Throughout this work we shall often have recourse to the
reports of these commissions. At the end of the present volume will be
found certain of these documents, unpublished till now.]

Unhappy cities have been tortured in body and soul, that is to say, in
their population and in the works built by their hands, the immortal
relics of the dead. Of the miseries the people have suffered it is not
permitted us to speak. But as to those noble houses built with art
which have been destroyed, as to those constructions erected by our
ancestors for the edification of men of all classes, of all times, and
all countries, which are today but ruins; as to those masterpieces in
which all the elegant poetry of our race was realized and that
belonged to the civilized world, of which they were a glory and an
ornament, and which subsist as nothing but a mournful heap of
debris--of these we are not bound to keep silent. But not one
exaggerated word shall be uttered by us. The account we shall give is
established by high testimony and by irrefutable documents.

But let us cease all this preparation and come to the events of
Rheims.

(Page 59 of the book.)

DOCUMENTARY EVIDENCE.

APPENDIX I.

No. 1.

AT RHEIMS.

_M. Henry Jadart, Librarian of the City of Rheims and Curator of the
Museum of that city, was present at the bombardments of the 4th and
the 19th of September. He was well placed to enlighten us on the
destruction accomplished at the time._

_He was kind enough to send us the communication which we publish
below. From the testimony of M. Jadart, it will appear how many
monumental constructions at Rheims were mutilated or destroyed, and
how these attest, not less than the ruins of the cathedral, the
vandalism of the German armies:_

Friday, Sept. 4.--The bombardment, which took place suddenly from
half-past 9 till quarter-past 10 in the morning, caused some accidents
to the cathedral, more or less notable from the point of view of art,
(some stained glass more or less ancient, some slight scratches to the
statues;) at the Church of Saint-Remi (ancient stained glass, tapestry
of the sixteenth century, pictures of the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries, altar screen, statues, south portal, and vault of transept)
and at the Museum of Fine Arts, Rue Chanzy, 8, (salle Henry Vasnier
broken in by a shell, about twenty modern pictures damaged.) Besides,
among the houses struck, the Gothic house, 57 Rue de Vesle, suffered