On Aug. 25, 1914, the inhabitants of Lunéville made an
attack by ambuscade against the German columns and
transports. On the same day the inhabitants fired on
hospital buildings marked with the Red Cross. Further, shots
were fired on the German wounded and the military hospital
containing a German ambulance. On account of these acts of
hostility a contribution of 650,000 francs is imposed on the
commune of Lunéville. The Mayor is ordered to pay this
sum--50,000 francs in silver and the remainder in gold--on
Sept. 6, at 9 o'clock in the morning, to the representative
of the German military authority. No protest will be
considered. No extension of time will be granted. If the
commune does not punctually obey the order to pay 650,000
francs all the goods which are available will be seized. In
case payment is not made domiciliary searches will take
place, and all the inhabitants will be searched. Any one who
shall have deliberately hidden money or shall have attempted
to hide his goods from the seizure of the military
authorities, or who seeks to leave the town, will be shot.
The Mayor and hostages taken by the military authorities
will be made responsible for the exact execution of the
above order. The Mayor is ordered to publish these
directions to the commune at once.
Hénaménil, Sept. 3, 1914.
Commander in Chief,
Von FOSBENDER.
On reading this extraordinary document one is justified in asking
whether the arson and murders committed at Lunéville on Aug. 25 and 26
by an army which was not acting under the excitement of battle, and
which during its preceding days had abstained from killing, were not
ordered on purpose to make more plausible the allegation which was to
serve as a pretext for the exaction of an indemnity.
The village of Chanteheux, situated quite close to Lunéville, was not
spared either. The Bavarians, who occupied it from the 22d of August
to the 12th of September, burned there 20 houses in the customary
manner and massacred 8 persons on the 25th of August, MM. Lavenne,
Toussaint, Parmentier, and Bacheler, who were killed, the first three
by rifle shots, the fourth by two shots and a blow with a bayonet;
young Schneider, aged 23, who was murdered in a hamlet of the commune;
M. Wingerstmann and his grandson, whose death we have recorded above
in setting out the crimes committed at Lunéville; lastly, M. Reeb,
aged 62, who certainly died as the result of the ill-treatment which
he suffered. This man had been taken as hostage with some 42 of his
fellow-citizens who were kept for 13 days. After having received
terrible blows from the butt of a rifle in his face and a bayonet
wound in his side, he continued to follow the column, although he lost
much blood and his face was so bruised that he was almost
unrecognizable, when a Bavarian, without any reason, gave him a great
wound by throwing a wooden pail at his forehead. Between Hénaménil and
Bures his companions saw that he was no longer with them; no doubt he
fell by the way.
If this unhappy man was to suffer the most cruel martyrdom of all, the
hostages taken with him in the commune had also to suffer violence and
insult. Before setting fire to the village, the hostages were set with
their backs to the parapet of the bridge while the troops passed by
ill-treating them. As an officer accused them of firing on the
Germans, the schoolmaster gave him his word of honor that it was not
so. "Pig of a Frenchman," replied the officer, "do not speak of honor;
you have none."
At the moment when her house was burning Mme. Cherrier, who was coming
out of the cellar to escape suffocation, was drenched with an
inflammable liquid by some soldiers who were sprinkling the walls. One
of them told her that it was benzine. She then ran behind a dunghill
to hide herself with her parents, but the fire raisers dragged her by
force in front of the blaze and she was obliged to witness the
destruction of her dwelling.
Like Nomeny, the pretty town of Gerbéviller, on the banks of the
Mortagne, fell a victim to the fury of the Germans under terrible
circumstances. On the 24th August the enemy's troops hurled themselves
against some sixty chasseurs à pied, who offered heroic resistance,
and who inflicted heavy loss upon them. They took a drastic vengeance
upon the civilian population. Indeed, from the moment of their
entrance into the town, the Germans gave themselves up to the worst
excesses, entering the houses, with savage yells, burning the
buildings, killing or arresting the inhabitants, and sparing neither
women nor old men. Out of 475 houses, 20 at most are still habitable.
More than 100 persons have disappeared, 50 at least have been
massacred. Some were led into the fields to be shot, others were
murdered in their houses or struck down in passing through the streets
as they were trying to escape from the conflagration. Up to now 36
bodies have been identified. They are those of MM. Barthélemy, Blosse
(Senior), Robinet, Chrétien, Rémy, Bourguignon, Perrin, Guillaume,
Bernasconi, Gauthier, Menu, Simon, Lingenheld (father and son),
Benoit, Calais, Adam, Caille, Lhuillier, Regret, Plaid (aged 14),
Leroi, Bazzolo, Gentil, Victor Dehan, Charles Dehan, Dehan the
Younger, Brennevald, Parisse, Yong, François, Secretary of the Mairie;
Mmes. Perrot, Courtois, Gauthier, and Guillaume, and Mlles. Perrin and
Miquel.
Fifteen of these poor people were executed at a place called "La
Prèle." They were buried by their fellow-citizens on Sept. 12 or 15.
Almost all had their hands tied behind their backs; some were
blindfolded; the trousers of the majority were unbuttoned and pushed
down to their feet. This fact, as well as the appearance of the
bodies, made the witnesses think that the victims had been mutilated.
We did not think we ought to adopt this view, the bodies being in such
an advanced state of decomposition that a mistake on the subject might
be made. Besides, it is possible that the murderers unbuttoned the
trousers of the prisoners so as to incumber their legs, and thus make
it impossible for them to escape.
On Oct. 16, at a place called Le Haut-de-Vormont, buried under fifteen
to twenty centimeters of earth, we found the bodies of ten civilians
with the marks of bullets upon them. On one of them was found a
laissez passer in the name of Edward Seyer, of Badonviller. The other
nine victims are unknown. It is believed that they were inhabitants of
Badonviller, who had been taken by the Germans into the neighborhood
of Gerbéviller to be shot there.
In the streets and houses, during the day of the sacking, the most
tragic scenes took place.
In the morning the enemy entered the house of M. and Mme. Lingenheld,
seized the son, 36 years of age, who wore the brassard of the Red
Cross, tied his hands behind his back, dragged him into the street,
and shot him. They then returned to look for the father, an old man of
70. Mme. Lingenheld then took to flight. On her way she saw her son
stretched on the ground, and as the unhappy man was still moving some
Germans drenched him with petrol, to which they set fire in the
presence of the terrified mother. In the meantime M. Lingenheld was
led to La Prèle, where he was executed.
At the same time the soldiers knocked at the door of the house
occupied by M. Dehan, his wife, and his mother-in-law, the widow
Guillaume, aged 78. The latter, who opened the door, was shot
point-blank, and fell into the arms of her son-in-law, who ran up
behind her. "They have killed me!" she cried. "Carry me into the
garden." Her children obeyed and laid her at the end of the garden
with a pillow under her head and a blanket over her legs, and then
stretched themselves at the foot of the wall to avoid shells. At the
end of an hour the widow Guillaume was dead. Her daughter wrapped her
in a blanket and placed a handkerchief over her face. Almost
immediately the Germans broke into the garden. They carried off Dehan
and shot him at La Prèle, and led his wife away on to the Fraimbois
road, where she found about forty people, principally women and
children, in the enemy's hands, and heard an officer of high rank say:
"We must shoot these women and children. We must make an end of them."
However, the threat was not carried into effect. Mme. Dehan was set at
liberty next day, and was able to return twenty-one days later to
Gerbéviller. She is convinced, and all those who saw the body share
her opinion, that her mother's body had been violated. In fact, the
body was found stretched on its back with the petticoats pushed up,
the legs separated, and the stomach ripped open.
When the Germans arrived M. Perrin and his two daughters, Louise and
Eugénie, had taken refuge in a stable. The soldiers entered, and one
of them, seeing young Louise, fired a shot point-blank at her head.
Eugénie succeeded in escaping, but her father was arrested as he fled,
placed among the victims who were being taken to La Prèle and shot
with them.
M. Yong, who was going out to exercise his horse, was struck down
before his own house. The Germans in their fury killed the horse after
the master, and set fire to the house. Some others raised the
trap-door of a cellar in which several people were hidden and fired
several shots at them. Mme. Denis Bernard and the boy, Parmentier, 7
years of age, were wounded.
At 5 in the evening Mme. Rozier heard an imploring voice crying,
"Mercy! Mercy!" These cries came from one of two neighboring barns
belonging to MM. Poinsard and Barbier. A man who was acting as
interpreter to the Germans declared to a certain Mme. Thiébaut that
the Germans boasted that they had burned alive in one of these barns,
in spite of his entreaties and appeals to their pity, a man who was
the father of five children. This declaration carries all the more
conviction, since the remains of a burned human body have been found
in the barn belonging to Poinsard.
Side by side with this carnage, innumerable acts of violence were
committed. The wife of a soldier, Mme. X., was raped by a German
soldier in the passage of the house of her parents, while her mother
was obliged to flee at the bayonet's point.
On Aug. 29 Sister Julie, Mother Superior of the hospital, whose
devotion has been admirable, went to the parish church with a
mobilized priest to examine the state of the interior of the building,
and found that an attempt had been made to break through the steel
door of the tabernacle. The Germans had fired shots around the lock in
order to get possession of the ciborium. The door was broken through
in several places, and the bullets had caused almost symmetrical
holes, which proved that the shots had been fired point blank. When
Sister Julie opened the tabernacle she found the ciborium pierced with
bullet holes.
The excesses and crimes which were committed at Gerbéviller were
principally the work of the Bavarians. The troops which committed them
were under the command of the German General, Clauss, whose brutality
has been brought to our notice in other places.
On the 22d of August the Germans burned part of the village of Crévic,
using torches and rockets. Seventy-six houses were burned, including
in particular that of Gen. Lyautey, which the fire-raisers had
entered, led by an officer, crying aloud: "We want Mme. and Mlle.
Lyautey in order to cut their throats." A Captain, leveling his
revolver at M. Voigin's throat, threatened to shoot him and throw him
into the flames, together with one of his fellow-citizens, "whose
brains," he said, "we have already blown out." He was alluding to the
death of an old gentleman, M. Liégey, 78 years of age, whose body was
found in the ruins with a bullet wound under his chin. The officer
added, "Come and see the property of Gen. Lyautey, who is in
Morocco--it is burning." Meanwhile a workman named Gérard was forced
at the bayonet's point to go up to his garret. The Germans set fire to
a heap of forage and obliged Gérard to remain near the blaze. When the
soldiers were driven out by the intolerable heat, Gérard was able to
escape through a little opening, but he had had one cheek already
badly burned.
At Deuxville, where the enemy willfully set fire to fifteen houses,
the Mayor, Bajole, and the curé, Thiriet, were arrested. L'Abbé
Marchal, curé of Crion, saw them both in his parish in the hands of
the Germans; he approached his colleague and asked the reason of his
arrest. The latter replied, "I made signs." L'Abbé Marchal gave him a
little bread and went away; but he had scarcely gone thirty paces when
he heard the sound of a volley. The two prisoners had just been
executed. The next day an officer who spoke our language perfectly,
and said that for eight years he had been attached to the German
Embassy in Paris, told L'Abbé Marchal that the curé of Deuxville had
made signs and had admitted it. "As for the Mayor," he added, "I do
not believe the poor devil had done anything."
At Maixe the Germans burned thirty-six houses and murdered MM. Gauçon,
Demange, Jacques, Thomas, Marchal, Chaudre, Grand, Simonin, Vaconet,
and Mme. Beurton on the pretext that they had been firing at them.
Gauçon was dragged from his own house and thrown on a dunghill where a
soldier killed him with a rifle shot in the stomach. Demange, who was
wounded in both knees while in his cellar, succeeded in dragging
himself as far as the kitchen. The Germans set fire to the house and
prevented Mme. Demange from rescuing her husband, and left their
victims to be burned in the blazing house.
Mme. Beurton was also in her cellar with her family when two soldiers
came down into it; one of them carried a lantern and the other a
rifle. The latter fired haphazard on to the group and hit the unhappy
woman. Vaconet was struck by a bullet in the side at the foot of M.
Rediger's staircase; as for Simonin, he was taken away in the
direction of Drouville. A few days afterward a German officer handed
to M. Thouvenin, Municipal Councilor of the commune, a note stating
that Simonin had been shot and that his last wishes were expressed in
a document which was in the hands of the General commanding the Third
Bavarian Division. On this document, of which a copy has been sent to
us, appears the signature of an officer of the Third Regiment of the
Chevauxlégers. The other victims at Maixe met their deaths under
conditions which we have been unable to ascertain.
In the same village, Mlle. X., aged 23 years, was raped by nine
Germans during the night of Aug. 23-24. An officer was sleeping in the
room above that in which this revolting scene was being enacted, but
he did not consider it necessary to intervene, though he must
certainly have heard the cries of the young girl and the noise made
by the German soldiers.
The Château of Beauzemont was broken into on the 22d of August. On the
fifteenth day of its occupation, the wives of several German staff
officers arrived in motor cars. Everything that had been stolen from
the Château, especially plate, hats, and silk dresses, was loaded on
the motor cars. On the 21st of October the Lieutenant Colonel
commanding the ---- French Infantry Regiment took possession of this
château. He found it in a state of disorder and revolting filth. The
drawers of most of the furniture had been broken into and left open,
and the floor of the billiard room was in a filthy condition. There
was a disgusting smell in the bedroom occupied by the German General
commanding the Seventh Reserve Division. The cupboard at the head of
the bed contained body linen and muslin curtains full of excrements.
At Baccarat the enemy did not massacre anybody, but on the 25th of
August they carried out a systematic pillage, and in order to be able
to do this undisturbed they had ordered the population to assemble at
the railway station. The pillage was carried out under the supervision
of the officers. Clocks and various articles of furniture and objets
d'art were carried off. When the inhabitants returned home they were
ordered out again an hour later and informed that the town was to be
burned. Indeed, the centre of the town was ablaze. The conflagration,
which was started by torches and pastilles, destroyed 112 houses; only
four or five were burned by shells. After the fire sentinels were
placed, who prevented the owners from approaching the ruins of their
houses, and when the blaze had abated the Germans ransacked the ruins
themselves in order to gain access to the cellars. After this
operation Gen. Fabricius, commanding the artillery of the Fourteenth
Baden Corps, said to M. Renaud, the Acting Mayor: "I did not think
that Baccaret contained such a quantity of fine wine. We found more
than 100,000 bottles." One must, however, add that at the glass works
the enemy really displayed comparative honesty, inasmuch as they only
exacted, at the revolver's point, a reduction of 60 to 75 per cent. on
the goods which they bought.
At Jolivet, on the 22d of August, M. Villemin was leaving M. Cohan's
house with the latter and a M. Richard when German soldiers fell upon
M. Richard. Struck on the head by the butt of a rifle, Richard fell.
Cohan rushed back to his house. Villemin went to look after his
cattle, after having followed Richard for a short distance as the
latter was being led away by his aggressors. At about 5 o'clock in the
evening he went out to see a neighbor, but was immediately arrested
and shot. His assassins threw his body over a fence into a garden.
On the 25th of August, in the same commune, Mme. Morin's house was
pillaged. The Germans took linen, plate, furs and hats. The next day
the house was set on fire by lighting bits of wood found in packing
cases.
At Bonvillers, on the 21st, 23d, and 25th of August, twenty-six houses
were set on fire by the Germans, who made use of squibs and candles.
At Einville, on the 22d of August, the day the Germans arrived, they
shot a Town Councilor, M. Pierson, whom they wrongfully accused of
having fired on them. They also executed, without reason, MM. Bouvier
and Barbelin, whom they had taken away a short distance from the
village. They also massacred a poacher called Pierrat, whom they had
found carrying a sack containing a small net and a gun in pieces. The
wretched man was terribly tortured by them. Having dragged him beyond
the village, they brought him back in front of Mme. Famôse's house.
This lady saw him pass by in the midst of the Germans. His nose was
nearly cut off. His eyes were haggard and, to quote the witness's
remark, he seemed to have aged ten years in a quarter of an hour. At
this moment an officer gave an order and eight soldiers went off with
the prisoner. When they returned ten minutes later without him one of
them said in French, "He was already dead."
On the 12th of September M. Dieudonné, Mayor of Einville, was taken
off as a hostage with his assistant and another of his townsmen by the
enemy at the time of their retreat. He and his companions were taken
to Alsace, then into Germany, where they were kept until the 24th of
October. Before his arrest, and during a fight which took place around
his commune, M. Dieudonné had been forced, notwithstanding his
protests, to commandeer several of his townsmen in order to bury the
dead. Three of the inhabitants of Einville thus forcible employed on
this duty were wounded by bullets; another, M. Noël, was killed by a
fragment of a shell.
The farm of Remonville, situated within the boundaries of the same
village, was burned down. The women were able to escape. Four men who
were working on this estate must have been all killed. The bodies of
two of them, Victor Chaudre and Thomas Prosper, were discovered two
months later buried together near the buildings which had been burned.
Both had been decapitated, and Thomas's head was smashed to pieces.
At Sommerviller the enemy's course on the 23d of August was marked by
the sack of the cafés and grocers' shops and of several private
houses, and by the murder of M. Robert, aged 70, and M. Harau, aged
65, who were killed by rifle shots. The latter at the moment when he
received his death wound was quietly eating a piece of bread.
At Rehainviller, on the 26th of August, the Germans seized the curé,
Barbot, and M. Noircler in the street. The bodies of these two men
were found a long time afterward buried in the fields a few hundred
meters from the village. Their bodies were in an advanced state of
decomposition, and it was therefore impossible to ascertain the wounds
which the curé had received; as for Noircler, his head was found in
the grave by the side of the rest of his body, in a line with his hip.
[Illustration: AVIATOR-COMMANDANT MARCONNAY
One of the Oldest and Best Known French Military Aviators Killed
During a Reconnoissance.
(_Photo from Underwood & Underwood._)]
[Illustration: GENERAL SIR DOUGLAS HAIG
Commanding the First British Army, One of the Six Armies Recently
Incorporated.
(_Photo_ © _American Press Association._)]
In this commune twenty-seven houses have been burned. No one saw
the fire lighted, but after the disaster a certain number of little
fuse-sticks which the Germans frequently use for the purpose of
fire-raising, and which the peasants call "macaronis," were collected.
At Lamath, on the 24th of August, the Bavarians shot an old man of 70,
M. Louis, who had come out of his house to relieve the needs of
nature. The unhappy man received at least ten bullets in the chest.
His son-in-law, who was in an advanced stage of tuberculosis, was
taken and led away. No news has been received of him. Two other
inhabitants of the commune who were made prisoners at the same time as
this man are still in captivity in Bavaria.
The Abbé Mathieu, curé of Fraimbois, was arrested on the 29th of
August on the false allegation that shots had been fired at the
Germans in his parish. In the course of his captivity, which lasted
sixteen days, he was present at the murder of two of our
fellow-countrymen, M. Poissonnier of Gerbéviller and M. Victor-Meyer
of Fraimbois; the former, an invalid who could scarcely stand, was
accused of having followed the armies as a spy. The latter had been
arrested because his little girl had picked up a bit of telephone wire
broken by shrapnel. One morning toward 6 o'clock the Bavarian officers
went through a travesty of justice, reading documents drawn up in
German, collecting the votes of eight or nine young Lieutenants to
whom voting papers had been given. The two men were condemned
unanimously and warned that they were about to die, and the priest was
requested to give them the consolations of religion. They protested
their innocence with prayers and tears, but they were compelled to
kneel down against the embankment of the road, and a platoon of
twenty-four soldiers drawn up in double file fired twice at them.
The village of Fraimbois was pillaged, and the objects stolen were
loaded on to vehicles. The Abbé Mathieu complained to Gens. Tanner and
Clauss of the burning of his bee-house, and received from the former
the simple reply, "What do you expect? It is war!" The latter did not
even reply.
At Mont three houses were burned with petrol. At Hériménil, on the
29th of August, the enemy, who had arrived on the 24th, were guilty of
monstrous acts. The inhabitants were asked to come to church and were
kept there for four days, while their houses were sacked and the
French bombarded the village. Twenty-four people were killed inside
the church by a shell. As a woman, who had succeeded with great
trouble in leaving the church for a moment, was returning with a
little milk for the children, a Captain, furious at seeing that this
prisoner had been allowed to pass, cried out, "I meant that the door
should not be opened! I meant the French to fire on their own people."
This same Captain, a short time before, had been guilty of a revolting
cruelty. He was present, eyeglass in eye, when Mme. Winger, a young
woman of 23, was going to church in obedience to the general order,
together with her servants, a girl and two young men, each of them 18
years old, and, considering their progress too slow, with a word he
directed the soldiers to fire, and the four victims fell mortally
wounded. The Germans left the corpses in the street for two days.
Next day they shot M. Bocquel, who was ignorant of the orders which
had been given and had remained in his house. They also killed in his
own house M. Florentin, aged 77. This old man, who received several
bullets in the chest, was probably killed in consequence of his
deafness, which prevented him from understanding what the enemy had
ordered.
In this commune twenty-two houses were burned with petrol. Before
setting fire to Mme. Combeau's house the soldiers dug up the floor of
a cellar and distinterred the sum of 600 francs, which they
appropriated.
On the 23d of August young Simonin, aged 15-1/2, living at Hadiviller,
was going back from Dombasle when the Germans threatened him with
their rifles and took him prisoner. They began by beating him
unmercifully. Then on the orders of an officer, he was led away by a
soldier. As he went along he saw his father about 50 meters off
calling to him. The soldier then tied him to a telegraph pole, and
fired on Simonin's father, who fell vomiting blood, and soon after
died as he lay. Meanwhile, the young man was able to free himself from
his bonds, and succeeded in running the gauntlet of several shots, one
of which tore his coat.
At Magnières, where one house only was burned, a German armed with a
rifle entered, toward the end of August, the house of M. Laurent and
compelled a girl of 12, young ----, who had taken refuge there, to
accompany him into a room, where he raped her twice, in spite of her
ceaseless cries and groans. The poor girl was absolutely terrorized.
In addition, the soldier was so threatening that M. Laurent did not
dare to interfere.
At Croismare on the 25th of August, when the Germans were forced to
beat a retreat, maddened by their check, they began to fire on
everybody they met. A Uhlan officer killed with a rifle shot M.
Kriegel, who had gone into the field to pull potatoes. He then saw MM.
Matton and Barbier returning from their work. He rode up to them and
ordered them to stop and stand up against an embankment. The two
peasants thought at first that he was anxious to see them sheltered
from the rifle shots that were being fired all round. But their
delusion was soon dispelled when they saw him load his revolver. In
the course of this operation three cartridges were dropped, and the
officer ordered Matton and Barbier to pick them up. Barbier handed him
one of the cartridges back with the words, "Do not do us any harm; we
have just been working in the fields." "Nicht pardon, cochon de
franzose, capout," replied the officer, and fired twice. Matton ducked
quickly, and thanks to this movement was only hit in the right
shoulder instead of full in the chest. As for Barbier, a bullet went
through both his thumbs and ripped open his left forefinger.
At Réméréville on the 7th of September the enemy, alleging falsely
that the inhabitants had fired on them from the steeple, set fire to
the houses with the assistance of rockets. A few houses only escaped
the flames. Before being burned the village had been bombarded by the
Germans, who had taken as their objective an ambulance, whose flag
they saw perfectly.
The commune of Drouville, which was twice occupied, was absolutely
sacked on the 5th of September. The invaders burned thirty-five
houses, using torches and doubtless petrol also, for they left on the
spot a can which contained twenty-five to thirty liters.
At Courbesseaux arson and pillage were also committed on the 5th of
September. Nineteen houses were burned, and M. Alix, who was trying to
put out a fire in a stack of luzerne on his property, was shot at
several times and obliged to flee.
Finally, on the 23d of August, at Erbéviller, a Saxon Captain found a
very practical means of getting money for himself. He collected the
men in the village and tried vainly, by threatening to shoot them, to
obtain a declaration from them that the sentries had been shot at,
although he knew perfectly well that it was untrue. Then he shut them
up in a barn. In the evening he had brought before him the wife of M.
Jacques, a retired schoolmaster, who was one of the prisoners, and
said to her, "I am not certain that these are the men who fired. They
will be set at liberty tomorrow morning if you can give me a thousand
francs in the next few minutes." Mme. Jacques gave him the amount, and
in reply to her request he gave her a receipt for it, and the hostages
were set at liberty.
The receipt drawn up by the officer reads as follows:
Erbéviller, 23d August, 1914.