SYSTEMATIC ARSON. DESECRATION OF CHURCHES

The life of the inhabitants of invaded countries, the honour of their women, the liberty of their youths were not the only blessings, which the Germans attempted to take away from them in contempt of all humanity and all law. Even the property of these inhabitants suffered from invasion. They had to gaze on the ruin of their ravaged homes, which the invader left to be devoured by the flames, and when, deprived of all their possessions, these wretched victims of invasion wanted to take refuge in the temples of God, this last resource was denied them, for the barbarians had sometimes destroyed the church, and sometimes taken possession of it to use as a barracks for their soldiers.
Arson as a Policy

As the French Commission of Inquiry remarked, arson was a common German practice, sometimes used as a weapon of destruction, sometimes as a means of intimidation. “The German army,” adds this Commission, “in order to be prepared for it, has a regular equipment, including torches, grenades, fuses, petrol-sprinklers, rockets which carry inflammable matter, and even little bags containing pastilles of a very inflammable compressed powder. Its incendiary fury is chiefly manifested against churches and monuments interesting from the point of view of art or of history.”

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Often the invader was not content with sprinkling the beds of dwelling-houses with petrol, he took care also to heap straw under agricultural machines to destroy them, as well as dwelling-houses, harvests, and the cattle remaining in the stalls. This was done at Chateau-sur-Morin by the 76th German regiment.

Often, also, arson was employed as a means to compel people to leave their houses, and to make it easier to pillage. As soon as they entered the villages the Germans, with this object in view, set fire to them. On other occasions they resorted to this method only when the loot was over: then the destruction of the houses of a village was only the crown of their work.

It would be impossible to record in detail acts of this kind committed by Germans on all the invaded territories. We must be content with noting those cases in which parts of large towns were destroyed and whole villages disappeared.
Louvain

The burning of Louvain must be regarded as an operation distinct from the bombardment. The bombardment was slight, but the burning fearful. The burning began on the 26th August at ten p.m. It was systematically carried out. In places where the fire did not catch on, the soldiers went from house to house throwing incendiary grenades.

The largest part of the town, especially those parts of the upper town which included St. Peter’s Church, the university and its library, the greater part of the scientific institutions of the university, and the town theatre were henceforth the prey of the flames.

Everybody knows that the academic library of Louvain was one of the scientific treasures of Europe.

In token of peace all the houses in Louvain were[173] flying a white flag, strips of which might be seen floating over the ruins.

The fire was still going on the next day. Far from taking measures to stop it, the Germans did all they could to keep it going by throwing into the flames all the straw they could find. On the 27th August Louvain looked like an old city of ruins. Drunken soldiers were walking about in it, carrying wine and brandy. The officers, seated in armchairs round tables, drinking like their men, looked on at the ominous results of the disaster. In the streets, the bodies of dead horses were decomposing in the sun, and the stench of putrefaction from them mingled with that of the fire, corrupted the air of the whole town.

The conflagration came to an end on the 2nd September. On that day four more fires were lit by the German soldiers in the Rue Leopold and the Rue Marie-Thérèse. Eight hundred and ninety-four houses were reduced to ashes within the precincts of the town of Louvain, and about five hundred in the suburb Kessel-Loo. The suburb of Berent and the commune of Corbeek-Loo were almost entirely destroyed. The suburb of Heverlé was the only one which was respected, perhaps because the Duke of Arenberg, a German subject, has property there.

The destruction of Louvain caused universal indignation, as the destruction of the Cathedral of Reims was to do a little later. In neutral countries public opinion was roused.

In Sweden it was described as a “monstrous act of barbarism against humanity and against civilisation.” In Spain the press gave voice to unanimous protests which recalled the fact that the Flemish treasures of Louvain had been respected from the time of Philip II to Napoleon I. The Portuguese Academy of Sciences[174] invited the Academies of Science in all countries to raise public subscriptions for the purchase of books for the University of Louvain, and to keep alive the protest of the intellectual world against an act of destruction so barbarous. In America public feeling was profoundly stirred. One newspaper made itself the mouthpiece of general opinion on this topic when it declared “Germany could not complain if her crimes recoiled on her own head” (New York Tribune, 21st September, 1914). In Italy, finally, the Giornale d’Italia, the Messagero, the Secolo, the Mattino, the Corriere della Sera, the Perseveranza, the Piccolo (de Trieste) and the Avanti signed a letter inviting the citizens to testify their indignation at the Belgian Legation at Rome.
The Burning of Nomény

Various crimes committed at Nomény have had their place in foregoing chapters. But the burning of the place surpassed them all. On the 13th August, 1914, at the cry “the Prussians, the Prussians,” the inhabitants of this small village (in the province of Meurthe-et-Moselle) took refuge in the cellars. The German cavalry and infantry, sword unsheathed and revolver in hand, rushed, shouting, into the village. Mlle. Jacquemot, an eye-witness of these incidents, has described them in the Nancy Est Républicain in these words: “Having taken refuge in a cellar with thirteen other persons, she was followed by the Germans, who could not find where they had hidden. The Prussians,” she said, “went up out of the cellar again, but it was to sprinkle us with petrol through the vent-hole. They set fire to it. We were choking. We should die by burning or asphyxiation. We must go out at any cost. In a choice of deaths it is better to die of a bullet or a[175] bayonet thrust. One of us has a watch. He looks at it. It is five o’clock. We had been there for seven hours! A couple of young girls (for, with the women, there were only some children and old men) offered themselves. Three of us then started out, the two Mlles. Nicolas and I. We went out past the outhouse. Everything in Nomény was on fire. The whole street was in flames. We must not think of going along the side of the street. Henceforth we have only one hope, i.e. to gain the fields. We went into the first garden we came to.

“As we went through the blazing streets, we had seen dead upon dead. There were some whose heads were split open. An old woman who would have been a hundred years old in the month of November dropped with exhaustion on the way. Of course she died. At the Zambeau infirmary, some bread and a little sausage meat were given us. We slept on the ground, and this morning, Friday, about six o’clock, we had to go packing.”
Senlis

The burning of Senlis is one of the most frightful cases of destruction by fire of which the Germans have been guilty. They had hardly entered it on the 2nd September when they began to loot houses, and afterwards threw into them special bombs which caused fires to break out. As M. émile Henriot has shown, in L’Illustration, 26th September, 1914: “It was not the bombardment that started the fire. A callous and calculated purpose directed this work of destruction. There are witnesses who affirm it, and in some houses spared by the fire, these incendiary bombs, which did not fulfil the mission, were found afterwards. Private houses, hotels domiciles of rich[176] and poor, modern villas or exquisite mansions of former days—nothing was spared. The beautiful home of the law courts and the sub-prefecture, which dated from the time of Gabriel and Louis is no more.” The cathedral, fortunately, was saved.

“Horror!” exclaimed M. Marcel Hutin of the Echo de Paris; “the whole Rue de la République, the principal street of Senlis, has been burnt down. Not a house has been spared. The hotels, private dwelling-houses, the castle, the town hall, the Houssaye Barracks—all, all in ruins.

“On the first day of their arrival, after the bombardment (I was told by the inhabitants, glad in the midst of the mental and material affliction to see a face from Paris) the Germans began to set fire to the houses in the Rue de la République. On what pretext? A tobacconist was alleged to have fired on them, and the unfortunate mayor (M. Odent) to have forgotten to cause all arms left in the possession of the citizens to be sent to the town hall.

“And such scenes! Some soldiers deposited incendiary bombs in the houses. Others, a few minutes afterwards, fired on the houses, which, being full of gases, immediately blew up. Nothing of them remains but the walls.

“Scenes of bestial savagery lifted these brutes to the highest pitch of joy: whilst the houses hard by were ablaze and the fire had just reached the topmost story of the H?tel du Nord, in the basement a dozen Death’s-Head Hussars, tipsy, were playing infernal music on the piano, and singing with wild eyes. Outside some cavalry were forcing their horses to leap through these furnaces! It was frightful. All the night I had a horrible vision of Senlis burnt down.”

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Baccarat

“On the morning after their arrival at Baccarat” (on the 25th August, 1914), says M. Jean Rogier in the Petit Parisien, “without excuse, without any pretext that the population had fired on them—for the mere lust of wickedness and destruction they set fire to the town. To begin with, they made an attack on the town hall. Soldiers bearing some resin torches, others cans of oil and petrol, marched as if on parade, to the town hall, splashed the walls with oil, emptied the petrol into the offices and the basement, and then threw their blazing torches into them.

“This hellish baptism accomplished, they waited. Ah! not for long. The flames burst forth with a fearful roaring noise, blackening the walls and rising above the front like a fiery serpent, and soon all was ablaze.

“This beautiful sight roused the brave soldiers. Close to the mayor’s residence and along the whole length of each side of the Rue des Deux Ponts there were beautiful houses, the residences of middle-class citizens. They sprinkled these sixty houses with petrol and with oil and ran their torches against the damp walls, and some minutes afterwards the whole street was on fire. The flames leaped out of the cellars, ran along the walls, rose, grew larger and larger and climbed up to the roof. They joined each other from one side of the street to the other, and, uniting, leaped to the sky like pillars of fire. The whole air was red. Flakes of flame sped outside the town, and left behind a trail of smoke. Up there on the top of the church the weathercock which revolved on the spire of the ruined belfr............