fosse
(Plate 100), the only outlet remaining to them. Great efforts were
made to relieve them, but without success, and after a final week of
continuous fighting, during the last two days of which they had only
water enough for the wounded men, the little garrison was overpowered
on the 8th of June, 1916. The Germans had the courtesy, in recognition
of his splendid defence, to allow Major Raynal to retain his sword. The
fort was finally regained on the 2nd of November of the same year.