dmaker Brocard was placed among a number of
hostages. Just at the moment when he was being arrested with his son,
his wife and his daughter-in-law in a state of panic rushed to throw
themselves into the Saulx. The old man was able to free himself for a
moment and ran in all haste after them and made several attempts to
save them, but the Germans dragged him away pitilessly, leaving the
two wretched women struggling in the river. When Brocard and his son
were restored to liberty, four days afterward, and found the bodies,
they discovered that their wives had both received bullet wounds in
the head.

At Montmirail a scene of real savagery was enacted. On the 5th of
September a non-commissioned officer flung himself almost naked on the
widow Naude, on whom he was billeted, and carried her into his room.
This woman's father, Francois Fontaine, rushed up on hearing his
daughter's cry. At once fifteen or twenty Germans broke through the
door of the house, pushed the old man into the street, and shot him
without mercy. Little Juliette Naude opened the window at this moment
and was struck in the stomach by a bullet, which went through her
body. The poor child died after twenty-four hours of most dreadful
suffering.

On the 6th of September at Champguyon, Mme. Louvet was present at the
martyrdom of her husband. She saw him in the hands of ten or fifteen
soldiers, who were beating him to death before his own house, and ran
up and kissed him through the bars of the gate. She was brutally
pushed back and fell, while the murderers dragged along the unhappy
man covered with blood, begging them to spare his life and protesting
that he had done nothing to be treated thus. He was finished off at
the end of the village. When his wife found his body it was horribly
disfigured. His head was beaten in, one of his eyes hung from the
socket, and one of his wrists was broken.

At Esternay, on the 6th of September, toward 3 in the afternoon,
thirty-five or forty Germans were leading away M. Lauranceau, when he
made a sharp movement as if to free himself. He was immediately shot
down.

In the same town the following facts have been laid before us:

During the night, between Sunday, the 6th of September, and Monday,
the 7th, the soldiers who were scattered among the houses pillaging,
discovered the widow Bouche, her two daughters, and Mmes. Lhomme and
Mace, who had taken refuge under the cellar staircase. They ordered
the two young girls t