Rheims and the Battles for its Possession Part 3

During the thirty-one months, during which a considerable portion of the population persisted in staying in Rheims (September, 1914, to April, 1917), life and work went on in the bombarded city, the people adapting themselves courageously to their precarious existence and to the danger.

They were supplied with helmets and gas masks, like the soldiers. Sh.e.l.l and bomb-proof shelters were organised, and the cellars, with which the city abounds, became the people's ordinary dwellings. The Town Council, with the exception of a few members who left on the approach of the enemy, remained at the Town Hall until it was destroyed, then installed themselves in a cellar, under the constant chairmans.h.i.+p of the Mayor, Dr. Langlet. The services rendered by the latter during these trying times were such that the French Premier decorated him personally in November, 1914, with the _Croix de la Legion d'Honneur_. The General Post Office had to change its quarters several times; but until the complete evacuation of the town the postmen went their rounds regularly.

The Courts of Justice were set up in the cellars of the Palais-de-Justice.

[Ill.u.s.tration: REMOVING THE WORKS OF ART IN JANUARY, 1918]

The archbishop, Mgr. Lucon, was absent from Rheims in 1914, being retained in Rome by the Council. As soon as the latter was ended, he returned to Rheims and thereafter, like his coadjutor, Mgr. Neveux, and the unmobilized clergy, he remained at his post until the evacuation of April, 1917. The Cathedral architect, M. Sainsaulieu, who, like Mgr.

Lucon, has been made a Chevalier de la Legion d'Honneur, remained constantly at his post, repairing from day to day, as well as might be, the damage caused to the Cathedral, and saving the art treasures spared by the German sh.e.l.ls.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SCHOOL CHILDREN WITH GAS-MASKS]

The firemen, reinforced in March, 1915, by thirty-two of their comrades from Paris, devoted themselves, at the risk of their lives, to fighting the flames caused by the bombardments. Unfortunately, their courage and devotion were often unequal to their task. For instance, twenty-two separate fires occurred on the night of February 22, 1915. Their task was rendered still more difficult by the fact that the Germans often fired on the burning buildings to drive off the men who were trying to save them.

On July 6, 1917, the President of the French Republic fittingly acknowledged the magnificent bravery of the firemen by personally decorating their flag with the Croix de la Legion d'Honneur. At the same time he conferred this dignity on the city (_see p. 2_).

After remaining closed for several weeks, the schools re-opened. Until then, the children had been too much in the streets looking for aluminium fuses of sh.e.l.ls, out of which they made rings, or for sc.r.a.ps of stained-gla.s.s from the broken windows of the Cathedral. The first school, called the "Maunoury" school, was installed on December 7, 1914, in a wine cellar of the firm Pommery, Boulevard Henri-Vasnier, near the Rond-Point St. Nicaise. On January 22, 1915, the "Joffre" school was opened in the cellars of Messrs. Mumm, 24 Rue du Champ-de-Mars. Then came the "Albert I." school, in the cellars of Messrs. Krug, 5 Rue Coquebert, and the "Dubail" school in those of Messrs. Champion, Place St. Nicaise. In addition to the underground schools, open-air cla.s.ses were conducted. The underground schools, in which the teaching staff, exclusively voluntary, lived permanently, together with the school-children and their relatives, were situated in the most exposed and frequently bombarded districts. The "Dubail" school was struck three times: on March 6, 1915 (by an 8-in. sh.e.l.l), and on March 25 and October 25, 1916. Luckily there were no victims.

The schools were quite close to the enemy lines, the distance varying from about two-thirds of a mile to a mile and a half.

In 1915 and 1916, the examinations for the "Elementary School Certificate" took place in July, as usual. In 1915, the ceremony of the Annual Prize Distribution, which had not taken place at Rheims for ten years, was restored, the book-prizes for the pupils coming from every corner of France.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CARDINAL LUcON, ARCHBISHOP OF RHEIMS, COMING OUT OF THE CATHEDRAL]

The victualling of the town, thanks to the co-operation between the Munic.i.p.al and Military Authorities, was effected with regularity. There was never any shortage of bread. The butchers' and grocers' shops remained open. The milk-women and hawkers donned their helmets and continued to push their carts through the streets. The market-women remained at their stalls. The nuns of St. Vincent-de-Paul, whose convent had been largely destroyed, ensured the service of cheap meals, organised by the Munic.i.p.ality for the poor. The undaunted inhabitants had their daily paper ("_L'Eclaireur de l'Est_"), edited by M. Dramas, a courageous journalist, whose printing-house was early wrecked by sh.e.l.l-fire, but who continued almost single-handed to issue his paper.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MILK-WOMAN, WITH HELMET, GOING HER ROUND]

[Ill.u.s.tration: WINE-CELLAR OF MESSRS. POMMERY USED AS A DWELLING]

[Ill.u.s.tration: PANORAMIC VIEW, SEEN FROM ST. NICAISE HILL (_p. 102_)]

A VISIT TO RHEIMS

(_pp. 28 to 120_)

=THE CATHEDRAL= (_pp. 28 to 60_)

=FIRST ITINERARY= (_pp. 61 to 94_)

=The Archi-episcopal Palace, Museum, Church of St. Jacques, Promenades, Town Hall, Place Royale, Musicians' House, Mars Gate, Faubourg Ceres, Church of St. Andre, Palais-de-Justice, etc.=

=SECOND ITINERARY= (_pp. 95 to 120_)

=The Lycee, Abbey of St. Pierre-les-Dames, Rue Barbatre, Church of St.

Maurice, Church of St. Remi, Hotel-Dieu Hospital, etc.=

[Ill.u.s.tration: GERMAN PRISONERS CLEARING A STREET (OCT., 1918)]

=The Cathedral=

The Cathedral of Rheims, which Charles VIII. declared to be "pre-eminent among all the churches of the kingdom," and which a local poet in the reign of Louis XIII. extolled above the seven wonders of the world, is one of the most beautiful Gothic churches extant.

Few edifices combine such grandeur, simplicity and grace; still fewer, its characteristic unity and symmetry.

The work of at least four architects, the building operations extended over two centuries, yet it has retained rare unity both of plan and style. The whole is so harmonious as to give the impression of being the effort of a single master-mind.

=Historical Account=

The Cathedral stands on the site of former churches, successively erected between the 5th and 13th centuries. On the night of May 6, 1210, a terrible fire destroyed the then existing edifice, together with a portion of the city.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE CATHEDRAL BEFORE THE WAR]

Exactly one year later, Archbishop Aubri de Humbert laid the first stone of a new edifice, which was destined to become the Cathedral of to-day.

Begun in 1211, the building went on without pause for twenty years, after which, there was a slackening, followed by a vigorous resumption in 1299. Another pause occurred during the Hundred Years' War. The Cathedral, less the tower spires provided for in the plans, was finished in 1428. The spires were not yet built when the great fire of July 24th, 1481, entirely destroyed the roof of the Cathedral, further deferring their construction, which was subsequently abandoned.

The funds for this colossal work were furnished partly by the clergy and the people, partly by Papal Indulgences granted to donors, and by collections in Christian lands, especially in the ecclesiastical province of Rheims. The wonderful plans of the Cathedral were long believed to be the work of _Robert de Coucy_, whereas the original ones were in fact drawn by _Jean d'Orbais_, who began their execution between 1211 and 1231. His work was continued with wonderful fidelity by _Jean-le-Loup_, from 1231-1247; by _Gaucher of Rheims_ in 1247-1255, _Bernard of Soissons_ from 1255 to 1290, _Robert de Coucy_ until 1311, and afterwards by _Maitre Colard_, _Gilles le Macon_, _Jean de Dijon_ and _Colard de Givry_ in the course of the 14th and 15th centuries.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE CATHEDRAL AFTER THE FIRE OF SEPT. 19, 1914]

In the 17th and 18th centuries only repairs rendered necessary by the wear of the stone were effected. In the 19th century, beginning in 1845, important restorations, princ.i.p.ally by Viollet-le-Duc, were carried out with regularity.

The Cathedral's approximate measurements are 480 feet long (it is the longest church in France), and 160 feet wide at the intersection of the transept. The vaulting, less lofty than that at Beauvais (156 feet) and Amiens (143 feet), is 123 feet in height. The towers are six in number (as in the cathedral at Laon), of which the four situated at the extremities of the transept have never had more than one storey. The princ.i.p.al towers are about 266 feet in height, or about 60 feet higher than those of Notre-Dame in Paris.

The plan of the Cathedral is in shape a Latin cross, with radiating chapels. It is built entirely of stone from the neighbourhood of Rheims.

Forty pillars support the vaults, which are further sustained by fifty b.u.t.tresses. Three great doorways and eight secondary doors give access to the interior, which is lighted by a hundred windows and rose-windows; 2,303 figures of all sizes decorate the exterior and interior.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE CATHEDRAL PHOTOGRAPHED FROM AEROPLANE IN 1916]

=The Cathedral During the War=

In revenging themselves on Rheims for their disappointments and failures, the Germans seem to have been particularly determined to destroy the building which is at once one of the most precious artistic treasures of France and one of the most ancient evidences of her history. In 1814 the then Allies bombarded Rheims but respected the Cathedral. It is true that there were Germans who found fault with this respectful forbearance. One of them, _Johann Joseph Goeres_, author of a voluminous work ent.i.tled "_Christian Mysticism_," dared to write in April, 1814: "_Destroy, reduce to ashes, this Rheims basilica, where Chlodoric was consecrated, and where was born that empire of the Franks, those turncoat brothers of the n.o.ble Germans; burn the Cathedral._" In the course of the recent war the Germans followed the vindictive advice of Goeres, although, less frank than he, they did not dare, in face of the indignation of Christendom and of the whole world, boast of their vandalism.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE PIERCED VAULTING AND TOWERS OF THE CATHEDRAL IN 1919]

By way of excuse they alleged sometimes errors in firing, sometimes that the French had established a battery of artillery near the Cathedral and an observation-post in one of the towers (a projector was installed on the Cathedral, on September 13, 1914, _i.e._ the day that the French re-entered Rheims, and it remained there only one night).

On November 9, 1914, General Rouquerol declared to the French Government, who had demanded an enquiry, that the nearest battery to the Cathedral was at that time more than 1,200 yards away; that on the day (September 19) the Cathedral was set on fire by the German sh.e.l.ls, the nearest French batteries were still quite close to the spot occupied by the above-mentioned battery, whose position the French Premier verified personally. The General concluded that the German artillery could not have made an error of 1,200 yards in firing, but that they had deliberately aimed at the Cathedral.

The Cathedral, though terribly shattered, is still standing. The description of the edifice (pp. 33 to 60) gives particulars of the damage and destructions which occurred princ.i.p.ally in September, 1914, April, 1917, and July, 1918.