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M. Georges Montorgueil, writing in "La Cités Meurtries, 1916," his
account of the early days of terror in Meaux, gives a picture of the old
priest who so devotedly and courageously shepherded his little flock of
women and children, helpless before the invasion and destruction of the
town by the Germans:
"Where, meanwhile, was the venerable priest, an old man of seventy-five
years, the Abbé Fossin, whose age and gray hairs was no protection,
to him, nor the eighteen unfortunates who were seized with him by the
Germans and thrown into jail, under the most atrocious circumstances,
not matched by any of its most ancient barbarities when the Germans were
known as 'Huns.'
"The Abbé Fossin kept a Journal of events during the tragic hours
preceding his arrest:
"'5th of September, 1914. Saturday.
"'I read my breviary. An aéroplane passed above my head. The bodies
of two pilots killed by a bomb were taken to the cemetery. A group
of captured French soldiers are passing. "L'église en ambulance." The
prisoners of Guerard have gone. All the electric lights in the town are
out.
"'6th September. Sunday.
"'A bad night. Impossible to say Mass or hold funeral of the two
aviators in the cemetery because of the falling shells. The
cannonade began at nine o'clock and lasted until five o'clock without
interruption. We are under a very rain of fire! The batteries of the
Germans, placed behind the presbytery, have been located by the English.
I believe my last hour has arrived. The din is frightful! I have thanked
God that I am protected.
"'7th September. Monday.
"'The battle has recommenced. Still impossible to say the Holy Mass. I
paid a visit to the Germans in the Church. These are the most terribly
wounded. They gave me their hands. They are badly off. I cannot give
them bread; all I had, all the fruits of my garden have disappeared! I
have nothing left!--'
"The diary ends here. Here was a holy man of venerable years of known
truth and great charity, visiting his enemies to give them what he had,
his prayers. He had nothing else to give. He was fatigued for lack
of sleep. He was hungry, but he had nothing to eat. All he had in his
meager house and small garden had been either taken away or destroyed.
Witness now his recompense: less than an hour after he had written those
last notes in his diary, the Germans had seized and dragged him before a
wrathful German officer.
"He was charged with having climbed the tower of the cathedral to signal
to the British lines. He who so suffered from rheumatism that he could
hardly walk from his doorway to the church, a few paces away, by the aid
of a cane. He was insulted by the officer, the soldiers who held him up
before his questioner spat in his face. At length his shoes and clothes
were stripped from him, and with great brutality he was thrown into a
cellar, where he spent the night, with some potato bags to cover him. In
the morning the door above was flung open, and a number of captives were
thrown down the steep steps of the cellar way. These were Milliardet,
Jourdin, Vapaille, Therré, Croix, Eugene Leriche, Lacour, Jules Denis,
Berthelemy Denis, Merillon, Combes, Mesnil, Liévin, Faure and his son,
aged fifteen, who was baker's boy in the village of Vareddes, and known
under the nickname of 'Marmiton.'
"To this group the Germans added later in the day Paul Lebel and Vincent
Denis, arrested because the latter called out to a German soldier, 'Eh,
well, old man, you are not yet at Paris!'
"On Saturday, without feeding them or allowing any one to visit them,
all these unfortunates were divided into several groups, and surrounded
by soldiers, hustled along the road to Lizy-sur-Ourcy, where they were
halted.
"They numbered now fifteen in all, not counting the old priest, the Abbé
Fossin.
"Père Leriche, who was himself seventy-four years old, relates that the
Abbé, who lay prostrate on the ground beside him, said to him in a low
voice, 'I believe that they are going to shoot me--take my watch and
breviary, and try and get them to my family.' When the march was resumed
the Abbé could not walk fast enough to suit the soldiers. He was pushed
and struck by them, his soutane was torn to ribbons. Finally they threw
him into a wagon which they seized on the road. In this he lay groaning.
He died a short time later, and was left beside the road. The heat was
atrocious; thus they marched, the younger ones sustaining the elders,
through the long hours to the rear, without water or food, insulted and
beaten constantly by their captors.
"At Coulomb, Père Jourdain fell in the road, unable to continue the
march. He was immediately dispatched by a revolver shot.
"At Chézy-en-Orxois, another old man, Milliardet, eighty years old, was
similarly disposed of. Any complaint was the signal of death. Both Terry
and Croix were shot for whistling.
"Old Eugene Menie, who halted on the edge of a deep ditch, was struck
by the butt of a gun in the hands of one of the soldiers, and his neck
broken--they threw him into the ditch and went on.
"Père Liévin, aged sixty-one, who had heart disease, could not keep step
with the others; he was purple in the face, and his eyes stuck out so
comically that it amused the soldiers, who finally shot him and left his
body at the cemetery gate in Chauny."
These are only haphazard extracts from the records of that terrible
month of September, 1914, when unfortunate Meaux was the very center
of affairs. Elsewhere we read of the aspects of the streets after
each successive bombardment, the telegraph hanging in festoons on the
footways, the trunks of huge trees felled by cannon barring the way;
the carcasses of animals lying about amid strange débris, such as heavy
leather shoes, broken guns, sticks and barrels, empty tin cans, torn and
ragged clothing clotted with blood, strange piles of still smoking ashes
containing small bones, and over all the odor of burning petroleum.
The houses with wide open doors and sashless window frames; gardens
uprooted and despoiled; walls thrown down, and strewn about an immense
quantity of broken glass bottles. These were the streets of Meaux, which
I had explored on that peaceful morning in August, 1910, and made the
sketches of the old bridge with its clustered mills, the fire blackened
beams now hanging in grotesque ruins over the water of the little green
river.
The bombardment began on Monday, the 7th of September, 1914. The first
of the German shells fell upon the town at eleven in the morning, in the
direction of the fauburg St.-Nicholas, then in the fauburg St.-Faron.
The bombardment followed the line of the railway. In the cemetery the
ancient tombs were scattered in all directions; ten shells destroyed the
hospital. The Grand Seminary fell next. Of the one hundred and twenty
shells which on this Monday fell in the town, the first five did the
greatest damage. Whole lines of houses were thrown down and set on fire.
This lasted until six in the afternoon. The next day shells began to
fall again in the early morning. The cathedral was encircled by shells,
which did great damage, but by a special Providence with the exception
of an enormous hole in the roof, and the destruction of the venerable
cloisters, the ancient cathedral escaped the fate of its neighbors.
This is the chronology: Wednesday, September 2, the exodus; Thursday,
the town lay deserted and helpless; Friday, the organization of all the
available defensive forces; Saturday and Sunday, the battle; Monday, the
bombardment; Tuesday, the enemy driven off, and the town saved.