Quis funera faudo Explicet, aut possit lacrymis aequare Labores?
Urbs antiqua ruit, fnultos dominât a per annos; Plurima perque vias
sternuntur inertia passim. Corpora, perque domos, et religiosa deorum
Limina!
(Virgil, Æneid, II. v. 361.)
Surviving the ancient wars and revolutions in this, "the Cockpit of
Europe," the great examples of architecture of the early days of France
remained for our delight. The corroding fingers of time, it is true,
were much more merciful to them, but certainly the destroyers of old
never ventured to commit the crimes upon them now charged against
the legions of the present invader. These fair towns of Picardy and
Champagne are sacked, pillaged and burned even as were the beautiful
Flemish towns of Ypres, Malines, Termonde, Dixmude, and Dinant on the
Meuse....
Never again shall we enjoy them: the chalices are broken and the perfume
forever vanished....
The catastrophe is so unbelievable that one cannot realize it. The Seven
Churches of Soissons, Senlis, Noyon, Laon, Meaux, Rheims, St. Remi;
these such as man probably never again can match, are either razed to
the foundations, or so shattered that it will be impossible to restore
them.
It is said that the Imperial Government has promised to rebuild these
Gothic masterpieces....
One cannot trust one's self to comment upon this announcement.
Imagine these sacred ruins.... Rheims!... Rheims can never be restored
to what it was before the bombardment. Let it rest thus.... A sacred
ruin--the scarred, pierced heart of France!
Likewise "these fair sweet towns" of the middle ages; these wonderful
little streets and byways, filled with the gray old timbered houses,
"old in Shakespeare's day." Up to the outbreak of the war there were
many of these throughout France, in spite of the wave of modernity which
resulted in so much so called town improvement.
In Arras the two old Squares, the Grand Place and the Petit Place,
survived until destroyed by bombs in 1914. Those double rows of Ancient
Flemish gables, and the beautiful lace like tower of the Town Hall
cannot be forgotten, although they are now but calcined beams and ashes.
Between the Seine and the Flemish frontier lay a veritable storehouse
of incomparable architectural monuments. Of these Rouen, with its famous
Cathedral, is happily out of reach of the guns of the invader, and
one hopes out of danger. Beauvais likewise has not yet suffered,
nor Chalons, with its great church of St. Loup and St. Jean, but the
Cathedral and the town of Noyon have been leveled, and the gray walls
of incomparable coucy-le-Château, "that greatest of the castles of the
Middle Ages," whose lords arrogantly proclaimed "Roi ne suys, ne prince,
ne duc, ne conte aussi; je suys le Sire de Coucy," have vanished forever
from the heights under the wanton fire of the invaders' shells, and
twenty thousand pounds of powder placed in the walls and exploded in
revenge on the day of the retreat (April 1917).
Amiens, for some reason, has been spared, but it too may yet receive
its baptism of fire, even as Rheims. Amiens and Rheims! Never were there
such miracles of art as shown in these temples! Rheims is now a ragged
ruin of roofless leaning walls. So Amiens, miraculously preserved,
is now the greatest existing example of Christian architecture in the
world.
In the following chapters I have quoted extracts from accounts written
by eyewitnesses of acts committed by the invader in the devastated towns
of France. I am not responsible for these statements, nor can I vouch
absolutely for their truth, or correctness. I give them for what they
are worth as part of the setting--the frame work of the pictures I
have made of the noble, now vanished monuments which can never be
replaced....
If I have betrayed bitter feeling it is because of their destruction by
whomsoever accomplished.
"Woe be unto him from whom offense cometh."
The Author.
Greenwich, Conn.
May 1917.
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