ip iilliijii ■;f fi;::fll'»S !l)l :;»-; Liz\j-sur- Ouvcq Trilpoi't m JIEAUX -Je-Pont # ChStiUon- sur - M arr^ Belleau Jaulqonne ^//'' Mont St. Pe Vauxw CHATEAU-]^IERRY CHAP«^- ^^ L>nPERTE~SOUS -JOUARRE ^Joinville jiFehtom]» \^j_JJ Ch enn evi ^i-es Montmtrail THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES ovV'^ UNTAIN ,# OF ''''^'' SIMS / Camp of Chalons Camp of Attila nValmij CHALONS-SUR-MARNE iVITRy-LE -FRANCOIS Matignicouri « ^Perthes ST.DIZIER N W SKETCH OF THE COURSE OF THE MARNE RIVER ^ABoloqn? CHAUMONT Rolamponi SOURCE OF THE MARNE ^LANGRES The Marne Historic a7id Picturesque The Spirit of the Marne [Paffe 321] Reproduced by special permission of the sculptor — M. Francois Cogne The marne Historic and Picturesque By JOSEPH MILLS HANSON Author of The Conque&t of the Missouri Illustrations by J. Andre Smith CHICAGO A. C. McCLURG & CO. 1922 Copyright A. C. McClurg & Co. 1922 Published October, 1922 Copyrighted in Great Britain Printed in the United States of Amepica 2^ Gil CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I A River of History i II The Cradle of the Marne 7 III Langres the Ancient 17 IV Past Blue Bassigny Hills 48 V Chaumont-en-Bassigny 62 VI Chiefly for Those Who "Fought the Battle of Chau- mont" 69 VII Where Dreams the Still Canal 115 VIII Joinville-en-Vallage 128 IX Art in the Iron Industry 133 X St. Dizier and the Plain of Orconte 143 XI Vitry-le-Frangois and the First Battle of the Marne 159 XII The Champagne Pouilleuse 174 XIII Chalons, Keeper of the Mighty Legend .... 180 XIV The Scourge of God 192 XV The Liquid Gold of Champagne 201 XVI In the Shadow of Pope Urban II 214 XVII The Reach of Dormans 225 XVIII The Rock of the Marne 233 XIX Where Dwelt the Sluggard Kings 243 XX Fishermen's Paradise 252 XXI Dream Country 261 XXII Meaux 281 XXIII Ile-de-France 292 XXIV The Playmate of Paris 306 304SS36 ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE The Spirit of the Marne Frontispiece The Valley of the Marne from the base of the ramparts, Langres lo Grotto of Sabinus by the source of the Marne lo The very name of Rolampont has in it the breath of romance 52 Damremont Barracks, Chaumont, American General Head- quarters 60 Champ de Mars and the Chateau Gloriette, Chaumont . . 60 The old Donjon garden, overlooking the valley of the Suize, Chaumont 70 The Tour Hautefeuille and St. Jean's twin spires, Chaumont 70 At Condes the Marne runs deep and still 76 Rue Victor Mariotte, Chaumont 76 Choignes with Chaumont in the distance yy Choignes on the Marne yy The Rue Saint Jean, Chaumont 104 Where Chamarandes drowses beneath the Chaumont hill . 105 The " lavoir " by the river is an institution in every Marne village 140 The narrow, crooked streets around the church, Joinville . 148 Timbered houses. Hauteville 148 St. Dizier 149 Vitry-le-Franqois has wide, straight streets 160 The mills at Vitry-le-Frangois 160 A battlefield of the Marne 161 Sector of the Marne battlefield near Mezy 161 Illustrations PAGE The Cathedral of St. Etienne at Chalons 182 Men, women and children gather the ripe grapes . . . .210 French fishermen fish — and never catch anything! . . .218 Chatillon-sur-Marne 218 Charteves, white-walled beneath its riven church tower . . 234 Charteves. Two-man rifle pit in foreground 234 Chateau-Thierry itself, eloquent with traditions .... 244 Hill 204, looking toward Chateau-Thierry 244 A street in Chateau-Thierry 245 A "dug-out" and listening post in the famous Bois de Belleau 248 The Abbey Tower, Essomes 254 Charly's main street unrolls its white ribbon toward Paris . 255 Garden walls washed by the river, La Ferte-sous-Jouarre . 268 St. Jean-les-Deux-Jumeaux 268 Ussy-sur-Marne from the meadows 269 Lizy — tucked into the last bend of the Ourcq River . . . 274 Pomponne — with Lagny across the river 274 The confluence of the Ourcq and the Marne 275 The Chateau at Lizy-sur-Ourcq 275 The charming old town of Meaux 290 The ancient mills and the ruins of the Market Bridge, Meaux 290 Charenton, where the Marne enters the Seine 291 The placid river at Chelles 291 Le Moulin de Doubes, Noisiel Z^^ The Marne, deeply green, near Nogent 310 The river road — Nogent 3^0 First glimpse of the Seine bridges and distant Paris . . .318 The Marne on the outskirts of Paris 3^8 The Marne Historic and Picturesque THE MARNE HISTORIC AND PICTURESQUE CHAPTER I A RIVER OF HISTORY ALTHOUGH it can scarcely be maintained, as a few enthusiasts would have us believe, that rivers have been the most important factors in the making of human history, it is hardly an exaggeration to say that they have affected its course more profoundly than any other natural features of the earth save the oceans themselves. One need regard for but a moment the influence upon human events of such streams as the Nile, the Euphrates, the Indus, the Rhine, the Danube, the St. Lawrence, or the Mississippi to acknowledge the meas- ure of their power in shaping the course of wars and political relations and, consequently, the destinies of nations. It is obvious that in a populous country a great river must modify the existence of the peoples living adjacent to its banks, if only by reason of its volume, which renders it a military obstacle in war, a vehicle of commerce in peace, and a natural boundary of political significance at all times. But it is not always the great watercourses which play leading roles in the march of events. The Metaurus, in Umbria, is little more than a brook ; the Nebel, at Blenheim, is a mere marshy rivulet. Yet by his failure to make good his retirement across the Metaurus, Hasdrubel suffered defeat in the battle which lost the supremacy of the world to Carthage and gave it to Rome, while, centuries later, by forcing his passage of the Nebel, I 2 The Marne, Historic and Picturesque Marlborough put a period to the victorious career of the armies of the France of Louis the Magnificent. In a similar sense, but in a far greater degree, it is a river, small by comparison with hundreds of other watercourses, which through centuries has been involved in such momentous and decisive events, affecting the whole course of Western civilization, that it has come to seem an instrument of Divine Providence and has acquired a fame transcending that of any other stream in the world. That river is the Marne. It is the purpose of the present writer to tell as much of the picturesque beauties, the moving romance, and the soul-stirring history of this placid little stream, wandering among its green-carpeted hills, its nestled villages, and its poplar-shaded valleys, as can be compressed within the limits of a single volume — a delicate task, because an adequate narrative of it could hardly be de- tailed in a dozen. The river upon whose selfsame banks the chains of Asiatic conquest in western Europe have been broken and the chains of affection and mutual esteem between western Europe and America have been forged ; upon whose selfsame hills flashed, two thousand years ago, the spears of the Roman legions and, in 19 18, the rifles of the French poilu and the Yankee doughboy, is not one whose story can be narrated in a few paragraphs. But how closely its creeping waters have woven together the past and the present may, perhaps, be sug- gested, however imperfectly, in the following pages. Physically considered, the Marne is a stream about 525 kilometers, or 328 miles, in length and it drains a watershed of 4,894 square miles. Its source is on the eastern slope of the plateau of Langres, about four miles south of the city of that name, in the Department of the Haute-Marne. Rising at an elevation of 381 meters (1250 feet) above sea level, it runs in a northerly course through the Department of the A River of History Haute-Marne, turns west near St. Dizier and crosses the De- partment of the Marne, receiving the waters of the Blaise River between St. Dizier and Vitry-le-Frangois. Just before reaching Vitry, where the Saulx River empties into it, it turns northwest, passes Chalons, and resumes a westerly course which it continues past Epernay, turning then somewhat south- west as it traverses a corner of the Department of the Aisne past Chateau-Thierry. Continuing across the Department of Seine-et-Marne, in which it passes Meaux and receives the tributary waters of the Petit Morin, the Ourcq, and the Grand Morin, it crosses the Department of Seine-et-Oise and finally enters the Department of the Seine, within which it discharges into the River Seine at Charenton, a suburb of Paris. In its course the Marne traverses a country much diver- sified in character, as will hereafter be shown. But neither in length nor in the extent of its watershed is it at all imposing as a river. The Rhone, the largest river lying exclusively within France, is 505 miles long and has a basin of 37,798 square miles; the Rhine has a length of 805 miles with a drain- age area of 75,cx)o square miles, while the Hudson, a few miles shorter than the Marne, yet carries off the rainfall of a dis- trict nearly three times as large. Compared to the gigantic Missouri-Mississippi, with its 4,221 miles of channel and its watershed nearly as great as all western Europe exclusive of Germany and Austria, the Marne is a brook. Yet its signifi- cance in history has been infinitely greater than the combined influence of all the other rivers mentioned. That such is the case does not appear to have been merely the result of accident. A glance at the map of Europe shows, standing between Italy, they project a nobstructing rampart as far as the Medi- and the conglomerate which was recently Austria on the east, the huge bulk of the Alps. To the south, between France and 4 The Marne, Historic and Picturesque Italy, they project an obstructing rampart as far as the Medi- terranean, to the east they diminish but gradually in the Tyrols. To the northwest the Jura lies like a curving outwork between the valley of the Rhine and those of the Doubs and the Saone, which are virtually extended parts of the valley of the Rhone. Still farther beyond the valley of the Doubs-Saone lies, west of the Rhine, the mass of the Vosges Mountains and, extending southwest from them in a curve beyond that of the Jura, more sweeping but less elevated, are the Monts Faucilles, west of Epinal, the plateau of Langres, the Cote-d'Or, southwest of Dijon, and other plateaus reaching southwest through Bour- gogne and Lyonnais. Around the massive redoubt of nature formed by the Alps and the Jura, through the lowlands of the Doubs Valley which make, at Belfort, a pass to the valley of the Rhine, is one of the regions where the waves of warfare between central and western Europe have washed most persistently. Sometimes its lower, outstanding spurs have been overrun, more rarely its very fastnesses have been painfully pene- trated but, in the main, the feet of contending armies have swept past its base on every side. Caesar rested his right flank in security upon it when he went to the conquest of northern Gaul and, clearing a base line on the valley of the Rhone, struck out toward the English Channel. Along its northern slopes and over the broad, open countries beyond, the successive waves of barbarian invaders from the east have always thrown themselves forward upon France. Swing- ing around this buttress, the Romans met, upon the banks of the Rhine, those Germanic hordes which all their power could never crush and which finally overcame Rome itself. Moving along its northern base through the Pass of Belfort, across the Rhine and into the valley of the Danube, Napoleon A River of History led his armies when, periodically, he found it expedient to flank invaders out of Italy or otherwise to humble the nations to the east. Indeed, for centuries before Napoleon's time armies operating in both directions had utilized that pass in their advances or retreats because it offered the only available road for avoiding the Alps on the south and the Vosges on the north. Again, north of the Vosges which stand to block invasion of France like a rock in a harbor mouth, come open grounds which, falling away gradually to the coastal plains of Fland- ers, have always been a fairway for invading armies in either direction. The Rhine, springing from the Alps, is and ever has been the natural dividing line between central Europe and France. But neither France nor Gaul before her nor Rome could always stop invasion on that line when it came in par- ticularly heavy force. The World War has demonstrated that distribution in depth is the best defense and that the true battle position lies far enough behind the front line to permit of the latter taking up the first shock of the enemy's attack and forcing him to come before the main positions with his initial momentum expended. In former days the theory may not have been clearly understood, but the course of events frequently forced the conclusion. It seems, therefore, a fair hypothesis of the importance of the Marne in history to state that its deep-cut valley, curving northwestward and westward from the pla- teau of Langres, 75 miles within the Pass of Belfort, to Paris, lies at such a distance from the Rhine as to constitute it the natural battle position against particularly strong attacks from the east. Whether or not the hypothesis will bear analyzing, the fact remains that at several of the most critical junctures in the near and distant past, the Marne has proved the stum- The Marne, Historic and Picturesque bling-block over which aggressors from the East have fallen. Under what circumstances they have fallen, through what vicissitudes the people of the valley have passed during the centuries, and what is the appearance and the nature of this lovely river which is a vein of the fair flesh of France, we may now consider. CHAPTER II THE CRADLE OF THE MARNE GOING down the wide, white Roman road which, clear- ing the frowning gateway and the drawbridge of the Langres Citadel, stretches away southward across the airy uplands of the plateau, one is struck by three outstanding features of his surroundings, the perennial loveliness of the countryside, the breathing presence of antiquity and, on every hand, the evidences of military construction and occupation. The ancient Roman highway, but one of many converging upon the fortress hill of Langres, lies along the plateau like a ribbon through the grain fields, which fall away abruptly on the east into the broad valley of the Marne and more gradually on the west to the patches of woodland which flank the road to Dijon. Behind one, St. Mammes Cathedral, eight hundred years old, rears its square, gray towers above the ramparts of Langres and it needs no practiced eye to dis- cern that the masonry which stands, half revealed, on many of the surrounding hills, flat-topped and abrupt as Montana buttes, are parts of the massive forts, now superannuated, which formerly made of Langres one of the chief strongholds of France as, indeed, in a strategic sense it still is. These first impressions of natural beauty, antiquity, and martial strength, which are characteristic of the Marne throughout its length, are particularly noticeable as one ap- proaches the covert glen wherein the river keeps its shyly hidden source, which the Roman road passes at a distance of a few hundred yards. Just before reaching it one skirts directly one of the old strongholds. Fort de la Marnotte, standing like a very guardian over the cradle of the stream, 7 2— Oct. 22. ' 8 The Marne, Historic and Picturesque half hidden in the bushes which have grown up around it. Its angled walls stare dumbly across the deep moat and the poppied pasture grounds encompassing it to the river valley and the blue hills beyond. The fort bears ample evidence that it has suffered its share in the late war as an object of experiments in the busy training areas that centered at Lan- gres, for the bottom of the moat and the lip of the glacis are netted with rusty barbed-wire entanglements, while here and there gaping holes in the ground or the masonry show where the shells of practicing artillery have burst. Perhaps at Fort de la Marnotte some of the gunners, American and French, learned the accuracy which later on and farther down the river helped to send the Germans reeling back from the region of Chateau-Thierry across the hills of Orxois. Turning down a little byroad which follows through the bushes a shallow depression on whose sunny side lies a long, narrow strip of well-tilled field, one comes in a moment to the edge of the plateau, dropping off so sharply to the valley that the tree tops from below wave almost against one's feet. A path winds steeply down between shoulders of stone to a shady little glen half surrounded by the gray, overhanging rocks and here, from a tangle of vines and shrubs, issues the trickle of crystal water which is the infant Marne. With the delicate sentiment characteristic of the French in such matters, the government of the Department of the Haute-Marne has, in 1877, protected from pollution the spring of the historic river by enclosing it in a stone vault with a little opening in front whence the tiny stream dances away among the pebbles down the valley. Behind the source a gray shoulder of cliff towers up, embowered in tree branches and beside it a tiny vineyard, hardly five meters square, takes the sunshine of the summer afternoons. The Cradle of the Marne 9 Only a few steps away, in the other face of the curving wall of rock is the spot which is, after the source itself, the chief point of interest hereabout and the one which renders the Marne, at its very birth, a creature of romance. It is the Grotto of Sabinus, a cave in the rock having two entrances, the one looking south, the other east. The interior is very irregular in outline but it is perhaps fifty feet deep, twenty feet wide, and seven feet high. Near the east entrance is a rough pillar, left evidently by the cutting away of the sur- rounding stone. The story, one of the most romantic in all history, goes that in the year 71, a. d., which was during the reign of Ves- pasian as emperor of Rome, Julius Sabinus, chief of the Lin- gones, a Gallic tribe whose capital was Langres, or Andema- tunum as it was then called, with other Gallic chiefs revolted against the authority of Rome. Through his grandmother, who had been a very beautiful Gallic maiden in the favor of Julius Caesar, Sabinus claimed to be the grandson of the con- queror. Young, wealthy, handsome, and with all the ambi- tion of his great ancestor, he conspired with other discon- tented leaders to create rebellion among the Roman legions on the Rhine, he himself aspiring to become emperor in Vespasian's stead. Fired with this mad scheme, he returned to Langres, stirred up his countrymen by his eloquence to raise a half- armed and undisciplined army of nearly 70,000 men and led it headlong southward toward Besangon, destroying towns and laying waste the country on the way. Soon, however, his motley host began to meet with reverses. Fearing to be enveloped by the legions of the Roman general, Cerealis, who was marching from Italy to the German frontier, Sabinus abandoned his army and fled to his country house at Giselles, 10 The Marne, Historic and Picturesque near Laignes and immediately thereafter, with only two faithful freedmen as companions, to the cave at the source of the Marne, then deeply hidden among the primeval forests. From here he caused one of his servants to go to his wife, Eponina, and inform her that he had killed himself. Eponina, who was famed through the country as well for her virtues as for her beauty, on receiving this news was so overcome by grief that she wept without ceasing for three days and nights, neither sleeping nor eating during that time. Sabinus was informed of this by his servant, and fearing that his wife would die of grief, he sent word to her that he still lived and informed her of his hiding place. Thereafter for seven months Eponina visited him almost nightly at the grotto, returning to her home before morning and so cleverly continuing her role of the sorrowing widow that no one sus- pected that her husband was still living. In the meantime, the other leaders of the rebellion, less timorous than Sabinus, whose greatest virtue seems to have been his deep devotion to a wife who far outshone him in every other worthy element of character, had kept their army together, returned to Treves and near that city delivered bat- tle to the legions of Cerealis. The latter defeated them utterly, the rebellion was crushed, and Langres gave its sub- mission to Rome. Shortly after, Sabinus, hoping to obtain pardon for his share in the revolt, made a secret journey to Rome with the intention of throwing himself upon the mercy of Vespasian. He soon learned, however, that there was little prospect of his receiving clemency and, fearing to be appre- hended and executed, he fled again to his cave by the Marne. Now ensued nine long years during which Sabinus remained there, his faithful wife being with him most of the time, but sallying forth at intervals to obtain news of condi- The valley of the Marne from the base of the ramparts, Langres [Page 5] Grotto of Sabinus bv the source of the Marne [Page 9] The Cradle of the Marne il tions at Rome and to learn whether prospects were any brighter for the pardon of her husband. While they were existing thus, Eponina gave birth to twins, whom she reared, to paraphrase the poetical words of one French historian, as a lioness rears her whelps, hidden from the light of day and nursed in the entrails of the earth. At the end of the nine years by some unlucky accident the Romans discovered the hiding place of Sabinus and his family. They were surprised in the cave and taken prisoners. Eponina and her children would have been left in Gaul by the Romans and, indeed, Sabinus himself seems to have mustered the courage to beseech his wife to remain behind. But her devotion would not per- mit it; with her children she accompanied her husband to Rome. When they were brought into the presence of Ves- pasian, Eponina threw herself at his feet and weeping plead for her husband's life. " These," said she, holding her chil- dren up before the emperor, "are the fruits of my exile. I have nourished them in a cave in order that we might be more numerous to bring to you our supplications." Her eloquence moved even Vespasian to tears, but he was inexorable regarding the fate of Sabinus; the would-be usurper must be executed. At last Eponina, seeing that pleadings were in vain, arose and with dignity demanded that she be permitted to die with Sabinus. "Grant me this grace, Vespasian," said she, " for thy aspect and thy laws weigh upon me a thousand times more heavily than life in darkness and under the earth." Her biting scorn stung the emperor to grant her request; with Sabinus she and her infants were led to death. It has been well said that it was because of the devotion of his wife that Sabinus' name has been preserved among those of heroes. But the name of the superb Gallic matron has also lived down 12 The Marne, Historic and Picturesque the ages and will live as the worthy prototype of that galaxy of heroines which, led by Jeanne d'Arc, has given to the womanhood of France such a glorious place in history. To return to the center of interest of this romance of the long-dead past, the grotto by the source of the Marne, one finds on walking a few feet from its entrance along the path skirting the foot of the cliff, a shrine chiseled in the face of the rock containing, behind an iron grating, a small figure of the Virgin. Both here and within Sabinus' cave the smooth face of the stone bears what seems from a casual inspection a fairly complete penciled roster of the American Expedi- tionary Forces and also of the mobilized army of France. As often happens in this form of publicity, however, it was an American who achieved the crowning triumph by getting his pencil in some way far enough between the bars of the grating to inscribe " Don Morrison, Lawrence, Kansas," upon the; pedestal supporting the Virgin. Scattered here and there under the trees empty "corned willie" or "gold fish" cans testify to the popularity of the spot as a place of relaxation when the Army Schools at Langres were overflowing with American soldier students. From the long, low entrance to the Grotto of Sabinus the view extends southeast and east down gentle slopes of grain and pasture, interspersed with clumps of trees and an occa- sional solitary oak, across the closely embowered buildings of the farm de la Marnotte and the red roofs and church tower of Balesmes to the orderly rows of poplars which, in the far distance, trace the highroads to Corlee and St. Vallier. Fol- lowing down the hillside to the farm de la Marnotte, the first habitation along the thickly peopled Marne, one may learn not without interest that in its fields, thickly starred with flaming poppies and the blue of cornflowers, have been The Cradle of the Marne 13 unearthed within modern times Roman baths, the foundations of Roman buildings, and many coins of the same epoch. Pursuing still the same descending road, one comes pres- ently past stone walls and hedges into the rambling street of Balesmes, the first village on the Marne. Between the scat- tered houses of the hamlet and the apple trees bending over the walls and now and then beneath tiny bridges, the infant stream murmurs over the rocks, sometimes almost losing itself under the overhanging branches of rose bushes, heavy with bloom, or swaying tufts of water grass. Here and there a few step- ping-stones across it are sufficient means of communication for the dwellers in neighboring houses, for it is scarcely six feet wide or more than five or six inches deep. Nevertheless in Balesmes the Marne receives its first tributary, another brooklet of about its own volume. The village church lifting its square Romanesque tower upon a little knoll in the center of the town has in its flagged floor, tombstones dating from 1619, for Balesmes, like nearly every French hamlet, has its bit of history. Along the Marne lies an old mill built on the site of an ancient hospital which was founded there in 11 80 by the Brothers Hospitallers of the Order of St. John and which passed in 1250 to the Order of Malta, while near the church was formerly a fortified stronghold belonging to the Priory of St. Geosmes. This St. Geosmes, or Sancti Gemini, though some kilome- ters back from the Marne, was such an important factor in the early history of this region that it deserves a brief description. The hamlet of this name lies just west of Fort de la Marnotte on the Langres-Dijon road, at the junction of two of the ancient Roman highways. Tradition says that it was the scene in the second century, a. d., of the martyrdom of three Christians who were triplet brothers: Speusippi, Meleusippi, 14 The Marne, Historic and Picturesque and Eleusippi. By all the logic of euphony they should have hailed from Mississippi but the record is clear that they were born in Langres. They had been converted from paganism by St. Benigne and were the first Christians in this region to suffer martyrdom by fire. Later they were canonized under the name of the Saints Jumeaux, meaning twins, whence the modernized St. Geosmes. In honor of the martyrs there was established here an abbey which became very rich, the prior of it being lord of seven neighboring parishes. In this church in 859 was held an ecclesiastical council in the presence of Charles i, the Bald, and in it St. Geofrid, Abbot of Wirem- theuse, in Ireland, was buried in 1716 after his death at Langres as he was returning from a journey to Rome. Because the tire of an automobile on the way to the American Tank Center at Bourg, a few kilometers farther down the road, gave out at precisely this point one day in the summer of 19 18, the writer had a chance to enter St. Geosmes Church under interesting circumstances. At that time the church was in use as a hospital for wounded men of some of the French colonial units from North Africa and the nave and transepts were full of cots on which were lying these coal-black soldiers, attended by a few French poilus. The interior, dark with age, shows a construction seen only in some of the most ancient churches antedating the eleventh century, the side walls sloping outward very perceptibly from floor to ceiling, producing a curious appearance as if the roof were collapsing. One of the French soldiers, anxious to dis- play all there was to be seen, produced a candle, unlocked and lifted a ponderous trapdoor in the floor and led the way down a long flight of clammy stone steps to a Roman crypt beneath the church containing some massive and hand- somely carved pillars and several stone sarcophagi whose The Cradle of the Marne 15 frigid aspect made a shell hole seem an acceptable place of interment by contrast. Only a small portion of the Roman crypt remains accessible, the rest of it having been filled up with rocks during the French Revolution — a curiously labo- rious method, it would seem, of showing contempt for re- ligious things. If one goes out of Balesmes on the poplar-shaded road running northeast and then turns northwest by the crossroad toward Corlee and Langres, he crosses just short of Corlee the deep cut of the Marne and Saone Canal and looking along it, sees at a distance of a quarter of a mile the entrance to the tunnel through which it runs, for more than 5 kilometers, beneath the heights of the Langres Plateau to issue finally at its southern end in the head of the valley of the Vingeanne River which it then follows to the Saone. The canal tunnel passes directly beneath Balesmes where occurs, therefore, the curious phenomenon of the Marne, whose impounded floods farther down stream furnish water for the canal, flowing in its natural bed above the latter. Through the tunnel water communication is maintained between streams emptying respectively into the English Channel and the North Sea on the one side and into the Mediterranean on the other, for the Marne, the Meuse, and the Saone all have their sources near together in the highlands of the Department of the Haute- Marne and all are connected by canals. The square church tower of Corlee, rising on the hill slope just beyond the canal as if guarding, like a shepherd his flock, the clustered red roofs of the village in the hollow below^ lies just short of a slight crest from which suddenly, across the grain fields and meadows, Langres again appears, its cathedral and fortress walls sharply silhouetted against the northwestern sky. From whatever standpoint viewed and l6 The Marne, Historic and Picturesque whether scenically or historically, Langres, at whose feet the Marne comes into being, is not and never has been incon- spicuous. Leaving the trickling river and the much more pretentious canal in the valley, the road climbs up the hillside through the Faubourg des Anges, passes beneath one of the double archways of the Porte des Moulins and entering the narrow thoroughfare of the Rue Diderot between solid masses of antique houses, leads into the heart of the town whose birth no chronicle records because that event is shrouded in the twilight of prehistoric Gaul. CHAPTER III LANGRES THE ANCIENT SOMEONE once ventured a guess at the age of Langres. It was probably as good a guess as any other investi- gator can offer. The Abbe Mangin, who flourished about 1765 as grand vicar of the Diocese of Langres, remarked in one of his learned works that "one is led to believe that it was perhaps built a little time after the Deluge and after the rash enterprise of the Tower of Babel had miscarried." Others have ascribed its foundation to one Longo, King of the Celts about 1800 b. c. At all events, Langres is un- doubtedly of Celtic origin and of a very early date as has been proven by the numerous objects such as statues, vases, urns, tombs, and building foundations which have been ex- cavated there. It is said, moreover, that excavations have disclosed the fact that the hill on which the city stands, 1,550 feet above sea level, is many feet higher than it originally was owing to the building of town after town upon the ruins of its predecessors as these came to destruction in the almost unnumbered wars of the passing centuries. A contingent of Lingones, the Gallic tribe inhabiting the country of which Andematunum, later Langres, was the capi- tal and the metropolis, accompanied the expedition of the Bellovici which crossed the Alps and descended upon the plains of northern Italy in 615 b. c, in the time of Tarquin the Elder. Other Lingones penetrated the Iberian Peninsula and settled in the most fertile parts of what is now Spain. In 58 B. c, the year in which Julius Caesar moved into Transalpine Gaul, turned the Helvetii back into Switzerland at the passes of the Rhone and Bibracte (Autun), and defeated 17 l8 The Marne, Historic and Picturesque the invading Germans tinder Ariovistus in the GaUic plain of Alsace and drove them before him across the Rhine, he found the Lingones robust warriors and their hilltop city, as it always has been, a stronghold worth controlling. He sought and obtained alliance with them so that this warlike tribe, curi- ously enough, at the most important juncture of its history became peaceably subject to Rome without the bloody subju- gation on the battle field which was the fate of most of the Gallic tribes. Caesar did the Lingones many favors during the years of his Gallic wars, frequently staying in their coun- try himself and making there the winter quarters of the legions. They, in turn, furnished him with an excellent and numerous cavalry which he employed not only in Gaul but later in the civil war with Pompey and in his conquests of Italy and Spain. The great Roman master of strategy made of Langres itself a stronghold and the center of a system of strongholds of which he saw the full advantages. Holding this point, as he himself proved a little later, he would be in a position to quell any revolt in case conquered Gaul should rise against him, while it was, moreover, an excellently placed base for operations against the Germans on and beyond the Rhine. The hilltop of Langres he entirely surrounded with a strong wall, having a wide and deep ditch and high towers at fre- quent intervals. The outlying stations, oppidums or intrenched camps, generally capable of being used as winter cantonments for troops, were most often situated at the junc- tions of two or more roads but always in positions so tacti- cally defensible that even the later leaders of the Middle Ages, comparatively ignorant of military art, could see their advantages and built their feudal castles on, or near, the ruins of the Roman works. Langres the Ancient 19 Under Julius Caesar, or his successors, was laid out the system of Roman roads, the greatest in all Gaul, which radiated in every direction from Langres, twelve of them in all binding the country together in a military sense and fur- nishing convenient communications. So substantially were they built that many of them today are still in use. Striking nearly always straight across the country, images, as has been expressively said, of the inflexible Roman will which went straight to its object regardless of obstacles, from Langres these roads reached, the first to Toul, Metz, and Treves, the second to Naix-aux-Forges, near Bar-le-Duc, and thence to Reims, and Treves, the third to the Rhine by Avricourt and La Marche, the fourth to the valley of the jMouzon, the fifth to Bourbonne, the sixth to the Rhine by way of Basle, the seventh to Besangon, the eighth to Lyon by the existing road to Dijon, the ninth to Alessia and Autun, the tenth to Sens, the eleventh to Reims by Bricon and the twelfth to the valley of the Blaise by Faverolles and Marnay. These roads and many other public works in Langres and vicinity were built largely by the legions of Julius Caesar at times when they were in rest between actual campaigns, the practice of "manicuring the roads" with "resting" troops evidently being as popular then as it was two thousand years later. Caesar's generosity with fatigue details was especially the result of his gratitude to the Lingones for their neu- trality during the formidable revolt of the Gauls led by Ver- cingetorix, in 52 b. c. This uprising burst forth as the result of a great Gallic council held at Autun. Caesar and his army at the time were at Sens. Vercingetorix, with forces much superior in point of numbers, moved northeast from Autun by Dijon in the direction of Langres with the object of cutting the Roman line of retreat upon the Rhone and 20 The Marne, Historic and Picturesque Italy. He accomplished this object, but Caesar, after pre- venting by quick maneuvering considerable bodies of Gallic levies from joining Vercingetorix, directed his own march from Alessia upon Langres, desirous of putting this strong place, which was neutral and therefore a safe base, in his rear and then delivering battle as soon as possible. Before the enemy could get astride his road he gained his communica- tions with Langres and deploying by the right flank on the heights of Prauthoy and Selongey, faced the Gallic Army as it was debouching from the valley of the Vingeanne River. The Roman kept the tactical defensive, repulsed the enemy's impetuous attack and then, advancing his left flank at the right moment, forced the Gauls into a retreat which, pressed by the Romans, became a disastrous rout. The legions pur- sued closely, penned up the enemy in Alessia and in the famous siege of that place, ending in the surrender of Ver- cingetorix, completely quelled the rebellion. The Lingones, whose passive aid contributed not a little to the success of the Roman arms, however they may have been accused by conscience for their inglorious attitude dur- ing the desperate struggle of their country against its con- querors, profited materially thereby and remained in Roman favor long after the passing of the first Caesar. Langres became the headquarters of administration and supply of a large military district, a financial center for the collection of public revenues, and a provincial capital of importance. Among the buildings erected in the city under Augustus and Diocle- tian were a capitol, an amphitheater, several temples, and a college of augurs. An arch of triumph attributed to Marcus Aurelius after his war with the Germans still exists, beauti- fully preserved, as the walled-up "Gallo-Roman Gate" famil- iar to all American soldiers who were stationed at Langres, Langres the Ancient 21 beside the National Road from Chaumont as it climbs the hillside on the west of the town. The concentration of high- ways at Langres gave to the city, great commercial advantages and after the abortive revolt of Sabinus, in 71 a. d., the city was so large, that after rendering its submission to the Ro- mans, it was able to appease their anger by offering to Domi- tian, the proconsul of Gaul, a contingent of seventy thousand soldiers for the Imperial armies. But the prosperity of Langres as a Gallo-Roman metropo- lis declined as the Roman Empire sank toward its dissolution, and as its strong hands relaxed, Gaul became a prey to the barbaric invasions and the internal disorders which marked the beginning of the Dark Ages. No longer upon the Rhine the eagles of the legions overawed those eternal enemies of Gaul and of later France who dwelt beyond its rushing waters. The first army, or horde, of German and Vandal invasion under the leadership of the ferocious Chrocus, surged across the frontier about the middle of the third century a. d. In the year 264 they reached and began the siege of Langres. The inhabitants, knowing that they could expect no mercy . from their assailants, resisted with the courage of despair, but to little purpose. The Lingones at this day, in advance of many of the Gauls, were already thoroughly Christianized, the first martyr of the faith in the city having been put to death in 165 while the first bishop, St. Senateur, came into power about the year 200. Pressed now by savage enemies the people, at the end of their material resources, turned to their bishop, St. Didier, a man celebrated for his virtues and his piety. He held a parley with Chrocus and besought him to have mercy upon the people of the city, offering himself to be burned alive as a sacrifice to save them from massacre. The barbarian chief spurned the offer and St. Didier returned 22 The Marne, Historic and Picturesque into the city, shut himself in the cathedral and devoted him- self to prayer. Shortly the enemy forced one of the gates and the warriors spreading through the streets began a whole- sale slaughter. Again the bishop, in his robes of office, appeared before Chrocus and plead for the people. The only reply of the German commander was to order the death of the bishop and of all his Christian followers. As he knelt in prayer the head of the prelate was shorn off with a sword and his blood spurted over the prayer-book which he clasped in his hands. A thousand years later according to popular belief the blood of the martyr bishop was still bright upon this relic, which was preserved and became an object of pil- grimage to crowds in search of healing. Langres was sacked by the barbarians and its first cathedral was reduced to ruins, but Chrocus, after ravaging all the surrounding country, upon advancing to Aries for the purpose of destroying that city, was at last defeated and killed. It required a long time for Langres to recover from the effects of Chrocus' attack, but under the judicious rule of the Roman governor, Constance Chlore, it had regained some- thing of its earlier population and prosperity when, after the lapse of thirty-six years, the Germans, undismayed by va- rious minor defeats at the hands of the Romans and con- stantly growing stronger as their adversaries grew weaker, again broke across the Rhine and swept westward. Langres •was their chief objective and Constance Chlore hastened to the aid of the city. Upon his arrival, the enemy being close to the place, he rashly declined to await the reinforcements for which he had sent and which were rapidly approaching and attacked the Germans at once with very inferior num- bers. The result was that he was defeated, he himself wounded. Langres the Ancient 23 and his trcwDps driven in rout toward Langres. The gates having been closed, the wounded Roman leader was gotten into the city only with the greatest difficulty, being hoisted to the top of the wall in a basket let down with ropes. Once inside, however, he was not too badly injured to take com- mand of the Langrois, all of whom able to bear arms had, meanwhile, assembled in haste. His reinforcements, like- wise, arriving under the walls about five hours after his disas- trous preliminary combat, the Roman general placed himself at the head of the whole force and again advanced from the city. The Germans, confident that their victory was already as good as won, had camped on the opposite hills of the Marne near the still-existing village of Peigney, where they were hold- ing high carousal. The Gallo-Roman forces crossed the river and attacked them furiously. This time the effort was com- pletely successful, the Germans according to no doubt grossly exaggerated legend, leaving 60,000 dead upon the field of their rout but, at all events, being driven precipitately out of the country. The name of Peigney itself is thought to be a corruption of the Latin word pngna, meaning "battle," while scattered over the plateau between the Marne, the Liez, and the Neuilly brook, on which the conflict occurred, numerous bones and weapons have been found in modern times. It is worth remembering that in the course of its exist- ence since the days of Julius Caesar, France has been invaded by the Germans forty-two times — that is on an average of once every forty-seven years. It might seem that after two thousand years a sense of discouragement concerning their ability ever to conquer France would begin to permeate even the predatory central tribes of Europe. But a distinguished Roman general, Celarius, over fifteen hundred years ago 3 24 The Marne, Historic and Picturesque pointed out to the Gauls a truth as pregnant today as it was then, when he said to them : " the self -same motives for invad- ing Gaul will ever endure among the Germans; love of pleasure and love of money. Ever will they be seen to relin- quish their heaths and bogs and rush to your fertile plains, with a view to rob you of your fields and make slaves of you." The fortunate issue of the struggle just described was for unhappy Langres the last victory of many a century. Held in check with increasing difficulty by the armies of the successive Roman emperors, Constantine, Julian, and Valentinian, the insatiable Germans forced the frontiers of the Roman prov- ince of Gaul finally and completely in the commencement of the fifth century and poured their devastating hordes into that devoted country and across it into Spain and Italy. The territories of Langres, Troyes, and Reims were ravaged suc- cessively by the Vandals, the Suevi, the Burgundians, and other Germanic tribes and at length in 451 the last abyss of woe was reached in the frightful invasion of the Huns under Attila (or Etzel, as he is called in the German language). Langres, which still possessed its Gallo-Roman fortifications, tried in vain to defend them. Attila carried the city by as- sault, devoted it to flames and reduced it to a heap of ashes. Nothing was left and after the cataclysm the Bishop of Lan- gres, Fraterne, was obliged to remove the seat of his diocese to Autun as, beneath the shell fire of the Germans of 1914, Monseigneur Ginisty, Bishop of Verdun, was obliged to re- move the seat of his diocese to Bar-le-Duc. Soon after the final defeat of Attila at Chalons-sur-Marne the last sparks of Roman power expired in Gaul and the anarchy of the Dark Ages assumed full sway. Langres, under the rule of the Burgundians, was rebuilt, but as little Langres the Ancient " 25 more than a stronghold where the wretched people of the countryside could gather as a final refuge from successive invaders, both French and foreign. Clovis, who put the last Romans out of northern Gaul in 486, adopted Christianity and uniting all the Franks under the Merovingian dynasty, began to give form to modern France, captured the place in his war against Gondebaud, King of Burgundy. It is a fa- miliar fact that Clovis, whose conversion to Christianity was one of the important episodes of history; was persuaded to the step by his wife, Clotilde. But it is perhaps less well known that Clotilde herself became a Christian through the efforts of the Bishop of Langres, Apruncule, to whom is attributed also the establishment of the first public schools of Langres. Most miserably for the people of northern France genera- tion followed generation and in the ninth century the country about Langres was ravaged year after year by the Normans. Those who remained of the unhappy inhabitants dwelt like beasts in the depths of the forests, often dying of famine until, everything having been plundered, there was nothing left to excite the greed of the invaders who came, not like a passing cyclone, as Attila had come, but like a slow pestilence destroying at leisure. Men, houses, flocks, fields, vineyards, it was said, were gone as completely as if the ocean had rolled over the country, and in 891, Bishop Geilon died of grief over the desolation of his people, which he was powerless to relieve. Conditions, however, now began to improve a little as the local nobles found increasing means for protecting their feu- datory possessions from the aggressions of neighbors and as the supreme authority of the kings of France gained grad- ually in strength. The first Count of Langres was Estulphe 26 The Marne, Historic and Picturesque who led 3,cxx) Langrois soldiers in the army that followed the Saracens into Spain and who, with his followers, per- ished in yy2 in that battle of Roncevalles which was immor- talized in one of the greatest battle epics ever composed, The Song of Roland. Under the successors of Charlemagne the counts and the county of Langres remained for a long time virtually independent between the great feudal domains of Champagne, Lorraine, Franche-Comte, and Burgundy. But in 1 179, Bishop Gaulthier of Burgundy, having ransomed the place after its capture in a siege, offered it to King Louis VII of France on condition that it should never again be alienated from the crown. The offer was accepted and thence- forth Langres remained under the royal rule and protection, although the latter often proved a very slight guarantee of safety. During the period from 1096 to 1270 during which the Crusades occurred, many of the nobility of Langres and its vicinity, like those of every other Christian land, took part in these expeditions followed by large numbers of their re- tainers. Their long absences from home in such a cause reflected credit upon their prowess and religious zeal, but certainly tended to lessen their power in their native land. While they were away the burghers of the larger towns, re- maining at home, gradually secured from successive kings increased rights and privileges in the way of charters of self- government for their communes and exemptions from certain taxes and other obligations, all in exchange for their accep- tance of the condition that they support the royal authority with arms in case of need. It was an excellent arrangement, both from the king's standpoint and from that of the bur- ghers, for the former thus acquired a formidable weapon for holding in awe the powerful feudal vassals who were often Langres the Ancient 27 rebellious, while the latter gained not only their chartered privileges but also strength to resist the exactions of oppres- sive liege lords and the depredations of neighboring barons. In evolution, the enfranchisement of the communes presently developed a distinctly new sort of military force. A French military historian. General Susane, in his Histoire de I'lnfan- terie, says : In that time of disorder and brigandage, when people were not safe at three hundred steps from the gates of the city, when nothing was more common than to hear the sinister strokes of the alarm bell, when there reigned among all the peaceable population a great terror of the barons and of their followers; when, moreover, the gendarmerie were enemies rather than protectors, it did not suffice merely to carry upon the rolls of the militia the names of all men capable of bearing arms. It was necessary, also, to have recourse to volunteers and to mercenaries. It was under the reign of the warlike Philip- Augustus that the celebrated companies of arbalesters (crossbowmen) were formed — the first effort in France at the organization of infantry troops. These companies of arbalesters, who later after the intro- duction of gunpowder became known as arquebusiers (muske- teers), were hired by their respective communes and kept themselves in a state of military efficiency for the protection of the commune and the service of the sovereign when re- quired. Having an underlying common interest, the compa- nies of the different towns eventually formed a sort of union, thus further increasing their prestige. So popular did the service become and so keen was the rivalry between the young men of the country for places in its ranks that little by little military exercises, by way of qualification, became one of the most important occupations of the people and the whole militia acquired, almost unconsciously, some degree of train- ing. This fact was of particular importance from the king's standpoint, which in that day meant practically the national 28 The Marne, Historic and Picturesque standpoint, and the development of the communal troops exercised a very potent influence upon the history of the country. The great seigneurs, though nominally vassals of the king and protectors of the land against German invaders, had be- come, in fact, the terrors of tjie realm. Holding their mas- sively fortified chateaux in places the least accessible to attack, and at the same time the most convenient for marauding on the countryside and along the few existing roads, no traveled way was safe from the depredations of these " robber barons " nor was hardly any individual respected in their eyes. These scions of ancient and illustrious families which had shared the glories of Charlemagne and carried the banners of the cross into the Holy Land, degenerated now to the level of highway- men and petty partisans carrying on feudal warfare with one another, often sought to soothe their consciences for crimes committed by bestowing great legacies of lands, buildings, or money upon the church which thus, in turn, acquired enor- mous temporal power. But even such a personage as the Bishop of Langres, who in this way had become one of the dominating ecclesiastics and one of the greatest secular pow- ers in the kingdom, being one of the Twelve Peers of France, found it not always safe to venture with his cavalcade outside the high towered walls of his episcopal city, for the barons of the castles along the road, whether or not they nominally owed him allegiance, were not to be trusted. The organized militia of the larger towns became an effective weapon to use against such disturbers of the peace and it very soon began to be put to such use. Among the most important chateaux of Bassigny connected with the history of Langres either by reason of hostilities or because the Bishop of Langres had rights over them, may be Langres the Ancient 29 mentioned those of Aigremont, Clefmont, and Bourmont. The village of Bourmont, appertaining formerly to the chateau of that name, will be remembered by many Americans as the seat of the Advance Quartermaster Depot 7, where the first American railhead was established in December, 19 17, and around which were camped at different times in the summer and fall of 19 18, the Forty-second, Seventy-eighth, and Eighty-second Divisions. All of the chateaux mentioned were located from 25 to 35 kilometers northeast of Langres and dominated the high country between the Marne and the Meuse. Other important chateaux were those of Bourg, Montsau- gon, Cusey, Coifify-le-Haut, Angoulevant, and Humes. The chateau of Bourg, ruling the neighborhood in which, in 19 18, was located the great American Tank Center 302 and the School of Tank Instruction, overlooked and controlled the course of the Vingeanne River. The structure consisted of a number of great towers and a donjon from the summit of which the Bishop of Langres, who possessed it, could look down upon his numerous fiefs, his vision embracing from there, so it has been picturesquely recorded, "all the high valley of the Vingeanne, the confines of Montsaugonais, going thence to rest upon the hills of Burgundy, the junction of which with the plateau of Langres is lost at the horizon in the blue mists of morning." The high-handed conduct of the local lords of these va- rious castles finally became so unendurable that the people of the larger towns exerted their military power to destroy the places and reduce their lawless occupants to order. A char- acteristic expedition of this sort, conducted with due cere- mony by the men of Langres, resulted in the demolition of the Chateau of Angoulevant in 1424. This structure domi- nated from its seat on the crest of the hills hardly more than 30 The Marne, Historic and Picturesque two kilometers east of the walls of Langres the confluence of the Marne and the Liez. It stood on the exact spot now occu- pied by the Farm of Angoulevant, beside the Reservoir de la Liez; a place conspicuous in the middle distance from that splendid observation point of the Langres ramparts at the table of orientation on the Rue Constance Chlore, from which on clear days the summit of Mont Blanc may be seen. An- goulevant was held in 1424 as a veritable highwaymen's roost by the haughty and enterprising Sire Jean de Maligny. This robber baron having defied the Langrois once too often, on a certain day criers went through the streets of the city calling, in the name of the king, for all masons, carpenters, and join- ers to assemble " for the purpose of being conducted where it was necessary that they should be conducted." When troops and artisans were gathered, they marched out of the city and across the Marne Valley and halted at the foot of the chateau walls. Here a trumpeter, in the name of the king and of the burgesses of Langres, summoned the occupants to surrender. But the Sire de Maligny and his followers, seeing the storm approaching, had fled, so while the horsemen of the assailants kept guard over the countryside, the workmen and foot soldiers entered the abandoned castle and began tearing it down. And according to the ancient legal document, still in existence, which described the proceedings, " no one re- turned to the city until the said demolition was completed." Through such enterprises as the above, which was dupli- cated many times during the ensuing two hundred years against other strongholds of the provincial nobles by the mu- nicipal soldiery of Langres, Chaumont, and other towns, the people of Langres gained an increasing confidence in their own strength and an increasing standing with the kings of France. Alreadv in the middle of the fourteenth century, to Langres the Ancient 31 protect the growing population which had spread far beyond the old Roman walls, a new and larger system of fortifica- tions was built. In 1465 King Charles vii granted to the city the right to elect four citizens to have charge of the local government and this system was improved upon a century and a quarter later when Henry iii, the last of the Valois, authorized the election of a mayor. Nevertheless, though the people were thus rendered largely independent in their local affairs, their nominal lord, the Bishop of Langres, had like- wise greatly increased his power. Ranking with the mightiest dukes and counts of the realm he rendered homage to no man save the king himself, but received that of such dignitaries as the Count of Champagne and the Duke of Burgundy, while at the coronation of the king he carried the scepter in the pro- cession and walked ahead of his metropolitan, the Archbishop of Lyon. During the Hundred Years' War the country about Lan- gres suffered almost without respite the hardships and devas- tation occasioned by the armies and plundering expeditions of English, Burgundians, and Germans which continually ravaged northern France throughout the decades of that con- flict. The city itself on its fortress-crowned cliffs fared bet- ter for it was credited with being the strongest city of the realm and a certain amount of industry flourished there, in- cluding the manufacture of cannon, the first of which to be made in France were cast at Langres and used at the battle of Poitiers in 1356. Although for a time the city, chiefly through the influence of certain leaders, acknowledged the sovereignty of the English claimant to the throne of France this attitude was not held for long and in the main during the course of the protracted struggle Langres gave its aid to the French king. Therefore when at last, through all the 32 The Marne, Historic and Picturesque sordid and selfish factionalism of Armagnacs and Burgun- dians which alone was dictating the conduct of both parties to the quarrel, there arose that one clear, girlish voice which called on Frenchmen, in the name of forgotten patriotism, to fight for France, Jeanne d'Arc found in the people of Langres ready sympathizers. It is unnecessary to enter upon the details of the number- less conflicts which centered around Langres or involved her military strength during the civil and religious wars which convulsed France in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. But it is of interest to note that between 1498 and i'547, under King Louis xii, and his successor, Francis i, the fortifica- tions were again remodeled and enlarged, one of the principal structures then built being the Tower of Navarre, a perfect example of the military architecture, of that epoch which still stands at the southwestern corner of the battlements, a famil- iar object to most visitors to the hilltop city. Like the rest of the fortifications built at that time the Tower of Navarre was designed by the engineer, Jean de Dammarien. It is a bastion open at the gorge, having very high and massively built circular walls which cause it to resemble some of the towers of the Middle Ages. But it was much more modern in other respects, possessing two tiers of casemates and four rows of batteries commanding the adjacent curtains, while in the center was a spiral ramp permitting a cannon to be placed at a point commanding the upper platforms of the tower itself. King Francis is said to have been much delighted with the Tower of Navarre, and to have gone over it five or six times during his visit to Langres in 1547, admiring its powerful construction. His solicitude for the frontier city bore good fruit for when the Count of Fiirstenberg with a German army Langres the Ancient 33 besieged Chaumont in 1523 he dared not attack Langres in like manner, while again in 1552 Charles v, of Germany himself, going with 100,000 men against Metz, Toul, and Ver- dun, left Langres alone as did another German army under the Baron Pollwiller in 1557, although the latter occupied for some time the greater part of Bassigny. The massive Porte des Moulins, still the principal entrance to the city, was not erected until nearly a century after these passages of warfare, under the reign of King Louis xiii. Langres adhered to the Catholic party during the Relig- ious Wars but, even so, conducted herself with much indepen- dence as on one occasion in 1588 when the Duke of Guise himself at the head of a Catholic army was refused admit- tance into the walls because his motives were suspected. The Peace of Vervins, in 1598, elicited public rejoicings in Lan- gres and for the following sixteen years a sort of uneasy peace was enjoyed until civil wars again began between pow- erful political rivals whose intrigues centered about the faction-torn court of Louis xiii. During the brief period of tranquility, however, Langres received from the king or rather, since he was still in his minority, from the regent, his mother, Marie de Medici, certain added privileges for its faithfulness to the crown. Among these was a curious fran- chise given by letters patent to citizens of the town who proved themselves particularly expert in the use of the bow, the crossbow, and the arquebus. Once each year there were to be raised upon the pinnacle of the cathedral three painted birds to be used as targets. Any marksman who shot down one of these birds with either an arrow or a bullet was exempted during a whole year from guard duty on the ramparts. To any man repeating the performance during three successive •years exemption from all taxes was granted during the rest 34 The Marne, Historic and Picturesque of his life and the exemption extended to his widow after his death. In the Thirty Years' War, Cardinal Richelieu made Lan- gres the base of the French armies in eastern France, The results of this struggle were auspicious for the city, the Ger- man power in Lorraine being extinguished and that country made a part of France, putting an end to the age-old inva- sions of France from that quarter. It must not be supposed that during all her centuries of warfare Langres contributed nothing to the pursuits of peace. A long line of martyrs, saints, and prelates, some of whom attained to the highest places in the church and many of whom contributed extensively to religious and speculative lit- erature, have graced her career from the second century to the present. Eminent artists, authors, statesmen, professional men, and inventors have been among her children. The bish- ops of Langres, of whom there had been no less than one hun- dred and four in succession up to 1852, included St. Didier, St. Bernard, the leader of the Second Crusade, and St. Mammes. In secular life the city gave an even greater num- ber of distinguished sons. Some of them have been : Barbier d'Aucour, seventeenth-century author, who wrote a large part of the dictionary of the Academie Frangais; Toussaint Ber- chet, Protestant writer of the latter half of the sixteenth cen- tury; the Tassels, father, son, and grandson, painters, who between 1550 and 1667 executed many works of art of which a number are to be found today in the cities of eastern France ; Nicolas Delausne who about 1640 first used spherical globes for the study of geography ; the artist Jean Dubuisson ; Pierre Petitot and Foucou, the sculptors; Nicolas Ebaudy de Fres- nes, political economist; Nicolas Jensen, who became one of the earliest printers of Venice; Claude Laurent-Bournot, Langres the Ancient 3^ printer and inventor of improvements in the printing art under the Restoration and Edouard Gaulle, sculptor, whose work appears in many churches and buildings of Paris. But, among them all, the most famous was unquestiona- bly Denis Diderot, born at Langres, the son of an obscure cutler, in 17 13, and died at Paris in 1784, honored by the whole intellectual world. This almost incredibly eloquent conversationalist, brilliant thinker, and versatile and prolific writer, conceived, with D'Alambert, the idea of that encyclo- pedia which should be not merely a summing up of the exist- ing facts of the world but a system of human knowledge. Almost alone he carried this gigantic project to completion, along with a number of lesser works, between the years 175 1 and 1772. Though revealing no scepticism regarding Chris- tianity itself, no disrespect for government and no radical political views which today would seem more than conserva- tive, his work outraged the autocratic government of France under which he lived and the bigoted dogmatism then pre- vailing in the church because of the reasoned eloquence with which it set forth ideas of religious tolerance and speculative freedom, exalted scientific knowledge, and peaceful industry, and declared the democratic doctrine that the chief concern of a government ought to be the lot of the common people of the nation. Although he lived to shame his enemies, these dis- turbing doctrines of Diderot more than once brought him persecution from both civil and religious authorities. But they also furnished part of the mental fuel so plentifully sup- plied by French thinkers of this epoch to eager minds on the other side of the Atlantic, powerfully aiding to produce the American Revolution which, in turn, by its example of suc- cessful resistance to tyranny, was a chief encouragement to the French Revolution itself. 36 The Marne, Historic and Picturesque Although the walls of Langres were again modernized in 1698 by Marshal Vauban, the great engineer of Louis XIV, who revolutionized the art of fortification and gave to France the most formidable system of frontier defenses she ever had possessed, it was not until one hundred and fifteen years later that the city was again subjected to the ordeal by battle. Then came the magnificent, but losing, struggle of Napoleon, at the head of the armies of Imperial France, against the combined strength of Europe which was fighting, as mankind always will fight, against the encroachments of a conqueror, whatever his power or prestige or his excuse for attempted tyranny over alien peoples. The part played by Langres in this campaign, which was made by the genius of Napoleon one of the most brilliant in all military history, was not a major one but it demonstrated the importance of the city and of the Marne Valley in the military geography of eastern France. When, following his disastrous defeat at Leipzig in Octo- ber, 181 3, the Emperor of the French had retreated across the Rhine, his enemies, firmly resolved to bring to an end the prolonged struggle for the control of Europe, pursued him promptly with enormously superior numbers. The emperor did not attempt to meet them on the Rhine with his weary and depleted forces but retired to positions well within the fron- tier where he could defend Paris. Marshal Blucher, with a Prussian army of 80,000 men crossed the Rhine in December and advanced through Nancy toward the Marne at Chalons, while the Prince of Schwarzenberg, violating the neutrality of Switzerland and crossing the Rhine at Basle early in Jan- uary, 1814, at the head of an army of 160,000 Austrians and Russians, invaded France by way of the Pass of Bel fort and the valley of the Saone. Langres the Ancient 37 Having cleared the Vosges and the Jura Mountains and gained the more open country beyond, Schwarzenberg turned northwest with the object, first, of gaining contact with Bliicher down the valley of the Marne in the vicinity of Chaumont and, second, of pursuing his own march toward Paris by way of the Seine. But barring his way to the accom- plishment of either object was the plateau and fortress of Langres. Napoleon, who with his main body was taking up a central position between Chalons and Troyes in order to present a single front to the divided armies of his foes, had directed Marshal Mortier with the Old Guard upon Lan- gres, under orders to hold the place while the main army was forming. Schwarzenberg, however, having been thus far unopposed, was advancing from Belfort by Vesoul with more than his usual energy and a body of his cavalry under the Count of Thurn arrived before the closed gates of Langres on January 9. The old Vauban defenses, unused for more than a cen- tury, had largely gone to ruin and there were no troops to defend them save a handful of National Guards, hastily levied, and a few superannuated veterans, and government employees. But under gallant officers these men determined to present a bold front and if possible to hold Langres until the arrival of Mortier who was rapidly approaching from Reims. A detachment of Austrian cavalry which attempted to rush the Porte des Moulins on the morning of the ninth was driven back by the fire of the defenders. At twilight that evening Colonel Thurn sent forward to the gates under a flag of truce an aide-de-camp bearing a demand for the sur- render of the place. The aide was followed at a little distance by a detachment of Bavarian cavalry. As the emissary de- sired to confer with the mayor the gates were opened to 38 The Marne, Historic and Picturesque admit him, but no sooner was the passageway clear than the Bavarian cavalry, violating the flag of truce, dashed forward to seize the gates. The National Guards, however, were too quick for them ; a volley drove back the treacherous assailants and the gates were closed. On the morning of the tenth the main body of the Aus- trian advance guard under General Hulst arrived before the city from the east. But before they could dispose themselves for an attack the head of column of Mortier's Old Guard, a body of some of the finest veterans still remaining of the Im- perial armies, made its appearance from the north after an all-night forced march down the road from Chaumont. The Old Guard was received with wild enthusiasm by the inhabi- tants and, for the moment, Langres was saved. But its situation was not, in fact, improved in any per- manent way. Marshal Mortier's troops, though of the high- est quality, were few in number compared with the hosts of enemies advancing upon them. Napoleon had no reinforce- ments which he could send and the levy in mass on a country already nearly exhausted of men capable of bearing arms bore scant fruit. Although during the next six days the French outposts held back the enemy's advance detachments, defeating them in numerous lively skirmishes, Schwarzen- berg's great front of invasion continued steadily advancing from the south and the northeast. On January 16 Marshal Mortier learned that the enemy was in force at Bourbonne- les-Bains and moving without pause toward Chaumont, di- rectly on the French line of retreat to Bar-sur-Aube and Troyes. The marshal had under his command about 10,000 men; the enemy's widely encircling front contained more than 30,000. Fearing to be cut off from the main French army, Mortier therefore reluctantly ordered the evacuation Langres the Ancient 39 of Langres and fell back on Chaumont, his men steadily driv- ing back the enemy's pursuing cavalry in brisk skirmishes at Vesaignes and Marnay. Next day Langres, powerless to resist, surrendered through its civil authorities and became for the time being the headquarters of Schwarzenberg and of the three allied monarchs, Alexander of Russia, Francis 11 of Austria, and Frederick William iii of Prussia, and the center of a motley throng of their followers, Austrians, Hungarians, Bavarians, Russians, and Cossacks, who thoroughly stripped the city and its environs of every variety of subsistence. In 181 5, after Waterloo, the city, defended only by its militia, was a second time captured after a short but fierce resistance, by an Austrian corps under the Count Colloredo and was occu- pied until late in the following autumn. In the years succeeding the Napoleonic wars the fortifica- tions of Langres were again brought up to date and greatly enlarged. Then it was that the citadel and the entrenched camp, still in use today, were built directly south of the old city wall, together with the two outlying forts of Peigney and La Bonelle, the first on the hill of the ancient battle across the Marne, the second among the rolling fields of the plateau southwest of the city. Though made capable of sheltering 5o,ooo troops and feeding them for a considerable period from its immense magazines, the place could be defended by a much smaller number as, in fact, it was during the Franco- Prussian War of 1870-71. In that conflict, so brief but so disastrous for France, Langres found itself threatened by the advancing armies of the hereditary enemy very soon after the first reverses to the French arms near the frontier. Fortunately, in a time when so many proved inefficient, an officer of energy and resolu- 40 The Marne, Historic and Picturesque tion was found in command at Langres — General Arbellot. About a nucleus composed of the 2,400 troops, artillery and infantry, which formed the garrison, he gathered a motley array of 12,500 recruits mobilized from the neighboring de- partments. National Guards, and volunteer citizens, practi- cally none of whom possessed any training or discipline. These men were hurriedly fitted out with such ill-assorted weapons and equipment as could be furnished from the arsenal of the fortress, whose upkeep had been sadly neglected. The spirits of these hasty levies were reduced to the low- est possible ebb by the constantly arriving news of appalling reverses which were befalling the French armies everywhere. But, nevertheless, by prodigious efforts General Arbellot re- duced them to some sort of order, completed a series of tem- porary earthwork forts on the hills far enough distant to hold the enemy beyond artillery range of the city and occupied with strong detachments a circle of villages still farther distant. Thus his forces stood when early in October the Fourteenth German Corps arrived in the Department of the Haute-Marne from the direction of Strassburg, seized Chaumont, and took up a line of observation just beyond the front held by Gen- eral Arbellot, eventually surrounding and practically isolating Langres, although at a great distance from the city. The chief duty of the invaders in this region was to guard the communications between the frontiers of Germany and their armies which were besieging Paris. Over these communi- cations General Arbellot from his central position at Langres, within striking distance of most of the railways and highways of the southern Haute-Marne, was able to hold a constant threat. Many of his untrained troops proved capable raiders and throughout the autumn and winter strong detachments were going out constantly in every direction attacking, with Langres the Ancient 41 increasing skill and boldness, German outposts and garrisoned villages, destroying convoys, and wrecking railroad trains. Although from time to time the Germans were largely rein- forced, they were never able to threaten Langres seriously and on only a few occasions did any of their troops come within range of the guns of the citadel or even of the encircling forts. On one of these occasions on December 16, 1870, a French column of 2,000 men with four guns, under command of Major Kock, was making a reconnaissance in force on the highroad to Dijon when it was surprised at Longeau, 10 kilo- meters south of Langres, by 6,500 Germans with 15 cannon under General von Goltz. All their higher officers, including Major Kock, being killed in the beginning of the action, the French, although they fought bravely, were badly defeated and retreated on Langres. The enemy pursued them to the plateau above Bourg where the fire from Fort de la Marnotte and Fort de la Bonelle halted the pursuit. At another time, still earlier in the operations, strong German columns advancing from the northeast and the northwest undertook on November 15 to force their way close to Langres for the purpose of discovering where battery positions could be located for the bombardment of the cita- del. The column from the northwest did not get very close, but the one from the northeast, after a combat with a com- pany of recruits at Bannes, forced its way into the village of Peigney whence a detachment tried to reach the Marne through the ravine north of that village. The fire from Fort de Peigney soon dislodged the Germans who had entered that place while those in the ravine were driven back by the shells from a French battery at the Langres-Marne railroad station and another on the crest of the Fourches Hill, a small eminence 42 The Marne, Historic and Picturesque in the valley a kilometer northwest of the city walls. Today on the summit of Les Fourches, which is itself an artificial mound bearing near its summit the huge stones of a prehis- toric cromlech, stands a little circular shrine with domed roof sheltering a statue of the Virgin, which looks down upon the Chaumont road and commemorates the gratitude of the peo- ple of Langres that in the war of 1870 from this spot the Germans were brought to a halt in their nearest approach to the city. Following the surrender of Paris, the armistice which terminated hostilities was signed on January 28, 1871, and immediately thereafter the French commander at Langres and the German commander at Chaumont entered into a conven- tion by which the benefits of the armistice were extended to Langres and the troops holding it. Thus the faithful defend- ers achieved for Langres a unique distinction among the French fortresses for it never came into possession of the Germans either before or after the armistice, although even Belfort fell into their hands in February, 1871, despite the gallant defense of Colonel Denfert-Rochereau. In the years which intervened between the Franco-Prus- sian war and the World War of 19 14, a circle of new con- crete and steel turret forts was built around Langres at a distance of 15 to 18 kilometers. The bitter experiences of such fortresses as Liege, Namur, and Antwerp proved con- clusively that such structures cannot stand against modern artillery, but those of Langres were never thus tested. A great French military center during the first part of the war, the city derived its greatest importance in the final months of the conflict from the establishment there of the American Army Schools, and from the autumn of 19 17 until the spring of 1919 most of the forts around the place as well as the cita- Langres the Ancient 43 del and the city itself were thronged with officers and soldiers in olive drab, most of them connected in one way or another with some of these institutions of military education. The Army Schools were a necessary outgrowth of the highly technical nature of modern warfare, which obliges not only many officers, but also great numbers of enlisted men, to acquire close familiarity with the duties and the material of their respective branches of the service. Very soon after ar- riving in France, in the summer of 1917, General Pershing, commanding the American Expeditionary Forces, took steps to establish proper centers of instruction for the troops of his command as they should arrive from America. The work was started with the assistance of a number of experi- enced officers and men of the French and British services who were later either replaced or supplemented by Americans, after the latter had become proficient. The general instruction system embraced three grades of schools; those of the division, the corps, and the army. Each division within its own training area had a school and train- ing center for the instruction of its own personnel ; each corps had an instruction center for the training of replacements, officers and men, and all grades of commanders for four combat divisions. The army itself maintained a group of schools for the preparation of instructors for the corps and division schools and for the instruction of staff officers, can- didates for commissions, and officers and men of the various special branches of army troops. It was at Langres that there centered the group of Army Schools which filled the city with Americans and gave to their period of occupation an importance which will cause it to be recorded in the history of the city as an episode as signifi- cant as any in its long and checkered career. Most of the 44 The Marne, Historic and Picturesque schools began functioning in December, 19 17, or soon there- after, and continued to graduate classes of increasing size until several months after the armistice, sending into the fighting army a large proportion of the rapidly but effectively trained men v^ho as officers or noncommissioned officers led American troops in their career of uninterrupted victory. During their existence of approximately a year and a half, the Langres schools were attended by a grand total of more than 45,000 officers and soldiers — 95,000 including the at- tendants at the Gas School — who, in addition to the troops stationed around the city and more or less connected with the schools, gave to the place the appearance of an American military camp, the civilian population of less than 9,500 being quite submerged in the flood of olive drab. Nevertheless, it was the quaint, closely-packed buildings of the old town itself which always made the picturesque background to the crowds of stalwart young soldiers from the New World thronging the streets and to the processions of automobiles and trucks, varying from the big, olive-drab limousines of general officers to busy little Y. M. C. A. Fords and lumbering "quad" trucks, bizarre with the hues of cubist camouflage, which often gave to the Rue Diderot the aspect of a business thor- oughfare in an American city. Along the Rue Diderot, in fact, were scattered most of the "cinema" theaters, cafes, and shops which attracted the patronage of doughboys at leisure. Few Americans who were stationed in Langres for any length of time can have for- gotten the Hotel de 1' Europe, below the College, whose long, narrow dining-room, gas lighted and paneled with wood, was the nightly gathering place of a throng of hungry officers and enlisted men who possessed the price, eager for a meal which would vary the monotony of the mess hall. At that hour the Langres the Ancient 45 tiny office was always occupied by a post-office line of wait- ing guests, gazing hungrily into the smoke-blue atmosphere of the dining-room and demanding from the frenzied wait- resses, une place, deux places, or six places, as the case might be. But the little square surrounding the statue of Diderot was the center most frequented. Perhaps few who looked at the figure of the great encyclopedist, gazing benevolently down the street from his tall pedestal and quite dominating the surrounding small shops and cafes, were conscious that this statue was the work of the same sculptor, Frederic Bar- tholdi, who created the Statue of Liberty which stands in New York Harbor, the gift of the French Republic to the United States. Farther afield among the obscure streets are a number of interesting places never seen, probably, by numbers of Amer- icans owing either to lack of time or inclination, but familiar to many others. Undoubtedly the chief of these, as it is the most conspicuous building of the city, is the Cathedral of St. Mammes, dedicated to the third-century martyr who was born in Caesarea of Cappadocia and who became the first Bishop of Langres and later the patron saint of the city. This building, begun in the twelfth century, represents in its interior the varjnng but happily combined forms of the archi- tecture of the Transition period. Its fagade and tall twin towers are of the eighteenth century and though conspicuous are not considered of much architectural excellence. But they rise above a church whose interior, though dark, is very impressive with its six bays and two side aisles divided by massive square piers and applied columns which support an upper gallery, or triforium, whose smaller columns are in the Romanesque style. The red stone of the columns themselves contrast becomingly with their white Gallo-Roman capitals 46 The Marne, Historic and Picturesque and with the pink shade of the walls. The perspectives with- in the cathedral are impressive, even though the nave has a height of only 75 feet and there are many objects of artistic interest to be found in the church and its chapels. Such are the beautiful fourteenth-century alabaster figures of Notre Dame la Blanche, "the White Lady;" the font made in 1549, the sixteenth-century tapestries in the transept chapels de- picting the life and martyrdom of St. Mammes, the paint- ings attributed to Rubens and Correggio in the Chapel of Relics, a Renaissance bas-relief showing, among other scenes, a churchly procession walking toward the walled city of Lang- res, and a number of statues of church dignitaries of later periods. Not far from the Porte des Moulins, St. Martin's Church, whose tall tower is almost as conspicuous above the city as are those of the cathedral, although it contains much less of interest than does the latter, has a " Crucifixion " by Franqois Gentil which is of unusual merit. The Museum, housed in a side street in the old Church of St. Didier, holds many pieces of Gallo-Roman statuary and sculpture excavated at different times in and around Langres as well as specimens of ancient coins and metal-work, particularly Gallic and Gallo- Roman, and a small, but valuable collection of paintings, some of them by such distinguished artists as Luminals, Tas- sel, Teniers, Vanloo, and Corot. There are numerous ancient houses in Langres having quaint and beautiful stone- and woodwork outside and much of interest within, the northern part of the city on the streets leading to the ramparts being particularly rich in such sou- venirs of the past. Notable among them is the Renaissance house near the Museum which is now used as a residence by the Bishop of Langres. In an ancient dwelling on a side Langres the Ancient 47 street north of the cathedral one may pass through an incon- spicuous doorway and a long, dark passage which comes eventually to a courtyard in which stands a venerable well with a balustraded stone wall behind it. Both the wall and the massive well curb are rich with carving, weathered faint by the passing centuries, for both are said to be relics of the Gallo-Roman epoch. This well is still in use today and as it was utilized to some extent by American troops in the city it may well be that against that same curb have leaned Roman soldiers wearing the cuirass of the legions and soldiers in the flannel shirts and woolen breeches of the United States service. In many such reflections one may indulge in this city, old when Christ was upon earth and still virile today although as many centuries have passed over it as years over some thriving cities of America. May it be that the presence with- in her borders of the soldiers from overseas has inaugurated for Langres a period of prosperity and peace transcending any that she has enjoyed in her long and often tempestuous past. CHAPTER IV PAST BLUE BASSIGNY HILLS THERE is a pleasant patchwork carpet of many-tinted fields rolling away toward the river from the steep slopes below the city as one leaves Langres through the Fau- bourg des Franchises by the road that curves around the foot of the battlements. Beneath great trees that mingle their branches over it the highway runs, while above the treetops on the left rise the great gray walls of the Tower Piquante, the Tower Longe-Porte, and the Tower St. Jean, with the massive masonry of the ancient curtains between them. The road," soon joining the National highway, passes the peak of Les Fourches, the dome of its shrine just visible above the trees surrounding it, and comes directly to Langres-Marne, the suburb containing the railroad yards and the chief sta- tion of Langres, connected with the city by a rack-and-pinion railway to the top of the plateau. At the lower end of the yards the slender thread of the Marne is spanned by a stone bridge beneath which, in the marshy ground below, cows graze peacefully among clusters of flowering bushes, indif- ferent to the puffing locomotives a few yards away. The National Road stretches on through the hamlet of Pont-de- Marne and thence northeast toward Montigny-le-Roi. But a branch road goes north up the well-tilled hillside until across the top of the plateau one sees the clustering trees beneath which the gardens and cottages of Champigny drowse through the summer days. Around Champigny breathe traditions almost as venerable as those of Langres. Across the breezy upland fields, belong- ing to the commune, four Roman roads intersect and the 48 Past Blue Bassigny Hills 49 quantities of marble sculpture, pottery, and Roman coins which have been unearthed there are a measure of the density of Roman population which once dwelt in the vicinity and which was followed by the people of the Gallo-Roman period, in every way less cultured than their predecessors as attested by the massive, but comparatively crude, stone sarcophagi in which they buried their dead, numbers of which have been discovered near Champigny. In the incessant wars of the seventeenth century, Champigny like most of the villages of northeastern France, suffered keenly and it was burnt to the ground in 1639 by Croats in the employ of Charles iv, Duke of Lorraine. His pillaging troops went back to Germany that autumn "with more cattle than soldiers and purses full," both cattle and money, of course, having been stolen from the inhabitants of invaded France. The people of Champigny, indeed, were reduced to such straits during these years that a historian of the Haute-Marne, M. Carnandet, declares that they were forced "to yoke themselves to their own ploughs, having neither cattle nor horses to work." The peaceful village of today gives little evidence of such periods of anguish and its square church tower surmounting a low cruciform church looks out above the dense evergreens which surround it across as placid a countryside as can be met with anywhere. Beneath the dense shade of these ever- greens at the side of the church one will find on warm summer afternoons a group of the village women seated comfortably with their sewing and mending, watching with contented curiosity the occasional wagon or automobile which disturbs the quiet of the deserted street. Cottages with well-trimmed vines hanging over doors and windows define this street until it runs out again into the country road which, after crossing a deep ravine, wanders on back to the valley of the Marne 50 The Marne, Historic and Picturesque and shortly into the next village on the right bank, Jorquenay. The length of Jorquenay's main street lies strung like a necklace along a curving bend of the canal, in whose still, blue bosom the gray old houses and the hillside behind, green and purple with waving alfalfa, and the church halfway up the slope, are reflected as in a mirror. The church, of course, has its history, the choir of the structure dating from the thirteenth century while within the quiet interior is an archaic statue of the Virgin and Child which was wrought in the same epoch. Humes, the next village down river, is reached by cross- ing the Marne and the canal at Jorquenay, the country road re-entering the Langres-Chaumont National highway before the latter comes into the long main street of the village. Humes was a busy place in 191 8, for not only was it a billet and barracks town for American troops of the Seventh Train- ing Area and the seat of Camp Hospital 7, but it lay beside the wide, well-paved road between American General Head- quarters at Chaumont and the Army Schools at Langres, a road whose wayside trees were usually white with the dust thrown up by passing convoys of trucks or hurrying auto- mobiles. To the parched throat of many a doughboy and truck driver the brasserie de Humes, conspicuously located beside the street, contributed an innocent, but soothing, brown liquid whose flavor improved materially some months after the armistice but which, at all times, gave the village among the Americans in the vicinity of Langres a distinction other- wise unwarranted by its size. Humes is, in fact, much smaller than the next village of any consequence northward along the road to Chaumont, this being Rolampont, the largest place lying between the two cities of the upper Haute-Marne. Rolampont lies on both Past Blue Bassigny Hills 51 banks of the Marne, whose stream is steadily growing larger from the addition of rivulets coming down from the wood- lands back among the hills. The very name of Rolampont has in it the breath of romance, for tradition says that it was originally " Roland Pont " or Roland's Bridge, although no other fragment of legend connects the locality with Char- lemagne's redoubtable paladin. The bridge now spanning the river is one of those solid, graceful stone structures so usual in France, whose well-proportioned arches frame charming vistas of rounded trees bending above the river's edge and long red tile roofs reflected in the rippled waters. A road running off northeast comes, just beyond the edge of that part of the village which lies east of the river, to broad fields of grain and alfalfa which sweep up and away in velvety slopes to the high, rounded summit of a great hill fringed with forest trees between whose branches can be caught glimpses of the grim walls of Fort de St. Menge, one of the far outlying defenses of the Langres enceinte. In centuries long past a Roman fort crowned this hill, guarding the roads from Langres to Nasium, near Bar-le-Duc. Legend says that in Roman times more than one battle was fought in this vicinity between the soldiers of the empire and the barbarians from beyond the Rhine, and the peasants of the neighborhood cherish a superstition that if one walks abroad on some nights in these upland fields about the hill of Fort de St. Menge he will see at certain hours in the light of the moon shadowy warriors on horseback, headless but clad all in armor and with horses barbed and richly caparisoned. Rolampont itself seems to have been for ages the site of a bridge and a point of some importance on the medieval highways. The little knoll on the west side of the river now occupied by the church was formerly the site of a chateau 52 The Marne, Historic and Picturesque fort now totally vanished. It was doubtless in this building that King Charles ix had his lodging when, in the seven- teenth century, he sojourned at Rolampont and left on record his admiration for the place in the phrase, "the beautiful vil- lage." King Stanislaus i of Poland likewise once visited there, resting at the presbytery, while the erudite Jesuit, Delecey de Changey, author of the Lanterne Encyclopedique, retired to the sylvan quiet of Rolampont for the pursuit of his literary labors. In February, 191 8, the village was the headquarters of the Forty-second American Division, the " Rainbow," and the billeting place of the One hundred and Sixty-eighth In- fantry regiment of that division. Probably in the chill, foggy days of winter it did not seem very attractive to the Iowa boys, but in summer it certainly still justifies King Charles' phrase, for it is a pretty spot between the wooded hills on either hand with the Marne whispering along the edges of the garden walls and beneath the shade of bordering orchards. The church, hidden deep among old trees, is of no great interest historically despite its massive Romanesque interior where six huge square columns bear up the groined roof of nave and transept. Close beside the church stands the village school, a large stone building but not, apparently, any too large for the accommodation of the many youngsters, both boys and girls, who swarm out of it at the end of the day's session. In Rolampont no more than in most other rural communities is there any evidence of the "race suicide" in France of which so much has been written. In such communities the children seem as numerous as in other countries and cer- tainly very attractive children they are; healthy, active, very often good looking and nearly always neatly dressed, while i«- .St- » ii«i i u'B iili l t WW i l -- :.-^4 The very name of Rolampont has in it the breath of romance [Page 51] Past Blue Bassigny Hills 53 their uniform politeness and good breeding are something to make other nations envious. It is easy to beHeve that the American soldiers who, during the war and for six months thereafter, thronged Rolampont and scores of other villages of its type in northeastern France, found life in these out-of- the-way places rendered more endurable by the presence of the children and that many a doughboy when he departed on his long trail toward the sunset, left behind him small friends, the thought of whom will sweeten recollections of France through all future years. Undoubtedly to the children themselves the presence of these stalwart Americans was, in general, a broadening expe- rience. It is altogether probable that before the war an Amer- ican had never been seen in Rolampont, for this section of France was far removed from the beaten paths of tourists. To be sure, everywhere in France the younger generation learned in school something of the former French colonies in America and a good deal about the American Revolution. They knew and revered the names of their fellow-countryman, Lafayette, of Benjamin Franklin and particularly that of George Washington, and when they visited Paris, as everyone in France does, sooner or later, they found there streets named for these men, and statues of them and other Americans in the public places and probably took an especially lively interest in the fine equestrian statue of Washington, in the central court of the Palace of the Louvre, which was presented to France by the school children of America. Yet such knowledge, though impressive, still left America and Americans rather vague and unreal. And then suddenly there appeared among them, almost overnight, hundreds, thousands, a perfect deluge of Americans, bringing the very substance of the shadowy New World into the midst of the 54 The Marne, Historic and Picturesque drowsy corners of olden France. Young, robust, bubbling over with good spirits, full of startling new ways of doing things, knocking together big, ugly frame barracks and stables and shops and " Y" huts in the most unexpected places, push- ing themselves with insatiable inquisitiveness into every nook and corner, often irreverent of all the ancient things about them, but always frankly curious concerning them, imme- diately making friends or enemies of everybody in the country- side, spending money like princes, drinking all the liquor, mild or powerful, accumulated in the neighborhood and fill- ing village streets and country roads with the clatter and dust of trucks and buzzing motorcycles and the songs and pro- fanity and laughter and banter of the land that lay the other side of Miss Liberty, they fairly submerged the country in olive drab and took possession of it. Some of the French youngsters, no doubt, chumming with these fascinating new arrivals, as they very promptly did, on the streets and in the shops and dooryards and simple village homes, fell in with the bad specimens of young American manhood who, fortunately, were in a decided minority among our troops, and learned more evil than good of America. But the most of them, we may believe, were broadened and bet- tered by that association and as they grow older will be able to recall those noisy, big-hearted visitors of a few months among them with the affection and something of the under- standing which are the bed-rock basis of lasting international sympathy and friendliness. An evidence of this sentiment is the almost reverential care with which the children, as well as the older people, of Rolampont and every other American billet village along the Marne, guard the weather-beaten wooden signs left by the Americans on house doors and street corners; signs whose fading stenciled legends announce. Past Blue Bassigny Hills 55 "Town Major," "Headquarters Infantry," "Do not drink this water. For washing only," etc. The sentiment which will preserve such poor relics is written on the hearts entertaining it so deeply that it will long outlive the relics themselves. The sharply eroded valley of the Marne presents many changing aspects of quiet beauty as one follows the shady road on past Vesaignes and Marnay, the latter with a pure Gothic church, to the railway junction of Foulain, whence a branch line of the Chemin de Per de I'Est winds oft" up the valley of the Traire River to Nogent-en-Bassigny, a manu- facturing town noted for its cutlery. It will also be remem- bered by a host of Americans as the seat of the Advance Section, Services of Supply, until October, 1918, and after that as the headquarters of the Fifth Army Corps, under Major General Charles P. Summerall. The narrow gauge branch line from Foulain is hidden almost like a forest trail in the narrow valley of the small watercourse and its first station, Poulangy, is unseen until one is almost upon it. It is itself the site of several factories but they have not spoiled the rustic appearance of its clamber- ing streets, nor detracted from the freshness of the steep hillside behind it which, in August, is rich with tiny sweet wild strawberries growing sheltered from the sun beneath a profusion of leaves. There formerly existed at Poulangy an abbey for women established by the Abbess Ste. Salaberge before the year 688 and successively presided over in the early part of the twelfth century by the Abbesses Ste. Adeline and Ste. Asceline, the nearest relatives of St. Bernard. Some quaint stories are preserved concerning the administration of justice in Poulangy in earlier days. It is related, for instance, that on one occasion -x local official caused a sow to be legally executed 5 56 The Marne, Historic and Picturesque for having killed an infant. At another time when a man whose life was valued by the villagers had, nevertheless, been condemned to death for some crime, real or alleged, the dif- ficulty was solved very simply by executing him with all legal solemnity — in effigy. Beyond Foulain a long bend of the Marne and the ever- accompanying canal beside it embraces the scattered dwellings of Luzy and alike the more compact group of Verbiesles. From the broad Marne bridges leading over to them, the two villages show little more than their red roofs and the spires of their churches above the billowed green of roadside trees and orchards. On the west side of the river are great hill- sides densely clothed with the forests of the Bois Millet and the Bois de la Vendue which were the scene, in 1918, of some of the extensive work of the American Forestry Department Engineers, whose cozy home " lumbering camp " was at Luzy, a very different center of operations from the log shacks of the Wisconsin or the Oregon woods. These hillsides rise almost sheer from the river, forming the eastern wall of the narrow watershed between the valleys of the Marne and the Suize, of which the latter, rising southwest of Langres, nearly parallels the Marne at a distance of a few kilometers all the way to Chaumont. The village church of Luzy is a charming example of thirteenth-century architecture with a Romanesque altar. It was for a long time in olden days a place of pilgrimage because it contains the relics of St. Evrard, the patron of the village. He was a hermit of the ninth century whose place of solitude was the long-since vanished Priory of Moi- ran, in the old forest adjacent to Luzy. The chateau of Luzy which, except for traces of the deep moats, disappeared centuries ago as completely as St. Evrard's retreat, was built Past Blue Bassigny Hills 57 by a Bishop of Langres and held under him at one time in the fourteenth century by one Charles d'Escars, Baron of Luzy. It must have been a noble structure in its day for its walls were flanked by nine towers. The ancient, but unimportant, annals of Verbiesles also run back for nearly a thousand years but its chief claim to a place in the history of France is the fact that within its communal precincts lie the chateau and park of Val-des- Ecoliers. That claim applies as well to American history for it did not arise until the early summer of 19 18, when the Commander-in-Chief of the American Expeditionary Forces, General John J. Pershing, took this lovely and storied estate, four kilometers southeast of Chaumont, as his place of resi- dence, continuing to occupy it for more than a year, until the American General Headquarters at Chaumont was closed in July, 1919. If one first approaches the Chateau du Val-des-Ecoliers from the Langres-Chaumont highroad it is disclosed to him as he swings around a high shoulder of hill, the white walls and mansard roof of the chateau gleaming between the grace- ful trees which dot the broad park all around it. In this portion of its course the valley of the Marne has spread to a greater amplitude. Beyond the chateau, the river and the blue canal, their waters peeping here and there between the marching rows of poplars, clasp the emerald lawns of the park, while still beyond its acres stretch the sunlit meadows, dotted in midsummer with fragrant cocks of hay which men and girls with broad-tined forks, like figures out of a Millet painting, are pitching up into the racks of great two-wheeled carts. Off over the meadows, sheer above the poplar trees skirting the river and the canal, stand the semicircular cliffs of the Cote Bault which rise above Chamarandes and beyond 58 The Marne, Historic and Picturesque them, wind-swept uplands of wheat and alfalfa interspersed with stretches of woods, with the low-spreading barracks of Hanlin Field, the American Gas Defense School, against the horizon to the northeast and the roofs and spires of Chau- mont rising out of billows of treetops to the north. It is a scene of rustic loveliness and peace whose equal is seldom to be seen in any land. As one descends by winding driveways into the cool shadows of the park, he is inclined to think less of soldiers and the clamor of war than of the sober monks who first inhabited this quiet spot and he half expects to see, pacing beneath the trees, some of the black-gowned figures who, long ago, made this a place of repute throughout France. For this religious house was founded in 121 1 under the discipline of the Order of St. Augustine, as a retreat for study and a foundation of learning by four doctors of the University of Paris. In the course of time it became famous by reason of the treasures of art and science which were gradually accumulated within its handsome buildings. Several of its abbots were men of scholarly distinction in their day and the house rested in 1637 under the control of the brotherhood of the Church of St. Genevieve of Paris. But the religious orders have been gone from the Val- des-Ecoliers for many decades past and although an ancient round stone tower, completely cloaked in glistening ivy, stands near one end of the chateau as a reminder of the former monastic buildings, the chateau itself is a much more modern structure. It was designed by Jean-Baptiste Bouchar- don, the distinguished architect and sculptor of Chaumont who did much to beautify the buildings of that city during the latter half of the seventeenth century. The chateau, both within and without, is a fine example of the dignified and Past Blue Bassigny Hills 59 spacious architecture of the period of Louis xiv and among its elegant furnishings are many priceless souvenirs of the ancient days of the Val-des-Ecoliers. It was to this restful and homelike retreat, whose very atmosphere seems to have acquired through the centuries a quality of calm in which petty and transitory things are reduced to their true proportions, leaving the mind strength- ened for the solution of greater problems, that the American Commander-in-Chief was wont to come from the busy Gen- eral Headquarters' offices in Damremont Barracks, or from still more strenuous days spent near the front of his fighting divisions in the Marne, or the Vesle sectors, the St. Mihiel Salient, or among the shell-torn hills of the Meuse-Argonne. In the summer or autumn of 19 18, if one passed in the twi- light on the highroad leading down from Chaumont an olive- drab limousine speeding southward, with a red oblong bearing four white stars on the windshield and the tall, rigid figure of a man sitting bolt upright in its rear seat, one could hope that the " C-in-C " was going to have, at last, a good night's rest at the Chateau du Val-des-Ecoliers. But that was by no means certain for often there were high officers of the Allied armies, American, French, or British, gathered for lengthy conferences at the chateau. Or, again, the American chieftain might be leaving in the small hours of the morning for a drive of 60 or 70 miles to some point close behind the battle front, or a still longer drive to General Petain's head- quarters at Provins or those of Marshal Foch at Senlis. After the armistice, when the distinguished personages of the Allied countries, military, political, and diplomatic, found time for making the social acquaintance with one another which had been denied them in the feverishly active days of the war, General Pershing's residence frequently became 6o The Marne, Historic and Picturesque the scene of house parties among whose members were men famous the world over. At different times there were enter- tained there President and Mrs. Wilson, President and Ma- dame Poincare, King Albert and Queen Elizabeth of Belgium,- Premier Clemenceau, Marshal Foch, Marshal Haig, the Prince of Wales, Mr. Baker, American Secretary of War, and Marshal Petain. In short, during the eventful year in which it was occupied by General Pershing, the Chateau du Val-des-Ecoliers earned for itself a place in our history which will doubtless cause it to be known in future beside the old farmhouse overlooking the Schuylkill River which was Wash- ington's headquarters at Valley Forge and the little Leister House on the Taneytown Road whence General Meade di- rected the Army of the Potomac in the battle of Gettysburg. Excepting for the double row of trees bordering the broad highway itself, the road to Chaumont, after climbing up from the river in the Val-des-Ecoliers, follows the crest of a plateau which is open to the sun and wind. To its left lies the nar- row valley of the Suize, intimately charming with its little fields and meadows bounded on one side by the wooded hills and on the other by the circuitous course of the small stream, now gliding furtively between beds of water grass and reeds and rows of bushy basket poplars and again tumbling gaily over a small dam as it pursues its way to its union with the Marne just north of Chaumont. To its right lies the broader valley of the Marne itself, with the red roofs of Chamarandes and Choignes glistening between the trees and here and there a factory chimney rising above them. Skirting the widespread brick barracks of the Quartier d'Artillerie, turned over to the Americans and occupied dur- ing the war by Roosevelt Base Hospital 15, the country road begins to assume the character of a street as it passes the ,,^^^*xx^;^- ^',j„ L,ii-_-054^iy' ' Damremont Barracks, Chaumont, American General Headquarters [Paffe 59] .>iK.-'l'%'^, Chamii de Mars and the Chateau Gloriette, Chaumont [Page 90] Past Blue Bassigny Hills 6 1 Octroi (town tollhouse) and the outlying cafes and houses of the Faubourg des Langres and then, swinging into the Avenue de la Republique, crosses the street-wide bridge over the railroad tracks, with the leafy promenades of the Boule- vard Thiers reaching away on either hand, and finds itself at last in Chaumont by way of the Rue de Chamarandes which leads directly, past the City Market and sundry shops and side streets, into the angular center of the city, scene of weekly markets and annual fairs, of public gatherings, and of historic ceremonies as well today as for almost count- less generations past, the Place de I'Hotel de Ville. CHAPTER V CHAUMONT-EN-BASSIGNY THE etymologists disagree concerning the origin of the name, Chaumont, and in disagreeing they have arrived, as occurs frequently with both etymologists and doctors, at directly opposite conclusions. One group declares that it is derived from two Celtic words : chad, meaning wood and mon, meaning mountain ; hence, wooded mountain. The other group avows that it is a corruption of the Latin, calvus mons, mean- ing bald mountain. One can take his choice but, at all events, Chaumont is not bald today for, excepting in the heart of the business streets, it is a riot of shady boulevards and parks and private gardens, from the scattered cottages of the south- ern suburbs right up to the bluff hill crest of Chaumont le Bois, 3 kilometers farther north where formerly old Fort Lambert thrust its frowning bastions out over the placid Marne, on the last promontory of the watershed between that river and the Suize. Measured by Langres, Chaumont is a modern town for its recorded history dates only from the year 940, although it was mentioned once in earlier chronicles as the scene of the martyrdom of the Christian virgins, Aragone and Oli- varia, who were murdered by Attila's Huns about the year 450. Both on the hill and in the adjacent valleys have been found the remains of Roman baths and Gallo-Roman tombs, household utensils, etc., some of which are preserved in the Museum of Chaumont. But the present town is entirely of feudal origin, having grown up around the chateau of the Counts of Champagne which stood on the great hill project- 62 Chaumont-en-Bassigny 63 ing like the prow of a ship from the western edge of the city into the valley of the Suize. The territory upon which Chaumont stands belonged orig- inally to the Counts of Bassigny and of Bologne. One of them, Geoffroy, was created the first Count of Champagne by Hugh Capet when that founder of the Capetian dynasty, in order to secure the greatest possible number of partisans, gave to his chief vassals as hereditary possessions the ter- ritories which they were guarding for the crown. This Geoffroy i of Champagne built the first massive parts of the chateau, which was greatly enlarged in later years and which came to be known as the Chateau Haute feuille. It was not until the twelfth century that Chaumont itself began to as- sume any importance, after the people of the town in 1190 had revolted and extracted from their count, Henry 11, a charter granting them certain privileges. A few years later another count, Thibaut iv, after having followed the good King Louis ix (St. Louis), on the Sixth Crusade, himself revolted and became the leader of a league against the royal authority. After a time he surrendered to the king and his late allies, in revenge, ravaged his territories and would have taken and pillaged Chaumont had a royal army not come to its rescue. Although it escaped at that time, Chaumont in later years suffered frequently from the ravages both of armed foes and of the terrible plagues which often swept Europe in the Middle Ages. It was captured and sacked several times dur- ing those long decades of unspeakable wretchedness for France, the Hundred Years' War (1337-1453)- The revolt- ing peasants of the "Jacquerie" took it in 1358 while engaged in their hopeless struggle against the cruel and oppressive nobility. Again about 1440 bands of brigands 64 The Marne, Historic and Picturesque called ecorchciirs (flayers) roamed at will over France and Belgium, killing cattle and stripping the clothes from their human victims. Some of them took Chaumont and for some time used it as a base of operations from which marauding expeditions went forth into the surrounding country, com- mitting frightful excesses, strewing the roads with corpses and causing the villages to be abandoned and the farms to remain uncultivated until a famine resulted, followed by a pestilence which forced the outlaws to abandon the town. Another plague decimated the place in 1500, during the Reli- gious Wars. Chaumont was a center of the Guises, leaders of the Catholic party, and it was attacked in 1523 by a Ger- man army of 12,000 men under the Count of Fiirstenberg. He was, however, eventually driven from the siege and pur- sued across the Meuse by the army of the Count of Guise. This was but one incident of the Religious Wars, whose devastations caused the people extreme misery. In Chau- mont their unhappy condition was aggravated in 1564 by the extravagant debts incurred by the city for the purpose of giving a magnificent reception to King Charles ix. The monarch visited Chaumont for some days and during his stay the streets were lavishly decorated, mystery plays were performed on stages in all the streets, banquets were given, and rich presents bestowed upon the king and his attendants. In the midst of the Thirty Years' War the plague once more broke out in the villages around Chaumont. In vain were the city gates closed and the people forbidden under pain of death to venture forth; the plague entered and destroyed 2,300 victims during the ensuing nine months. The following years of the Thirty Years' War found Chaumont often crowded with French troops or those of her allies and Chaumont-en-Bassigny 65 from some of these rough soldiers of fortune, the people suffered almost as much as from the enemy. After the Peace of the Pyrenees had closed the Thirty Years' War in 1659, Chaumont at last settled into a tran- quility which endured almost unbroken by noteworthy events, until the Revolution of 1789. Yet even during the preced- ing centuries, which constituted in every European nation a cycle of conflict and confusion while the peoples who were almost savages at the time of the dissolution of the Roman Empire were gradually building new foundations of govern- ment, religion, and culture, the condition of the people of Chaumont was by no means wretched always and in every respect. The dark side of the picture only has been presented thus far. The political and commercial privileges granted to the city in 1190 by Count Henry 11 of Champagne were grad- ually increased in later years. After Chaumont, as a part of Champagne, became united to the crown in 1328, the royal bailiffs themselves generally gave to the inhabitants a just and, for the period, beneficent government. Such govern- ment, however, was still better assured in 1355 by the inaugu- ration of elections at which the inhabitants chose their own local officials, while in 1604, King Henry iv finally granted to the city the privilege of being governed by a mayor and city council. The successive kings of France displayed a per- sonal interest in Chaumont, mainly, it is true, because of its military strength. But this interest finally resulted in its thorough fortification, the work being begun under Louis XII and completed, between 1515 and 1559, under Francis I and Henry 11. These fortifications existed until 1848 when they were leveled to make the broad boulevards which today encircle the inner city. They consisted of nine bastions con- 66 The Marne, Historic and Picturesque nected by tall ramparts and they were sufficiently strong to hold at bay all assailants who came before them during the two centuries following their completion. A great measure of independence from the afflictions caused by the presence of alien soldiery was attained by Chau- mont with the foundation, during the reign of Charles vii (1422-1461), of the companies of arbalesters, composed of young men of the community, similar to those at Langres already described. As was the case at Langres, these com- panies came to be not only a great safeguard to their native city, but a powerful weapon for overawing and finally for destroying the predatory nobility of the adjacent country. An armory called the Hotel de I'Arquebus with which was connected a commodious garden or drill ground, was built for this militia in 1647, outside the ramparts on the ground now occupied by the large Trefousse glove factory on the Avenue des Etats-Unis, where it remained until 1852. Through all their long generations the people of Chau- mont have taken a deep and comforting interest in their reli- gion and in the institutions and buildings in which religion has found tangible outward form and expression. The fact that through all the sectarian struggles which in different ages have agitated France, the vast majority of the Chau- montais adhered unswervingly to the Catholic faith probably contributed materially to the wealth and, particularly, to the standing of the various religious bodies whose buildings were dotted thickly through the town before the Revolution. A number of these buildings still remain, though altered to other uses. The beautiful Church of St. Jean-Baptiste, the most notable structure in the city, was begun in the twelfth century, but it was so long in reaching completion that parts of it exemplify also the styles of the fifteenth and sixteenth Chaumont-en-Bassigny 67 centuries. The ancient Convent of the UrsuHnes, on the Rue Docteur Michel, was transformed after the Revolution into barracks for the gendarmerie. The present museum and art gallery was originally a Carmelite Monastery and then became the Prefecture of the Haute-Marne until the comple- tion of the present more modern prefectural building. The extensive mass of the Lycee, with its pleasant, tree- shaded courts, colonnaded porches, and lovely seventeenth- century chapel, was once a college of the Jesuits, while the ancient Capucin Convent has now become that place of amusement, so curiously antiquated and compressed to Amer- ican eyes, the Municipal Theatre, hidden away on the alley- like Rue Felix Bablon. The large City Market now covers most of the ground occupied prior to the year 1800 by the churchyard and church of St. Michel, which, it used to be said "carried into the clouds the summit of its tall tower." On the Avenue Carnot, leading down Buxereuilles, the Hopital Civile, whose slate-colored dome is conspicuous above the trees from every elevated point west of the city, was erected in 1765 by the Sisters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul and it is still conducted by them, though during the war it was used by the French as a military, not a civil, hospital. Far down in the bosky valley of the Marne, with the road to Neufchateau on one side and the creeping waters of the river on the other, still stands St. Aignan's ancient chapel guarding the cemetery clustered about it. But the Chapel of Notre Dame, said to have been set quite as graci- ously in the valley of the Suize at Buxereuilles, has quite vanished, as have several other chapels within the former city walls. Today factories, stores, and offices occupy many of the places formerly held by the old religious houses while the streets, where once walked so many black- or white- or 68 The Marne, Historic and Picturesque gray-robed figures of the omnipresent orders, are filled with a crowd as modern and as preoccupied with the business and pleasures of the present as were the former denizens of these precincts with the problems of death and eternity. CHAPTER VI u CHIEFLY FOR THOSE WHO FOUGHT THE BATTLE OF CHAUMONT >> LEST he display too great a familiarity with the place to J escape detection, it seems best to the writer to confess, before proceeding further with this rambling narrative, that a great part of his war-time and post war-time days in France were passed at Chaumont. That experience he shared in common with some thousands of other Americans, officers and soldiers, some of whom were "sentenced to Chaumont for the duration of the war" while others were there for short periods only and then departed for other centers of American activity, buzzing with the industry of the Services of Supply or trembling with the cannon roar of the front, as the case might be. Some of these warriors in olive drab liked Chaumont; others detested it. To some the narrow, crooked thoroughfares, the quaint old buildings, the tree branches bending out over high, secretive walls from jealously hidden gardens, the sudden vistas of far hills and red-roofed villages flashing upon the eyes of the wayfarer at turns in the outer streets where once the ramparts ran, the leisurely habits and unfamiliar business methods of the people, were all sources of interest, even of pleasure, because they spoke to the stranger the subtle language of antiquity and fired his imagination with the romance of a long and colorful past and a novel and piquant present. To others, all of these things were merely irritants, forcing constant unfavorable comparison with the fresh, efficient modernness of America and the energetic methods of its people. But whether they liked Chaumont or whether they de- 69 70 The Marne, Historic and Picturesque tested it, one thing is certain — they can never forget it. In fact, it is safe to predict that they will remember it with increasing clearness, yes, and with increasing kindliness, as the years go by. For whether humble or conspicuous the part which he played in it, hardly a veteran of the World War will meet any future experience of peace-time which will stay with him as will those of the days when he was numbered among the host of America's Great Crusade, a soldier in the armies of civilization. Therefore let us go back to Chau- mont, that nerve-center of the American Expeditionary Forces, as it was in 19 18, and strolling about its crooked streets and shady purlieus, revisit some of the places which we knew then, throwing about them something of that dis- tant past which only history can revivify, interwoven with something of the nearer past of which we were a part. We may start, appropriately enough, at that busy little gare, with its two sugar-loaf roundhouses opposite the plat- forms, its long strings of passenger cars, 40 Hommes, 8 Chevaux, and its assortment of locomotives varying from teakettles to real American Baldwins, where so many new arrivals at General Headquarters ran the gauntlet of red brassards appertaining to the Railway Transportation Officers. The Chaumont station does not bear a particularly historic appearance, but at least once, long years before the Amer- icans began to swarm out upon its platforms, it witnessed an episode which was interesting, even though distressing. This was in 1870, when the troops of the French Fifth Army Corps, under General de Failly, having become isolated from the army of Marshal MacMahon after the battle of Worth, retreated from Bitche, north of Strassburg in Lorraine, across the Vosges Mountains and thence by Mirecourt and Mon- tigny-le-Roi toward Chaumont, seeking by this hard and The old Donjon garden, overlooking the valley of the Suize, Chaumont [Page 7S] 1e>.^- ..,'•;- The Tour Hantef'euille ;ind St. Jean's twin spires, Chaumont [Page 73] *' Fought the Battle of Chaumont" 71 circuitous route to reach a railroad by which they might join the French reserve army at Chalons-sur-Marne. They suc- ceeded, but when they reached Chaumont, exhausted, ragged, almost without food and utterly dispirited, they were the mere ghost of an army corps. For two days, observed by the Chaumontais with combined dismay and disgust, they thronged the Chaumont yards while embarking upon troop trains for the north. The last train to depart for Chalons had barely passed St. Dizier when Prussian uhlans cut the line at that point. De Failly's troops eventually rejoined Marshal MacMahon only to become involved, with the rest of that unfortunate commander's army, in the overwhelming disaster of Sedan. Going out through the gates of the railway station with the crowd of French civilians, American doughboys weighted down with packs, Y. M. C. A. girls in fussy Ford ambulances, and officers in limousines bearing the red, white, and blue insignia of General Headquarters, we come immediately, in the square facing the station, upon the monument to the sol- diers of the Haute-Marne who died for their country in the war of 1870. At the risk of offending some persons of highly developed artistic taste, the opinion is ventured that most doughboys thought this monument a pretty fine thing, with its high marble pedestal bearing aloft a dying French soldier and an officer, very much at bay, above whose heads an angel with outspread wings poises a laurel wreath. At all events, it thoroughly typifies the spirit of the memorial monuments of 1870 to be seen in nearly every city of France. Behind an ornate gateway, facing one side of the monu- ment, stands the sedate building of the Bank of France, resembling rather a residence than a business establishment, and across the square from it the little hostelry and restau- 6 72 The Marne, Historic and Picturesque rant generally known as the Hotel Tourelle. Perhaps its outer cafe, where French poilus or civilians sipped wine or beer, and its inner dining-room where food as well as drink were served, was not familiar to many soldiers. But those who visited it occasionally found it much favored by " Y " workers of both sexes, who discreetly drank water despite the conspicuous enameled sign on the window : Ici on consulte le Bottin, which men in uniform usually interpreted, "Here one consults the bottle," rather than the guidebook advertised. Across the Rue de la Tour Charton from the Hotel Tour- elle lie the cool, shaded pathways of the Square Philippe Lebon, with the statue of that kindly appearing inventor, a native of the Haute-Marne who introduced gas lighting into France, standing just within the gateway. The rustic kiosque de musiqiie farther from the street and embowered in trees, was seldom used during the war, but in the afternoon or early evening one seldom failed to find a few American sol- diers, off duty, playing ball with a bevy of French children on the lawns which stretch back toward the low wall and the close-cut hedges bordering the western edge of the park. From the semicircular bay in that wall projecting farthest on the edge of the hill is to be seen one of the city's most attractive views. Below one's feet down the almost precipitous hillside are the chimney pots and tile roofs of the houses clinging to the sides of the Rue de I'Abattoir and the Rue des Tanneries; streets which drop down the narrow ravine from the now demolished Porte de I'Eau into the valley of the Suize. Hardly 300 feet distant across the ravine rises, from above the treetops, its equally precipitous opposite face, crowned by the rear walls of the residences facing on the Rue du Palais. Beyond and above them the twin spires of St. Jean-Baptiste prick the sky and at the extreme end of "Fought the Battle of Chaumont" 73 the promontory the Palace of Justice, overtopped by the majestic bulk of the Tour Hautefeuille, crowns the dizzy escarpment of the old donjon, ivy cloaked from base to ter- race. Far below the gentle Suize winds among the gardens and the scattered dwellings of the Faubourg des Tanneries and on through verdant meadows, while far away the blue hills of Bassigny roll off toward the setting sun. Perhaps a soldier, smoking a cigarette and idly swing- ing his feet over the edge of the semicircular wall, remarks that the latter looks old. It is. The wall is the lower por- tion of the Charton Tower, one of the nine bastions of the city ramparts built, probably, about 1550 and cut down to its lower stage three hundred years later, when most of the fortifications were completely leveled. The donjon was an- other but much older bastion of the same enceinte and these two strong points by their cross fire protected the approach through the ravine to the former massive Porte de I'Eau at its head, where the streets leading up from the valley fau- bourgs entered the city ramparts. Though demolished, the medieval defenses have left their traces in some form nearly everywhere. The deep cut through which the railroad runs along the southern edge of the city was originally the moat of the walled town and on the east the broad Boulevard Gam- betta and Boulevard Voltaire have found ample elbowroom because they were laid out on the whole space formerly occupied by the rampart and moat. Returning to the Hotel Tourelle one stands at the end of the Rue de Verdun, a street wider and more modern than most of the streets of the city and containing a number of the buildings, small, perhaps, but of the dignified, carefully chiseled stone construction characteristic of modern French architecture. But even here is to be seen at the rear corner 74 The Marne, Historic and Picturesque of the hotel, abutting on the gateway to the gray old court- yard known as the Cour de Champs, one of those curious, semicircular exterior turrets starting 7 or 8 feet above the ground and enclosing a spiral staircase, lighted by tiny win- dows and extending to all the floors above. The use of these space-saving adaptations of medieval fortress turrets seems to have been common in old Chaumont and many of them are to be seen there, particularly in the short streets near the Palace of Justice, constituting, because of their rarity else- where, one of the features which makes Chaumont notable among antiquarians. The Rue de Verdun soon runs out into the little square with a drinking fountain in its center where this street meets the Rue Victor Mariotte, the Rue Felix Bablon and the Rue Toupot de Beveaux. The Rue Victor Mariotte, much fav- ored as a short cut from the station by trucks, automobiles, and marching columns, climbs a steep grade past one of the two houses occupied for a time by the American Provost Marshal's office. This place, of rueful memory to many a luckless doughboy, shares its dubious honors with another in the Rue Laloy, near the Hotel de Ville, where the Assist- ant Provost Marshal maintained his court of Nemesis in the earlier days of American occupation. Upon the Rue Felix Bablon, as heretofore mentioned, is the boxlike entrance to that Theatre Municipal and erstwhile convent wherein were staged, at various times, moving inter- national ceremonies, and such American soldier productions as the G. H. Q. Revue, first given here in December, 19 18, for the benefit of the "Christmas Fund for the Kiddies of Chaumont." But much more often one saw at the Theatre Municipal those French plays and vaudeville performances of the "small town" variety, gazed upon admiringly from the <{ Fought the Battle of Chaumont" 75 wooden benches of the pit by blue-coated poilus and their best girls, tolerantly from the red plush upholstery of the premier loges by family parties of Chaumontais, and disdain- fully by groups of American officers sequestered between the high partitions of the boxes farther back. One does not for- get, either, the discreet admonition of the management, pre- sented on a neat placard beside the stage for the guidance of the public in case any performance should chance to meet with disapproval: "The audience is kindly requested to refrain from throwing anything on the stage." The Rue Toupot de Beveaux, after passing sundry shops, among them the Libraire Jeanne d'Arc with its window cases displaying an odd collection of missals and breviaries, gilt saints, beads, and candlesticks intermixed with the latest novels and monographs on the war, comes in a moment to Chaumont's most pretentious hostelry, the Hotel de France et des Postes. Leaving aside for a moment the enlisted men wise enough to cherish their francs and centimes, what officer who ever set foot in Chaumont escaped at least one meal at the Hotel de France ? Not that it was not a good meal, the potage savory, the viands tender, the salads crisp, and the vins above the average. But probably, afterward, if he were staying in the city, he borrowed some money and joined a mess, while, if he were merely passing through, he borrowed some money to take him on to his destination. However, the expensiveness of the Hotel de France must have been one of its appealing features to Americans, for at dinner time the big front dining-room and the more exclusive one farther back were always filled with Sam Brownes and it was seldom that the humble line officer could not whisper to his neighbor, in an awestruck voice, " See that big, fat guy over in the corner? That's Major General Umptytum, 76 The Marne, Historic and Picturesque commanding the th Division," or, " Don't you know that consumptive-looking shrimp with the tin pigeons jollying Madeleine over the other side of the coat rack? Why, man, that's Colonel Poohbah! He runs the whole works down at Back-sur-Back, delousing stations 'n'everything." Then, too, one always enjoyed the mild sensation caused among newcomers by the dramatic entry of " Petit Paul," that re- markable dwarf of three-foot stature with his armful of daily papers, his amazingly vibrant voice and his stock English phrase, "New York Herald, Sheecago Treehnne, sair? Thank you, sair." Finally, it was pleasant, after dinner, to sip one's cafe noir — fin, if you preferred — in the shadows of the big courtyard or the tiny coffee-room behind the cashier's desk where one could talk English, real English, with Mademoi- selle Alyce or her equally smiling and volatile sister and cousin. Under such circumstances it wasn't so bad even when, sometimes on moonlit nights, the siren whistle blew at the waterworks and the lights went out and one knew that somewhere up the line, 50 or 60 miles away, *' Jerry was com- ing over" on one of his bombing raids and that around town some of the more timorous women and children of Chaumont were hustling for the " caves " and ahris. Everybody knew that he wouldn't come there. It wasn't etiquette to bomb each other's General Headquarters and though Jerry violated most of the rules of etiquette during the war he never violated that one, at least not in the case of Chaumont. Beyond the Hotel de France, at the corner of the Rue de Chamarandes, was that other caravansary, the Hotel du Centre, where, providing one were fortunate enough to find his way to the staircase through the mazes of the ground- f^oor cafe, he could reach a passable dining-room above where everybody ate at long tables and in a stony silence. It was At Condes the Marne runs deep and still [Page 118] w ^T-yrt-r^ k- 3* iL^^s:!?;; ^?^^ U-i' |.i»^*>>i*rx^ Rue Victor Mariotte, Chaumont [Page 74] Choignes with Chaumont in the distance [Page 77] Choignes on the Marne [Page 81] ''Fought the Battle of Chaumont" jy a good place " to chew the cud of thought," but if you craved a more Hghtsome atmosphere, imitative of Paris, you went to the Cafe de Foy, a few steps from the Hotel de Ville, across the Rue de Chamarandes. Here there were an abun- dance of mirrors to reflect the electric lights, and a certain modest luster of glass and silver plate, especially on the little tables in the grilled recess at the rear end. Also occasionally there were some flashing eyes which could be looked into without too great difficulty. Passing the market where once arose St. Michel's spire and crossing, once more, the bridge over the railroad tracks, one came, just beyond the boulevards, to the alleyway, fes- tooned about at evening time by American and French sol- diers, which lead back to the Cinema de Paris. There was good music here, especially from one maimed ex-soldier, who once conducted his own orchestra in Paris, and the pictures were generally worth looking at — that is, so much of them as could be seen through the clouds of tobacco smoke emitted by the Allied soldiery which always thronged the lower floor. Eastward beyond the cinema theater and the fire engine house, or depot de pompes a incendie, lay, on the Rue de Reservoir, that building of bains et lavoir where many a grimy warrior up from the ports or down from the front got his first thorough bath of many a day. From the bridge over the tracks the shaded promenades and broad roadway of the Boulevard Thiers extend both east and west, li one walked eastward he came presently to a fork, the right hand roads leading him out past the city cemetery and suddenly into the open country, where from a steep, wooded hillside with pinetops sighing in the breeze, he looked across the lovely meadows of the Marne to the roofs and belfry of Choignes, sleeping at the feet of the great hills yS The Marne, Historic and Picturesque beyond the river. The left-hand turn, on the contrary, led him still through the city, along the Boulevard Gambetta with its pleasant wayside benches beneath the trees. Here, on one side, stood the comfortable and hospitable hut of the French Officers' Club and, flanking the Normal School for Men, the row of pretentious mansions much favored for billets by American officers of the '* order of the golden leaf " and upward. On the lower ground across the boulevard extended the tar-papered Adrian barracks of some units of French infantry, with the impressively large buildings of the Girls' High School and the Normal School for Women at the northern extremity of the block. Chaumont is well supplied with educational institutions, particularly in this quarter. The French infantry barracks of war-time, mentioned above, occupied the ground of the Champ de Foire, normally left free for open-air fairs, circuses, and playgrounds for children, since it directly faces some of the oldest and most crowded streets of the city. Here even remain a few of the street names of pre-Revolutionary times and if one descend the Rue Voie Beugnot he will pass those mere slits between the walls of opposite houses called, respectively, the Rue du Vinaigrier (street of the vinegar factory) and the Rue du Pain Perdu (street of the lost bread). Decent enough within seem most of the houses abutting on these ancient alleyways but the children dwelling therein certainly have need of the nearby Champ de Foire for their daily fresh air and sunshine. A few steps more bring the wayfarer to the Place de I'Hotel de Ville. How many recollections may crowd upon the American as he stands on the f^at cobblestones of the Place and looks down the principal street of Chaumont, now the Rue Victoire de la Marne, and up at the chaste fagade "Fought the Battle of Chaumont" 79 of that city hall, built in 1788 on the eve of the Revolution, with its three arched doorways supporting a colonnaded bal- cony and a gracefully carved pediment bearing the usual inscription, Liberie, Egalite, Fraternite, and above that the face of the town clock and the domed bell tower surmount- ing all ! There may come back to him that sultry afternoon of July 4, 19 1 8, while France and England and America were waiting with bated breath for the next German drive some- where along the Western Front, when the Place was jammed from wall to wall of the surrounding shops with a throng of French and American soldiers, civilians, women, and chil- dren, fervently celebrating the anniversary of America's Independence Day. Again he can see the rigid ranks of our Marines in forest green and French infantry in horizon blue, guarding the narrow passageway up to the steps of the Hotel de Ville left clear for the distinguished guests. Then he sees General Pershing, General Ragneau, and Gen- eral Wirbel, amid the wild applause of the crowd, striding up that pathway behind the slender, flashing bayonets of the French guard of honor and watches them appear on the bal- cony above, framed about by billows of red, white, and blue bunting intermingled with the Tricolor and the Stars and Stripes. He may not remember the more or less eloquent speeches but he will not forget the tall, rigid form of Amer- ica's chieftain unbending to receive the great bouquet pre- sented to him by a little French boy on behalf of the grateful children of Chaumont, nor the flashing smile which lighted that chieftain's face, usually so set and drawn during those anxious days, as he lifted to the balcony railing the laughing little daughter of Chaumont's mayor. Commandant Levy- Alphandery, and looked with her down upon the cheering throng below. 8o The Marne, Historic and Picturesque Or, again, he may recall the foggy morning of the fol- lowing Christmas Day when, with colder air outside but warmer and infinitely more joyous hearts within, another crowd gathered in that same Place to welcome President and Mrs. Wilson as they, accompanied by General Pershing and a group of distinguished French and American officers, as- cended the steps of the Hotel de Ville for the reception tend- ered them by the city. Hedged about with the simple, hearty spirit of a family gathering and all the kindliness of the season seemed that Christmas morning in Chaumont as the townsfolk looked upon the chief executive of the great nation which had shared with them the burdens of the war and the joy of its recent overwhelming triumph, and in their happy faces they showed that they welcomed him in their hearts as sincerely as in their public places. Nor would the soldier, standing in the Place, forget the little stands and booths and carts which on certain days of the week in ordinary times ranged, themselves as if by magic over the flat cobbles, draped with bright bands and streamers of ribbon and tissue paper and filled with every sort of knickknack, from cheap jewelry and toilet articles to candy and fruit and lacework, while about them buzzed a crowd of women and children, always artlessly interested and always buying. But the Place de I'Hotel de Ville had witnessed many a stirring and tragic and merry scene long years and centuries before the feet of American soldiers found their way thither. Thus it was that on the afternoon of January 4, 1814, the townspeople, in response to the beating of the drums through the streets, gathered in anxious haste to hear the Commissary of Police announce from the balcony that the invading armies of Germany, Russia, and Austria, 350,000 strong, had crossed "Fought the Battle of Chaumont" 8l the frontiers of France and that a part of the army of the Prince of Schwarzenberg was advancing on Chaumont. The commissary, by order of the emperor, proclaimed the levy in mass, but the people, long since deprived of their arms by the suspicious Imperial government, willing though they were, found themselves helpless to respond to the appeal to their patriotism and returned dejectedly to their homes. No defenders remained to them save the few thousand stout veterans of the Old Guard under Marshal Mortier which were retiring sullenly before overwhelming numbers from Langres via Chaumont on Bar-sur-Aube. These devoted troops arrived and billeted in Chaumont, their advanced posts out on the road to Nogent and Bourbonne, their line of de- fense along the Marne guarding particularly the bridge at Choignes. On the afternoon of January i8, Schwarzenberg's forces reached the heights opposite and, deploying, attacked the crossings. They were repulsed but all through that cold winter night the battle continued, the French cannon thunder- ing from the hills southeast of Chaumont in response to the enemy's bombardment, while the reserves of the Old Guard, stood to arms in the Place de I'Hotel de Ville. At 3 :oo o'clock on the morning of the nineteenth, while the anxious people gathered in the streets of the city watched the glow on the night sky from the burning buildings of Choignes, came word that the enemy had forced the passage of the Marne. Soon followed the order for the Guard to commence the retreat from the city and across the Suize by the Paris road. At 8 :oo o'clock the dejected citizens around the square heard the clatter of a horse's hoofs and a Wiirtemberg hussar rode up before the Hotel de Ville and, calling for the mayor, demanded the surrender of the city and the immediate as- signment of subsistence and billets for the Allied troops. For 82 The MarnCj Historic and Picturesque eight days thereafter the hosts of the invaders poured through Chaumont, taking whatever they wished of private property, treating the inhabitants with great harshness, and ruthlessly pillaging the surrounding country. At the end of January the Emperor Alexander i of Russia, King Frederick William of Prussia, and Emperor Francis i of Austria passed through the city on their way, so they thought, to Paris. But the unexpected defeats of the hosts of Blucher and Schwarzen- berg by the desperate French Army, inspired by the genius of Napoleon, sent this trio of "warrior monarchs," toward the end of February, scuttling incontinently back to Chaumont where, through the brains of their ministers, they presently evolved the noted Treaty of Chaumont, designed to rivet upon Europe in perpetuity the divine right of kings and to thrust France into the dust of humiliation chiefly because of her revolt against absolutism. Turning back, again, the pages of history, this time for more than three hundred years to the days when " la Place " was surrounded, not as it is today by stores dispensing jew- elry, electric supplies, books, music, millinery, etc., but by the gabled houses and dimly lighted tenements and shops of the Middle Ages, we may imagine it as it looked when it was the culminating center of the curious religious festivities known as "la Diablerie de Chaumont." These observances grew up gradually after 1475, ^" which year Pope Sixtus iv granted to the church of St. Jean-Baptiste de Chaumont a plenary indulgence called " le Grand Pardon de Chaumont" under which absolution could be granted to all penitents com- ing to the church on the festival of St. John the Baptist when that saint's day fell on a Sunday. Great numbers of pilgrims were attracted to the city from distant parts by this easy method of obtaining spiritual pardon for any sin in the deca- ''Fought the Battle of Chaumont" 83 logue, or out of it, and their presence naturally proved a great stimulus to business in the city. Thus, to hold the crowds, added attractions were intro- duced and gradually developed, the chief ones taking the form of mystery and morality plays of a semireligious nature, such as were in vogue at about this period at various places on the Continent and in England. Some of these plays, as, for ex- ample, Everyman, have been revived of late years in some- what modernized form and with marked success. Certain of the early favorites at Chaumont in which priests as well as laymen participated, were, The Morality of the Banquet, The Sacrifice of Abraham, and one, the most highly favored of all, presenting the mysteries of Monsieur Sainct Jehan-Bap- tiste. The several scenes of these plays were enacted on stages or wagons called "pageants," set up on different streets of the city, the climax occurring on the stage in the Grande Place. But gradually the religious character of the presentations was lost, more and more vulgarity and buffoonery being intro- duced, while angels, saints, and even the Three Persons of the Trinity vied for attention with numerous devils, imps, and Saracens. In the final scene, the people crowding into the Place were regaled with the sight of a group of devils shoot- ing a rocket from which, at a height of several hundred feet, there fell a puppet representing the soul of Herod, which was conducted by a wire so as to fall headlong into an immense basin of fire, the similitude of hell, about which the minions of Satan danced in fiendish delight. An improving sense of propriety on the part of the public finally compelled the dis- continuance of "la Diablerie" in the year 1668. Of the several streets leading out of the Place de I'Hotel de Ville, the Rue Victoire de la Marne, in ancient days the Rue de I'Etape, is easily the most frequented and it is lined with the 84 The Marne, Historic and Picturesque city's most pretentious shops as well as by a few monumental buildings. Animated, particularly in the long summer even- ings, with crowds of promenaders, one saw here in the months following the armistice the gradual reblossoming of chic fem- inine fashions from the sober apparel of war-time, while a rapidly increasing array of men in civilian dress replaced the dwindling numbers of uniforms, French, American, British, and Italian, demobilized or departed for distant lands. Here were those tailoring establishments displaying in their show windows wasp-waisted olive-drab blouses, with touches of English swank in the bellows pockets and ample skirts, appeal- ing, so said army gossip, particularly to American aviators. Here were the lingerie and embroidery shops with filmy laces, gaily embroidered handkerchiefs, and wonderful cushion cov- ers decorated with roses or French and American flags and bearing the legend Souvenir de la Guerre, laid out to attract the eye of the Yankee lad, ever keen for just such souvenirs for "the only girl" back in the States. Here were the post- office and several of the banks and that cozy cafe whose little tables, half hidden behind a row of dwarf cedars set in big green boxes, was much affected by both officers and soldiers after the toils of the day were over. And almost opposite to it was the imposing Lycee, part of it temporarily alienated to the use of a French military hospital and part to the American post school. Because the chapel of the Lycee was closed during the war perhaps not many Americans took the trouble to seek out the concierge for the purpose of gaining access to it. But it was well worth the effort of a visit, for its interior is a perfect example of seventeenth-century architecture. Its dazzling ex- panses of carved white marble in walls and columns and vaulted roof display a combination of Greek and Renaissance (t Fought the Battle of Chaumont" 85 forms in a rich profusion almost overpowering to the be- holder. The beautiful altar screen with its bas-reliefs in gilded stone is from the hand of Jean-Baptiste Bouchardon, the distinguished seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century sculptor and architect of Chaumont, whose sons, Edme and Philippe, attained to even greater fame than their father. The most notable work of the elder Bouchardon is in St. Jean's Church in Chaumont. His son Philippe emigrated to Sweden, where he designed the medals of the Swedish kings. Edme, the greatest of them all, was born at Chaumont in 1698 and died in 1762. He passed some time at Rome, where he made the busts of Pope Clement xii and of Cardinal de Rohan and Cardinal de Polignac. Going to Paris, he came under the patronage of Louis xv and executed the magnifi- cent monumental fountain in the Rue de Crenelle represent- ing the City of Paris seated between the god of the Seine and the goddess of the Marne; the Fountain of Neptune in the Gardens of Versailles, the Cupid, and the Temple of Love in the same Gardens and many other works. A few feet to the right of the entrance to the Lycee, in Chaumont, on the Rue Victoire de la Marne, everyone who has been in the city will recall the fountain dedicated to Edme Bouchardon, with its handsome entablature borne up by two Corinthian columns and sheltering a bust of the sculptor on a pedestal at the base of which a river nymph, couched among reeds, holds the pitcher from which the fountain flows. Farther along the main thoroughfare as it curves gradu- ally to the left toward the Boulingrin Park, are some fine old tourelle stairways and one also passes, on the right, the en- trance to another street still bearing its curious medieval name — Rue Cour dii Trois Rots (Street of the Court of the Three Kings). Almost opposite to it is the Museum, a build- 86 The Marne, Historic and Picturesque ing massively constructed though not of great size, which, as heretofore mentioned, was originally built as a Carmelite convent. Besides the collections of the Museum, it houses a public library of about 40,000 volumes and a priceless group of about 150 illuminated parchment volumes, the work of monks of the Middle Ages, most of them resident in or around Chaumont, the most valuable being those from the Abbey of Val-des-Ecoliers. On the days of the week when the Museum was open a few American soldiers were generally to be seen among the visitors in its galleries of paintings and the halls of statuary and antiquities. Though it possesses a number of modern paintings, a finely preserved " Head of Christ," by Albrecht Diirer is its most notable canvas while, in addition to copies of Greek and Roman masterpieces of statuary, the "Adam and Eve" of Jules Etex is remarkable. The collection of Roman and Gallo-Roman antiquities excavated in northeastern France and of sculptures preserved from medieval churches, includes some excellent stone sarcophagi and the statue of Jean de Chateauvillain from his tomb. In the summer of 19 1 8 there stood in the pleasantly shaded courtyard of the Museum, abutting on the street, a contribution from the American Forestry Engineers then working in the Forest of Corgebin, 6 or 7 kilometers southwest of Chaumont. In dig- ging a well in this venerable woodland, which more than seven hundred years ago belonged to the Order of the Knights of Malta who had a chateau in its borders, the Americans un- earthed a handsome Roman pedestal upon which, evidently, a statue once stood in the grounds of the long-since vanished summer villa of some aristocratic Roman. The pedestal was turned over by its New World discoverers to the Chaumont Museum, where it is now preserved. "Fought the Battle of Chaumont" 87 Crossing, from the Museum, the broad esplanade of the Avenue Carnot one passes the Prefecture, a stately stone building of two stories surmounted by a mansard roof and separated from the street by one of those graceful iron rail- ings with elaborately wrought gates so frequently seen in French cities, and enters the shady, winding pathways of the Boulingrin — a name which is merely the French version of the English term "bowling green." The breadth of open street before the Prefecture is accounted for by the fact that it covers the ground formerly occupied by the towers, the port- cullis, the drawbridge, and the moat of the Porte de Buxer- euilles and, a little farther to the east, the still wider space where stood the Bastion de Bracancourt. Never even by daylight, much less in the evening, did the secluded benches of the Boulingrin fail of occupancy by a certain number of swains in olive drab, earnestly endeavor- ing in doughboy French to express to the dark-haired Chau- mont damsels by their sides the depth and fervor of their emotions, while these damsels as earnestly endeavored to com- prehend and respond. The very atmosphere of the Boulin- grin tempted to love-making, for was there not before the eyes of the idler within its precincts that ornate fountain with its shapely bronze nymphs and chubby little cherubs above the dry basin, and that exquisite "Amour" of Bouchardon, replica of the one in the Temple of Love at Versailles, and the deli- cately modeled Kiosque de nmsiqiie where of a Sunday after- noon, after the armistice, the American General Headquar- ters Band discoursed music for, apparently, the entire popu- lation of Chaumont and all the uniformed strangers within her gates? Even for those less fortunate than the amorous occupants of the benches, the Boulingrin was the pleasantest part of the long daily walk between town and General Head- 88 The Marne, Historic and Picturesque quarters, for nobody, it seemed, ever made that trip by auto- mobile excepting second lieutenants and field officers above the grade of major. Another and, to officers, still more important oasis on that caravan route so frequently beset by either dust or mud, was the Officers' " Y " Hut in the Place du Champ de Mars, just beyond the Boulingrin; the enlisted men had theirs, as jealously guarded from the encroachments of Sam Browne's, nearer to Headquarters on the Avenue des Etats-Unis. A homelike place, indeed, was that Officers' "Y," with its many snug little bedchambers for " casuals " and its pleasant dining-room with chintz curtains in the windows and the walls hung with American and French war loan posters and the wonderfully decorative pictures of the seashore, the mountains, and the Riviera issued by the Paris-Lyon-Medi- terranee Railroad. The dining-room was buzzing every noon and night with a crowd of hungry patrons and every Friday evening it was cleared for the weekly dance — a democratic affair at which a lieutenant, if he had sufficient nerve, might, without danger of being sent to Blois, tag a general and take away from him a pretty nurse from the Base Hospital, or a "Y" girl from Jonchery — though it must be confessed that in such a case he ran an excellent chance of a very cool recep- tion from the lady thus favored. But, best of all, was the big lounging-room with its bookcases and writing desks, its long tables heaped with periodicals, the pictures on its walls, and the comfortable chairs and settees which could, on winter even- ings, be drawn up around the crackling cheer of the huge double fireplace. The world was by no means a bad place when one could snatch a few moments of leisure from work to spend at the Officers' " Y," especially if he passed part of the time in talk with some of those fine, clean-cut American "Fought the Battle of Chaumont" 89 women, who were at all times to be found graciously presid- ing over the place and giving to it the last wholesome, satis- fying touch of home. He would be a captious critic, indeed, who would venture the opinion that the "Y" ever "fell down" at the Officers' Hut in Chaumont. Next door to the Officers' Hut, in the same Place du Champ de Mars, was the great "Y" Entertainment Hut, thronged to the doors more evenings than not in the winter of 1918-19 with soldier spectators for some of the division shows, boxing bouts, performances of the " Over There The- ater League," lectures, etc., which provided a never-ending stream of entertainment during the months of impatient wait- ing to go home. Not to discriminate but merely to exemplify, here it was that on one evening Colonel George C. Marshall, Jr., aide-de-camp to General Pershing, delivered his powerful lecture on the conduct and operations of the American armies in Europe before a packed house which included the Comman- der-in-Chief and Mr. Secretary of War, Baker. There, on another evening in the presence of General Pershing and the Prince of Wales, the theatrical company of General Head- quarters again put on the uproarious G. H. Q. Revue, which went with a bang from start to finish and so delighted the royal guest of honor as he sat, frequently convulsed with laughter, between the tall figures of General Pershing and General McAndrew, the American Chief of Staff, that proba- bly the most unsparing critic of royalty in the crowded hut was obliged to admit that here was as unassuming and pink- cheeked and good-natured an English lad as could have been found in any British billet town between Dunkirk and Le Havre. At another time, on December 24, 19 18, the Entertainment Hut was the scene of that whole-souled " Merry Christmas 90 The Marne, Historic and Picturesque for the Kiddies of Chaumont," in which the American sol- diers stationed there showed to their 2,000 small guests in a little play written by the present author and produced by Dorothy Donnelly, just how the day of good cheer is observed in the United States, and bestowed upon each youngster from beneath the boughs of a mighty Christmas tree whose upper branches, spangled with tinsel and colored lights, brushed the high ceiling, toys and bags of candy to gladden every childish heart, too many of which had long been deprived of such joys by the rigid economies of war-time. Since the departure of America's hosts the Place du Champ de Mars, once so crowded with their flimsy temporary buildings, is denuded again. But its wide expanse is to be the site of the memorial monument to the American occupa- tion of Chaumont, the structure being the joint fruit of appro- priations by the municipal and departmental governments and of popular subscriptions from all the towns and villages of the Haute-Marne; an abiding evidence of the bond, never to be broken, binding Chaumont in sentiment with the Republic of the West. The attractive Chateau Gloriette,, General Pershing's resi- dence during the autumn, and winter of 19 17- 18 and, a year later, the hospitable home of the Y. W. C. A. workers in the Chaumont region, stands on the edge of the hill near the north end of the Champ de Mars and, opposite to it, the glove factory of Trefousse and Company, the largest of Chaumont's industrial plants, a great proportion of whose product has for many years been marketed in the leading stores of a num- ber of American cities. By the gates of the glove factory begins the long avenue of trees with a broad promenade in the center and roadways on either side, formerly called the Avenue du Fort Lambert but now rechristened the Avenue ^'Fought the Battle of Chaumont" 91 des Etats-Unis because it leads to the Caserne Damremont, the seat of the American General Headquarters. Along this thoroughfare one often had the pleasure of seeing detachments of German prisoners of war "manicur- ing the roads" and keeping them in first-class order for the processions of trucks, automobiles, and pedestrians in uniform who were constantly hurrying back and forth along this main artery. The avenue passed the commodious "Y" Hut for enlisted men, which stood across the way from the barracks long occupied by a battalion of the Sixth Marines, the Gen- eral Headquarters garage and that usually crowded motor transport park which, one morning late in May, 19 18, to everyone's surprise, was utterly deserted because, as appeared later, the trucks had rushed north during the night loaded to capacity with small arms ammunition for the Second Division then just coming into line west of Chateau-Thierry for its immortal stand that stopped the Germans in their march toward Paris. Next to the motor transport park and across the street from the gateways of the caserne lay the long barracks of Camp Babcock, thoroughly concealed behind a high old wall, while farther down the tree-arched roadway came the French portion of the caserne, American fuel yards, carpenter and blacksmith shops, the Post Quartermaster's building, the local Gas Defense School and, finally, ever-smoldering incinerators out on the bluff point overlooking the meadows where the Suize joins the Marne; the point which in the thirties of the last century carried the ramparts of Fort Lambert at a time when the national government entertained an intention, later abandoned, of making Chaumont, as well as Langres, a fort- ress of the second line of defense against Germany on the northeastern frontier. But it was by passing through the gateway into the great 92 The Marne, Historic and Picturesque quadrangle of the Caserne Damremont, shaded on three sides by well-trimmed trees, that one reached, literally, the heart of the American Expeditionary Forces. From the front line of the battle zones back to the farthest port, the vital func- tions of the American Army were controlled absolutely, in their larger aspects, from the three plain, four-story buildings which face the inner quadrangle on its western, its northern, and its southern sides. These barracks buildings were, before the American occupation, and continued to be after the Amer- ican evacuation, the rendezvous of the One Hundred and Ninth Regiment of French Infantry and the caserne was named in honor of General Charles Marie Denis Damremont, a distin- guished French commander during the conquest of Algeria in North Africa, who was killed at the head of his troops in the storming of the city of Constantine, Algeria, on October 12, 1837- The circumstances which lead to the location of American General Headquarters in Damremont Barracks and, indeed, in Chaumont, were not altogether simple, for at first thought it would seem that any one of a number of cities in the same general region might have served as well. The decision of General Pershing to make the portion of the Western Front lying between the Argonne Forest and the Moselle River the scene of the future operations of the American armies, was reached very soon after his arrival in France in the summer of 1917. The choice of this front after conference with the other Allied high commanders and the selection of seaports and lines of railroad communication best suited to serve it, indicated the necessity of establishing the General Headquarters at some point in northeastern France within easy reach of the front and yet centrally located with relation to the lines of commu- nication, the training areas for troops and the great supply ''Fought the Battle of Chaumont" 93 depots and manifold industrial plants which were to be devel- oped for the use of the coming hosts of America. Yet this point must have at once good road and rail con- nections with all the places mentioned, accommodations for very extensive offices, billeting and barrack facilities for a large number of officers and men and a location both health- ful and physically attractive, so that no avoidable handicaps might operate to reduce the maximum efficiency of the selected men who would be gathered there, most of them because of proved capacity for some branch of general staff work. Some other cities possessed some of these requirements, but none save Chaumont possessed them all. It was approximately 60 miles from the selected American front and thus nearer than either the French or the British General Headquarters to their fronts, its railways and highways gave easy communication in every direction, its many comfortable houses, for it was a place of 16,000 people, offered ample and pleasant quarters for the personnel, its salubrious location in the beautiful up- land country of the High Marne together with its many open spaces of boulevard and park, assured both health and con- tentment to those who would reside there, while, finally, the large and airy buildings of Damremont Barracks, situated on the high crest overlooking the lovely scenery of the river val- leys and the uplands beyond, provided, ready-made, ideal quarters for the creation and expansion of the offices of a great staff organization. Thus upon Chaumont fell the choice and with the arrival there of the American Commander-in- Chief and his, as yet, small corps of assistants, early in Sep- tember, 19 1 7, began the most important epoch in Chaumont's long existence. In the course of a few months the various departments were settled and functioning in the quarters which they continued to occupy until July 15, 1919, when 94 The Marne, Historic and Picturesque General Headquarters departed from Chaumont to return to the United States. The geometrical as well as the administrative center of G. H. Q., as General Headquarters was usually termed, was in " B " Building, the middle one facing the gateway, where on the second floor at the head of the main stairway was General Pershing's private office, flanked by those of his personal aides. The general's office was distinguished from most others merely by having a well-carpeted floor and some upholstered furniture, this unwonted luxury being amply justified by the fact that here the " C-in-C " constantly received and con- sulted with the most important personages in the military and civil life of the Allied nations. Opposite to the general's office on the other side of the hallway, which, like those in all the buildings, ran the full length of the structure with offices on both sides of it, were the offices of the Chief of Staff, first occupied by Major General James G. Harbord, before he departed to take command, first of the Marine Brigade and then of the Second Division during the Marne defensive and counter-offensive, and later to continue his distinguished ser- vice as Commanding General of the Services of Supply at Tours. General Harbord was succeeded at Chaumont by Major General James W. McAndrew who served with great ability as Chief of Staff throughout the rest of the war and until late in the spring of 19 19, when Major-General Harbord for a brief period resumed the position. Next door to the Chief of Staff was the office of the Deputy Chief of Staff, General Leroy Eltinge, In the office of the Chief of Staff occurred the daily morn- ing conferences between the Chief of Staff and the Assistant Chiefs of Staff of the " 5 Gs," as the sections of the General Staff were familiarly called. At these conferences were dis- ''Fought the Battle of Chaumont" 95 cussed and decided the many momentous questions constantly arising with regard to the administration, movements, and supply of the American forces; the questions, that is, which involved action by more than one staff section, and those which were not decided without consultation by the Comman- der-in-Chief himself. The relation of the several sections to the general problems of the campaign will be better under- stood if the functions of each are briefly outlined, at the same time that their location in Damremont Barracks is recalled. The First Section, which began work under the command of Colonel James A. Logan, who was succeeded by Brigadier General A. D. Andrews, had its offices on the lower floors in the left end of " A " Building, at the south of the quadrangle, where the walls of most of its rooms were decorated with a bewildering array of charts and "graphs," in black and white and variegated colors. The First Section supervized the organ- ization and equipment of troops, ocean tonnage, and priority of shipments, replacements of men and animals, the Provost Marshal's service, the Military Welfare societies, etc., and prepared strength reports and the American order of battle. The Fourth Section was at first headed by Colonel W. D. Conner who, going to command the Sixty-third Infantry Bri- gade, Thirty-second Division, was succeeded in May, 19 18, by Brigadier General George Van Horn Moseley. This sec- tion was also housed in "A" Building, occupying a greater part of its right end. Among the activities of the Fourth Section were : the control of supply, construction, and trans- portation in France; supply and transportation arrangements for combat; hospitalization and evacuation of sick and wounded; assignment of labor and labor troops and assign- ment of new units arriving in France. 96 The Marne, Historic and Picturesque Finally, "A" Building contained on its upper floors the offices and the vast accumulations of papers of the Adjutant General of the American Expeditionary Forces, who was at first General Benjamin Alvord and later General Robert C. Davis. In the big document rooms of the Adjutant General's offices the maddening search through interminable filing cab- inets for letters, file copies, originals, duplicates, which seemed always to be demanded unexpectedly and for instant delivery by every other office in General Headquarters, was relent- lessly pursued from, approximately, daylight until dark by some 60 officers and 70x3 enlisted men. The Adjutant Gen- eral's Printing Plant, which printed all General Orders and a multitude of other documents, was located on the first floor of " B " Building. The largest and probably the most complex of the General Staff sections was the Second, or Intelligence, Section, whose offices occupied the left wing of " B " Building and ramified into " C " Building and into sundry temporary Adrians adja- cent to the caserne. Throughout the war the Intelligence Sec- tion was in charge of General Dennis E. Nolan. Only once, to certain knowledge, did he take a vacation. That was during the battle of the Meuse-Argonne. He spent it pleasantly in commanding a brigade in the Twenty-eighth Division with which he captured the Heights of Chatel-Chehery, flanking the enemy out of the Argonne Forest and, incidentally, win- ning for himself the Distinguished Service Cross by leading a handful of tanks in an early morning counter-attack on the enemy in the valley of the Aire River. The Intelligence Sec- tion had. charge of accumulating, classifying, and distributing all information concerning the enemy's troops and his military and economic resources; of the secret service and counter- espionage, of the censorship, the preparation and distribution "Fought the Battle of Chaumont" 97 of maps, including the daily maps of the enemy order of battle, and the daily issue of a number of intelligence pubHca- tions embracing the Press Review, the Summary of Informa- tion and the Summary of Intelligence. The section also had supervision of the greatest publication of all, the weekly Stars and Stripes, the official American Army newspaper, whose extensive offices of publication were in Paris. Many of the Intelligence Section offices in "B" Building resembled in every particular the offices of a large daily Amer- ican newspaper excepting that all the workers were in uni- form. But probably the most interesting place of all was the Order of Battle Room, where day and night, officers stood before the huge maps of the Western Front which covered the walls, marking upon them by means of little oblong iden- tification cards the location and movements of the enemy's divisions, as information concerning them came in constantly from the front or from the headquarters of other Allied armies, by our own wireless or interceptions of German wire- less, by telephone or telegraph, airplanes, or special couriers. This data, together with all other important facts which were ascertained concerning the strength, condition, or intentions of the enemy's combat units were classified and sent daily to the headquarters of the American armies, corps, and divisions in line, in order to keep them constantly and accurately informed. The lower floors in the right wing of " B " Building were occupied by G-3, the Operations Section, first commanded by Colonel John McAuley Palmer, who, on going to a command in the field, was succeeded by General Fox Conner. All the vital matters concerning the actual combat operations of our troops, strategic studies and plans, orders, artillery concen- trations, and allotments of guns and ammunition, employment 98 The Marne, Historic and Picturesque of the air service, liaison within our own forces and between them and the AlHed armies; movements, location, and com- position of combat troops, reconnaissances, security, and information at the front, the issue of daily situation maps of our own forces and the collection and classification of reports of operations, were among the responsibilities of General Conner's section. As in G-2, maps were the most conspicuous feature of the furnishings of the Operations Section offices; maps contoured and hachured, printed, photographed, mimeo- graphed, and hand-drawn, the chief difference appearing to be that in the Intelligence Section a majority of the maps seemed to cover the walls, where they could be contemplated, while in G-3 a majority covered tables and desks, where they could be pored over with pencil and dividers. Up under the mansard roof of "B" Building were the quarters of the Fifth, or Training, Section, directed prior to February, 19 18, by Colonel Paul B. Malone, who in that month went to the front to become the pugnacious comman- der, first, of the Twenty-third Infantry, Second Division, and then of the Tenth Infantry Brigade, Fifth Division. He was succeeded in charge of the Training Section by General Harold B. Fiske. General Fiske's section evolved the doctrine of instruction and training for the American Expeditionary Forces and controlled its application throughout the American training areas and schools. It was in general charge of the Army Schools at Langres and it prepared and issued all train- ing manuals, conducted inspections to insure thoroughness of training throughout the army and, in consultation with the Operations Section, determined the organization and equip- ment of troops. In the winter of 1918-19 the Training Sec- tion, with the discontinuance of training for battle, inaugu- rated and supervised the huge programs of athletic contests "Fought the Battle of Chaumont" 99 throughout the American Expeditionary Forces culminating in June and July, 1919, in the Inter-Allied Games at Pershing Stadium, Paris. The five sections whose functions have just been outlined, with their hundreds of officers, enlisted men, and field clerks, constituted the General Staff organization proper of the Amer- ican Expeditionary Forces. But there were, in addition, num- erous administrative and technical services of the army which maintained their main offices or at least liaison offices at Gen- eral Headquarters, many of them occupying rooms in "C" Building, at the north of the quadrangle, or in some of the smaller, adjacent buildings in the caserne. Among these were the main offices of the Inspector General and the Judge Ad- vocate General of the American Expeditionary Forces and liaison offices of the Engineer Corps, the Medical Corps and the Signal Corps, the Air Service and the Ordinance Depart- ment, whose headquarters were at Tours. In " C " Building were likewise housed the Italian Mission to American General Headquarters, under General Perelli, and the Belgian Mission, under Colonel Tinant. The British Mission, whose chief was General C. M. Wagstaflf, was located in the southern of two buildings at the main entrance to the caserne, while the French Mission, the largest of any of the foreign missions, under General Ragneau, had a commodious building of its own down town on the Rue Decres. West, south, and east of Damremont Barracks, every available space was filled with the long Adrian barracks of American troops connected in one way or another with Gen- eral Headquarters, and on the frequent occasions of ceremony or entertainment in the quadrangle, the show place par excel- lence for such functions, they could disgorge an impressive number of men in olive drab both as participants and as spec- lOO The Marne, Historic and Picturesque tators. When there occurred such an event as the bestowal upon General Pershing of the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honor by President Poincare, the parade ground would be surrounded by solid ranks of American and French troops, backed by a throng of spectators, both soldiers and townspeo- ple, while the superb General Headquarters' Band, " General Pershing's Own," supported by some French regimental band, would discourse martial music, the bugle corps of the two organizations, in particular, vying with each other to produce the most amazing flourishes on their instruments. Many decorations of officers and soldiers by the American military authorities or by the representatives of Allied governments, took place in this spot, especially during the winter and spring of 1919. There at different times President Wilson, King Albert and Queen Elizabeth of Belgium, Marshal Haig, and the Prince of Wales were formally welcomed to General Headquarters and there, on one winter afternoon, slender little Elsie Janis, quite alone, for more than an hour kept in an uproar of merriment a crowd which filled every foot of space within sound of her voice. But the popular daily events, unless the weather was rainy, were Guard Mount, at 11 :oo o'clock a. m. and the concert by the General Headquarters Band, from 12:30 to 1:30 p. m. Guard mount was always a finished and snappy performance while, at the hour of the concert, a large percentage of the headquarters personnel was always to be found, spending the few leisure moments following the noon meal, beneath the trees or around the covered band stand in front of " B " Building while the 85 or 90 musicians, selected as the best in the American Expeditionary Forces, rendered a musical pro- gram which no band in the United States could excel. From this same quadrangle, while the war continued, through all ''Fought the Battle of Chaumont" loi the hours of darkness of winter or summer nights, Hghts could be seen twinkhng around the edges of the black curtains in some of the windows of each barracks building, showing where work continued throughout the twenty-four hours. This, in the briefest sort of outline, was General Head- quarters, American Expeditionary Forces, the center of the complex staff organization which for nearly two years con- trolled the destinies of an American army amounting, at its maximum, to over 2,125,000 men; an organization whose decisions and utterances were awaited eagerly during that time by the people of the United States and upon whose foresight, efficiency, and firmness, it may fairly be said, the destinies of the world for a time depended. As was in keeping with the power of America's effort and the magnitude of her army, the General Staff at Chaumont was the greatest and undoubt- edly the most competent staff organization which our nation ever possessed. Furthermore, there is probably no officer or enlisted man who had the high privilege of serving with that organization for any length of time who would not acknowl- edge that in that group of regular and temporary officers, representing the highest degree of military, professional, and technical ability in the many lines requisite for the prosecution of modern warfare, were assembled the finest and most repre- sentative body of American gentlemen and men of affairs whom he ever saw gathered in one group of like size. Such groups are not drawn together by the ordinary affairs of life; only patriotism — the single desire to serve their native land to the exclusion of all else — could ever have assembled such a body, or can ever again assemble such another. Retracing our steps from Damremont Barracks down the Avenue des Etats-Unis, over whose broad, cindered prome- nade the sunlight, sifting through the trees, weaves a pattern I02 The Marne, Historic and Picturesque of moving leaves, and turning to the right past the Museum, one comes, at the next corner, to the Rue Bouchardon. Its curving length of cobbles arrives, after a few hundred feet, at a high stone entrance opening upon a wide stairway. Mount- ing this stairway to the second floor, past a stained-glass win- dow depicting the signing of the Treaty of Chaumont on March I, 1814, one enters the rooms of the Cercle Militaire des Armees Alliees : the Inter- Allied Military Club. Before the American occupation these pleasant quarters were devoted to the use of the French officers of the One Hundred and Ninth Infantry and others on duty in Chaumont, but they threw the doors wide to their brother officers of the Allied armies and in 19 18 and 19 19 the place was much more frequented by Americans than by French. Two card-rooms, a small bar, and a big, quiet reading- and writing-room, its massive center table furnished with a good selection of current periodicals French, English, and American; this was the extent of the Military Club. The deep leather chairs of the reading room and the crackling fire burning in the fireplace, handsomely carved above, rendered the place a favorite resort for those desirous of a quiet hour, especially in the evenings of winter when most billets, however comfortable in other respects, were apt to be as cold as sepulchers. To those more convi- vially inclined, the card-rooms offered an atmosphere of greater congeniality where among the devotees of the varied sports of the green-felt-covered tables might be found both those who sip the austere pleasures of chess and those who prefer, with more tempestuous emotions, to " read 'em and weep." The remainder of the handsome building whose second floor was occupied by the Cercle Militaire was the American Guest House, at which many visitors to General Headquarters ''Fought the Battle of Chaumont" 103 were housed and fed both during and after the war. A cer- tain, and not very Hmited, number of General Headquarters officers will recall, either with pleasure or a slight suggestion of headache, as the case may be, the fraternal celebration of Bastille Day, July 14, 19 18, which occurred, chiefly, in the courtyard of the Guest House. The refreshments, it may be remembered, consisted of sandwiches and champagne. Nev- ertheless, the next day everyone was busy again for that was the day when Fritz hit the line along the Marne and east of Reims — and lost the ball on downs. A still more important event than this celebration of Bas- tille Day, however, occurred in the Guest House 104 years earlier, when this building was occupied by Lord Castlereagh, the British representative to the chancellories of Russia, Prus- sia, and Austria while the armies of these Allied powers were engaged in their final mighty struggle with Napoleon. During the fluctuating campaign the monarchs of the three nations, with their prime ministers and military staffs, rested for some time at Chaumont and it was in the salon of Lord Castlereagh's house, on March i, 1814, that the Treaty of Chaumont was signed by that minister acting for Great Brit- ain, Prince Metternich for Austria, Count Nesselrode for Russia, and Prince Hardenburg for Prussia. By the Treaty of Chaumont, done in all the dark secrecy dear to the medie- val diplomacy of autocratic governments, the contracting pow- ers solemnly agreed not to cease warfare against France, still flaming with democracy and revolt against the old order of things despite the imperial form of her own government, until she should be reduced to the boundaries held by her at the beginning of the Revolution of 1789. Pending the accom- plishment of this aim, each of the three continental powers agreed to keep 150,000 men constantly in the field, while 8 104 ^^^ Marne, Historic and Picturesque Great Britain promised to furnish the coalition with an annual subsidy of 120,000,000 pounds; an almost fabulous sum in those days. With the final overthrow of Napoleon, this nefa- rious conspiracy against France was carried out to the letter, setting back for many years the cause of human liberty, not so much in France, where it could not be suppressed, but in Europe at large. During the period in which the Treaty of Chaumont was perfected. Czar Alexander of Russia maintained his resi- dence in the secluded Chateau of Chamarandes, lying on an attractively parked island in the Marne. The imperial visi- tor appears to have treated the family of the Marquis of Chamarandes with great courtesy and many souvenirs of his sojourn there are preserved in the long salon, the curious old library, and the other apartments of the chateau, one of them being a life-size likeness of the then marchioness and her daughter, painted by the czar's portraitist, an aide on his staff, and presented to the lady mentioned. In the summer and fall of 1918 foreign officers were again billeted in the Chateau of Chamarandes but, though not of royal lineage, they were much more welcome to the family residing there, of which, indeed, in all respects of cordiality, they might well have been members. These officers were two young lieutenants from Chicago, of whom one was the town major of Chamarandes. Within the luxurious chambers in which they lodged, fitted with gilded Louis Quinze furniture and rare tapestries, they breezily admitted that they were " sitting on the world " and didn't care how long that sort of a war lasted. A few hundred yards down the Rue Bouchardon and across the end of the Rue Girardon, a narrow alleyway runs around beneath the eaves of the Church of St. Jean-Baptiste. The pathway constitutes a short cut into the Rue St. Jean .- -— . r. The Rue Saint Jean, Chaumont [Page IO4] Where Chamarandes drowses beneath the Chaumont hill [Page IO4] "Fought the Battle of Chaumont" 105 and issues upon that street beside the south portal of the church, an exquisite example of Renaissance architecture incrusted with delicately modeled stonework and bas-reliefs of biblical characters surrounding and surmounting the time- worn doors, which in themselves display remarkably rich wood carving. In marked contrast to this elaborate entrance is the main, or west portal, lying between the towers and forming, with the towers themselves, the oldest portion of the church, wrought with the severe simplicity of the twelfth century. The interior of St. Jean's, as it is smaller, is also less awe- inspiring than those of the great French cathedrals. A cer- tain warmth of tone in its stonework and soft blending of the side chapels into the nave and choir, and of the massive, clus- tered columns into the groins of the roof, together with the subdued light which filters through its rich old stained glass by day and the not too garish illumination of its candelabra at night, lend to the ancient edifice an atmosphere of venera- ble friendliness very rarely to be found in a church of such really majestic proportions. Passing, on a summer afternoon, from the white sunshine and the workaday noises of the street into the cool, hushed twilight of these sacred precincts, it would be a cynical person, indeed, who could fail to feel a reverent quieting of the spirit as he looked about him. Directly before him, with perhaps a ray of filtered sunlight across her earnest, upturned face, stood, in its little chapel, Desvergnes' slender, armored figure of Jeanne d'Arc, the shaft of her upright banner in her hands and, at her feet, a pitiful little cluster of prayer offerings and of half-burned candles left by those anxious parents and wives and sweethearts and chil- dren who knelt to her for the safety of their menfolk, fight- ing for France in the far-off trenches of the battle line. Mid- lo6 The Marne, Historic and Picturesque way of the nave the wonderful carved flowers, wreaths, and human and angelic figures wrought by Bouchardon, the elder, on the high pulpit and the churchwarden's bench, stood etched against the towering pillars while far down the side aisles past the various chapels whose walls were rich with time- darkened paintings, among them one by Andrea del Sarto, the faint flicker of candles in the chapels behind the great altar intensified the darkness of those secluded recesses and the jewel-like coloring of the stained glass above them. Through an archway looking across the breadth of the right transept the open, almost lacelike stonework enclosing the spiral turret stairway accentuated the height of the ceilings, while beside the high altar great French and American flags with those of the other Allied nations beside them, lent a startling burst of patriotic coloring to the otherwise subdued vista. Nineteen chapels adorn the inner circuit of St. Jean's, not one of which does not contain valuable works of sculpture, painting, metalwork or wood carving. In the Chapel of St. Nicholas and St. Francis-Xavier is a stone carved Tree of Jesse of the fifteenth century, one of the most curious in exis- tence. On the branches of the tree are seated fourteen figures, representing the ancestors of Jesus Christ but dressed, none the less, in costumes of the fifteenth century. The Chapel of St. Honore contains a painting of St. Alexis by Andrea del Sarto, and several other chapels have statues by Edme Bouchardon. The vandalism of the Revolution destroyed a number of the art works within the church as well as the statues which for- merly ornamented the south portal. But there still survives one of the finest groups — that surrounding the entrance to the Holy Sepulchre. It consists of a superb figure of Christ upon the cross, over the doorway, and figures of the Virgin ''Fought the Battle of Chaumont" 107 Mary and of Christ carrying his cross, in niches at the sides. These statues, with minor figures, and the architectural work surrounding them, were the creation of Jean-Baptiste Bouch- ardon, whose son, Edme, later copied them for the Church of St. Sulpice in Paris. But the Holy Sepulchre itself, whose doorway these statues adorn, is easily the most remarkable work in the entire church. Set in place in 1471 in a stone vault measuring about 9 by 12 feet within and illuminated only by one tiny Gothic window admitting a mere pinpoint of light, this vividly life- like masterpiece of a sculptor whose identity has been lost, has, for nearly 450 years, drawn to its mysterious abiding place the feet of devout pilgrims from near and far, particu- larly on the evenings of Maundy Thursday when, at the sol- emn midnight service ushering in Good Friday, the Sepulchre is opened. Such a service, never to be forgotten, the writer was privileged to witness on Good Friday Eve, in 1919. A large crowd filled every corner of the church, whose central portion was well lighted but whose chancel and side aisles lay in obscurity, the outlines of sculptured saints and the dull glitter of gilded altars and stained glass appearing, half revealed, above the heads of the people. Although the congregation was so large one felt the homelike intimacy of the edifice, so unlike the austere atmosphere which pervades so many ancient churches. The gathering seemed that of some big family, facing from every direction toward the high pulpit, while the priest, pronouncing from this eminence the sober discourse appropriate to Good Friday Eve, was, indeed, like a father admonishing his children. At length he ended and the congregation, rising, faced toward the doorway of the Holy Sepulchre while the tones of the great organ rolled through the archways and the voices of the worshipers lifted io8 The Marne, Historic and Picturesque to the vaulted roof the strains of one of the majestic old sacred hymns. Then slowly and reverently, the crowd began passing through the low, massive stone portal, more than six feet deep, into the Sepulchre. A blazing array of candles lighted the interior from one end, and beneath their glow the group of statues revealed themselves with a startling suggestion of life. Down in the vault, two or three feet below the floor level, lies the figure of the Christ, strikingly natural in face and outline though vault and recumbent figure are carved from one solid block of stone. At the foot of the vault kneels Nicodemus, pre- paring to anoint the body of the Master with perfume; at its head is Joseph of Arimathaea in a similar attitude. At the side kneel Mary Magdalene, St. John, and the swooning Vir- gin, and behind them are the Centurion, Mary, the mother of James, Veronica, and James the Elder. The colors of the statues and of the interior of the Sepulchre are strong and rich, despite the centuries that have passed since they were painted, and the figures are remarkably executed. It did not de- tract from the impressiveness of the scene to reflect that this group was placed in the Church of St. Jean-Baptiste twenty- two years before Columbus discovered America and that dur- ing all these generations pilgrims from the pleasant villages round about Chaumont have come on Good Friday Eves to pay homage to it, even as they had come on this night when, intermingled with them for a time as friends and neighbors, many American soldiers brought also to the ancient shrine a reverence none the less sincere because they came from a land whose youth forbids the existence of such venerable symbols of the Christian religion. Crossing the broad street intersection before St. Jean's, from which one may look back at the grotesque gargoyles '^Fought the Battle of Chaumont" 109 projecting from the cornices of the church and the pigeons circling, in the rays of the westering sun, about the hoary, buttressed towers, one may turn, if he wish, at once into the Rue du Palais and thence to the Palace of Justice. But south a few steps down the steep cobbles of the Rue St. Jean and then around the corner where once stood the Porte de I'Eau, into the still steeper length of the Rue des Tanneries, there is a place that should not be forgotten. It is the Restaurant Trompe, standing back from the street, so modest and small that one would never give it a second glance did he not know of it beforehand. Once through the unpromising doorway, one found himself in a low room flanked by two long tables with chairs along their outer edges and benches against the walls on the other side. The table to the right was usually favored by French soldiers and civilians. From the one at the left the arriving guest in olive drab never failed of a jovial welcome from the group of American habitues who always assembled there for dinner; young lieutenants and enlisted men, most of them, with an occasional sprinkling of "gold or silver leaves" and possibly a "pair of eagles," but every man, it may safely be asserted, an epicure. For where else in Chaumont was to be found such creamy potage, such veau and hoeuf and mouton in various appetizing forms, such modest but excellent vins, such brown and feathery pommes frit — yes, and even to palates grown weary of their Gallic frequency, such really savory petits pois and chou-Heurf And who that supped at the Restaurant Trompe will ever forget the added flavor which every dish acquired because it was served by Leone, the winsome daughter of the proprietor; slender little Leone, with her golden hair and blue eyes, her quick smile and grace of movement, and that wistful voice of hers that made her so startlingly different from anyone no The Marne, Historic and Picturesque else and so appealing to every man's sense of chivalry? Because of her, somehow when you left the Restaurant Trompe you felt that you had not only enjoyed a good dinner but had come in contact with a personality that embodied some of the best and most charming attributes of woman- hood, which may often reach greater perfection in a humble home than in a palace. The walls of the reserved old residences along the Rue du Palais echo the footsteps of the passer-by at any hour but never more loudly than just at sunset, which is the best time to visit the Palace of Justice, the Tour Hautefeuille, and the tiny garden beyond them. Then the stone steps, worn hol- low by the feet of many generations, and the circuitous cor- ridors within are deserted and as you cross the hall of the Court of Assizes, with its high, funereally draped judge's bench and pewlike jury and witness boxes, you realize some- thing of the outward trappings which help to make the course of justice in France so much more pompous and awesome than it is in America. Another corridor which lies in semi- darkness with deeply vaulted doorways abutting upon it, con- ducts onward to a ponderous oaken door at its farther end. When this door, by no small exertion, has been pulled open, admitting a rush of daylight and fresh air, one steps forth into a little fairyland, borne up above the world almost as if founded upon a cloud. It is the garden occupying the site of the former donjon of the Counts of Champagne. A gravel path skirts the edge of the parapet, bordered on its inner side by rose bushes which in midsimimer are weighted down with luscious blossoms, two inches or more in diameter, pink and white and yellow. The rose-fringed pathway encloses a bit of emerald lawn and a bench or two beneath the low branches of some patriarchal trees, above whose topmost boughs "Fought the Battle of Chaumont" iii looms the mighty bulk of the Tour Hautefeuille, brooding, as for ages past, upon the lovely valley at its feet. From the edge of the ivied parapet, which is the base of the old donjon, one cannot look upon the scene without delight in its present beauty and moving thoughts of the past. Far below, in the Valley of Peace, as it is sometimes called, the blue and rippling ribbon of the Suize wends its circuitous way daintily between the neat gardens and the white-and-red cottages of the Faubourg des Tanneries. To the right the steep declivity of the Chaumont Plateau, from base to summit richly green with pines and firs, sweeps around toward the north, the dome of the Hopital Civile and the roofs of the Caserne Damremont just visible above them. Far to the left, above the Faubourg des Abattoir, is discernible the length of that majestic viaduct, worthy of a Roman architect, which carries the Chemin de Fer de I'Est across the Suize Valley on its way to Bel fort. Beyond it the last rays of the sun stream across the Bassigny Hills, casting long shadows over the Valley of Peace where cattle graze in the pasture lands and the rooks stalk solemnly between the haycocks on the dewy meadows. White roads climb out of the valley beyond the faubourgs and stretch away across the uplands by wheat field and coppice and woodland toward Jonchery, Villers-le- Sec, and Bretenay and those other villages whose spires can barely be discerned in the blue distance. And as one stands beside the donjon parapet with the perfume of the roses, symbols of eternal youth and beauty and hope, in his nostrils and the shadow of the sentinel tower, symbol of vanished oppression, ill-requited toil, and social slavery, above his head, he must realize more keenly why the people of France by instinct fight so tenaciously for the treasures of liberty and peace which they have wrested, bit by bit, in age-long strug- 112 The Marne, Historic and Picturesque gles from domestic despots and foreign invaders. As we in America, so they in France have all about them the evi- dences of their modern achievements. But they have, like- wise, all about them the decaying memorials of the walls and shackles which they have burst, and ever on their borders the threatenings of those ancient enemies who would reduce them once more to a bondage as bitter, though different in form. Could any incentives be more potent than these to the ready spirit of sacrifice for home and country? The Tour Hautefeuille, laid up of enormous squared stones and buttressed within by timbers like the masts of a frigate, was built about the year 960 and it is by far the oldest structure in Chaumont. Yet it formed, originally, but a small part of the great chateau which the Counts of Cham- pagne first used for centuries as a fortress, and then for other centuries as a sort of pleasure palace and hunting lodge. The now fertile valley of the Suize was at that period dammed across its narrowest part, forming a lake which ran far back up the valley, in the midst of the immense park appertaining to the chateau. Upon many a battle, siege, and foray the old tower has looked down and upon many a courtly assemblage where cardinals and mighty dukes and even kings and queens were gathered to partake of the hospitality of the lords of a feudal house once as powerful as any in Europe. Today it looks down upon the court of justice of a republic and the homes of a free people; some humble, many comfortable, a few luxurious, but all far removed from the cheerless hovels of the ancient days. Had it the gift of speech, the Tour Hautefeuille might well prove not only a learned historian but a shrewd moralist. Although a thousand interesting corners still remain un- explored, our wanderings in Chaumont must come to an end. "Fought the Battle of Chaumont" 113 But, crossing the city once more in the gathering dusk to the extremity of the Place du Champ de Mars, we may leave it by the shady road to Neufchateau, curving down the long hillside into the valley of the Marne. At the foot of the hill is the mossy wall surrounding St. Aignan's Cemetery, with the fagade and tower of the ancient church, as old as St. Jean's itself, half hidden behind the tombstones and the trees growing among them. Beside the wall a by-road leads down toward the Marne where, on a sheltered little plateau above the stream, lies a spot more sacred to the soldiers from the New World than any other in Chaumont — the American Military Cemetery. Slumbering in the deep peace of the valley, here lie buried 545 officers and soldiers of the United States Army and among them a few faithful nurses and welfare workers. Some of them died in the camps in and around Chaumont but most of them of wounds or disease at Base Hospital 15. The loca- tion and surroundings of the cemetery are most appealing. Close beside the parish cemetery it lies, the shadow of St. Aignan's stretching across it in the afternoon and the soft tones of her bell floating over it at matins and vespers. Here, with the peculiar tenderness of the French for the places of the dead, come often the people of Chaumont, impartially bestowing their attentions upon these graves of allies and upon St. Aignan's sepulchres ; planting and tending the flow- ers around the mounds or hanging upon the white crosses at their heads some of those pathetic funeral wreaths of bead- wrought flowers and leaves which are the universal tokens of mourning in the cemeteries of France. How much better that they should lie there forever, marshaled with the comrades of their faith and watched over by the kindred people to whose aid they came in the hour of bitter need, than that 114 ^^^^ Marne, Historic and Picturesque their dust should be exhumed and sent across the ocean to be scattered in the private cemeteries of city and village and countryside, inevitably to be at last neglected and forgotten! For here they may rest, as the dead in America's other war cemeteries in France may rest, still active factors for the good of the world as everlasting symbols of the union of free peoples in a high cause. Certainly to Chaumont, knowing scarcely a single American before the great war, the cemetery beside St. Aignan's is a bond of sympathy with the people and the institutions of the United States more strong and abiding than the most imposing monument. So, as the lights twinkle out among the trees of the hill- top city and evening with its deep peace comes down over the valley where the fragrance of wild flowers and mown fields drifts above the serried graves and the waters of the immortal Marne whisper at their feet, let us leave both Chau- mont and them, assured that here among the hills of the High Marne, fallen comrades and living friends have together reared a shrine to which the feet of Americans will come generations after the last soldier of the World War shall have received his discharge from the armies of earth. CHAPTER VII WHERE DREAMS THE STILL CANAL AMONG the characteristic features of the French coun- tryside, none probably impressed itself more vividly upon the recollection of many Americans than the numerous canals. To us they are more striking than to Europeans because they are comparatively rare in our own country, whose rapid growth has thus far outrun such intensive devel- opments as canals for the cheapening of transportation. But in France they are, and for many years have been, important factors in the economic life of the country. In the region of northeastern France given over to the American training areas, canals, usually paralleling the courses of the larger rivers, are quite common and rarely lacking in beauty. Among them all none is more picturesque than the Marne- Saone Canal between Chaumont and St. Dizier. In all that distance of 75 kilometers, or more, the accompanying canal is more conspicuous than the river, which receives only one tributary of any importance, the Rognon, in the region men- tioned. The capricious little Marne wanders where it will about the bases of the hills and through woodlands and meadows, while the canal marches onward in long stretches of placid blue water, edged by the white towpaths and straight ranks of poplars, turning now and then only in a sweeping bend to conform to the general outline of the valley. Just below Chaumont occurs one of these bends, where both canal and river round the base of the hill overspread by the dusky woods of the park which surrounds the Chateau of Condes. In a marshy bit of ground just at the foot of the hill the waters of the Suize glide into those of the Marne, 115 Ii6 The Marne, Historic and Picturesque while high above them both the canal stretches on, its em- bankments clothed with grass short and thick as a lawn, and starred with daisies. In such stretches as this the big blunt- bowed canal barges appear scarcely to move at all as they are pulled ahead by a long towrope attached to a team of horses. Long accustomed to such toil, the animals lift and plant their feet with incredible deliberation, giving to their driver, usually a small boy, ample leisure for exploring the adjacent shores and for gazing back at the high hill of Chau- mont, lifting the dark mass of buildings of Damremont Bar- racks against the southern sky. The progress of a canal barge through a lock is always an entertaining sight, especially if one can watch it from the comfortable eminence of the iron railing, or one of the cement " snubbing posts " at one end of the long, boxlike lock whose substantial masonry walls are topped by smooth cement. As the barge, assuming it to be a descending one, approaches the head gates, the lock-keeper or his wife or daughter comes forth from the neat little stuccoed house which stands beside every lock, and by turning a windlass swings the great iron head gates slowly open. Into the lock the barge is drawn and the towteam then unhitched to graze peacefully by the side of the path until the barge shall have been lowered. The lock-keeper closes the head gates, proceeds to the other end of the lock, and opens the sluices of the tail gates. With a great hissing and splashing the confined waters begin to pour down into the lower level while the hull of the barge slowly sinks within the lock walls. Perhaps the family on board is preparing for a meal, for these craft appear often to be chartered by some farmer or other worker having merchant- able produce who loads the fruit of his year's labor into the hold and, with his family in the cabin, and the whole upper Where Dreams the Still Canal 117 deck for back yard and recreation ground, proceeds in this pleasant fashion to some large city where he can advantage- ously dispose of his goods. The mere passage of a lock does not interfere in the least with the domestic routine of an itinerant family. If dinner is preparing, it proceeds; if the washing is finished, it goes up to dry on lines strung about over the deck. In perhaps 6 or 8 minutes the surplus water has been discharged from the lock and the barge has sunk some 8 or 9 feet to the level of the next stretch of canal. Then the tail gates are thrown wide, the sleepy horses are hooked up once more to the sagging towrope and the ungainly craft with its family, and perhaps a milk goat or a dog gazing out across the stern, all blissfully unconcerned with the fret and feverish hurry of the world, floats off at the rate of some 2 miles per hour down a lane of turquoise water whose sur- face, scarcely broken by a ripple, reflects the feathery poplar branches and the blue sky above them like a pathway leading into fairyland. The village of Condes, about a mile and a half below Chaumont, though possessed of less than 200 inhabitants, is said by the ancient chroniclers to have been a town in 961, in the time of King Lothair. Such a rate of growth would hardly encourage real-estate investment by the business man of America, nor does Condes appear to have attained great pro- portions at any epoch. We are told that in 1225, 264 years after King Lothair graced the place with his royal but rather nerveless presence, one Seigneur d'Ambonville, then lord of that region, sold to the Abbey of Clairvaux "all the tithes and revenues " not only of Condes but also of Bretenay and Jonchery for the sum of 240 livres, about $4,800.00, "in strong money of Provins." Evidently the good seigneur Ii8 The Marne, Historic and Picturesque intended to get his $4,800.00 at par value, for in those days the "strong money" coined at the local mint of the city of Provins, in Ile-de-France, was a synonym for standard weight and fineness. Today Condes is a cluster of cottages on a little hill, encircled by a bend of the Marne which here runs deep and still past the ruins of an old mill, half buried in trees and bushes, and along the base of the steep hills towering up opposite the village. The highest point in the hamlet itself is crowned by the gray old church, a massive retaining wall holding its graveyard aloft from the street, which circles about it and seems seldom animated by other living presence than a few chickens and ducks and perhaps a cow or two. A few hundred feet above the village a bridge, its stones green with moss, arches the Marne and gives access to the lovely park of the Chateau of Condes. This place, even more secluded than the Chateau du Val-des-Ecoliers, was occupied during the latter part of the war by a number of Italian officers connected with the Italian Mission at American Gen- eral Headquarters. A little stream, wandering down from the hills and filled, near the chateau, with a variety of rare aquatic plants, is said to harbor excellent trout, while along the winding graveled paths and roadways one catches glimpses of more than one white marble statue gleaming through the foliage. Hardly a quarter of a mile west of Condes, the Marne- Saone Canal, within the space of a few hundred yards, per- forms two feats which, though not uncommon, yet always seem rather startling for a canal; it crosses the river and it goes straight through a hill. The broad aqueduct, solidly built of steel and cement, by which it passes over the Marne, permits the latter to make the bend by which it skirts the Where Dreams the Still Canal 119 chateau park and circles Condes. The jutting ridge thus avoided by the river, the canal on the contrary bores through by a tunnel 300 yards long and having a width of 50 feet and a height of 25. Upon emerging from the tunnel, the canal swings around past the foot of the hill on which Bre- tenay sprawls its two or three short, rocky streets and then again meets the Marne; but, for the first time since the two began their journey side by side near Langres, on the left instead of the right bank of the river. In the floor of Bretenay's church are imbedded a number of tombstones upon whose worn surfaces can still be deciph- ered dates of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries and the names of long-extinct noble families of the region round about whose very existence is otherwise forgotten. But aside from these venerable stones and the views across the valley of the Alarne, so lovely from nearly every village on its course that the temptation to linger in contemplation becomes a fixed attitude of mind, there is little to commend Bretenay to the wayfarer's attention. That is, little unless it be a certain curiosity as to where the vineyards grew which produced the wine unflatteringly mentioned in an addition to the litany made by the devout Chaumontais of olden days : " From the bread of Brottes, from the wine of Bretenay, and from the cheese of Verbiesles, good Lord, deliver usl" Couched close beside the river on the bank opposite to the road from Bretenay to Bologne, the hamlet of Riaucourt misses half the sunlight of the afternoons because the shadow of the forest-clad hill behind it so early stretches itself across the gray church tower and the meadows close at hand. Close to Riaucourt, on the rolling uplands, lies a farm which was mentioned by its present name. La Ferme des Quartiers, in documents of as remote a date as 1184. Obviously, upon I20 The Marne, Historic and Picturesque ground so long cultivated, intensive farming has been neces- sary for many a century past in order to keep in the soil any productive power whatever and the success of such methods, practically in perpetuity, is shown by the really excellent crops produced on many ancient farms. In the church of Riaucourt one finds upon a certain worn tombstone a quaint epitaph which, freely translated, runs as follows : //, stranger, thou dost wish to know Who, in this sad house, lies below, 'Tis one who swore not save, "alas!" And was esteemed a new Pallas. Anne she was tianted; a woman sage. Of noble blood and speech to trust; Fixed in her home, where, in old age, She wished her bones returned to dust. Pray, stranger, to the God of grace To give her soul a pleasant place. If one but had the time and the facilities, in this widely diversified country of the High Marne, for journeying from one to another of the river villages on foot or, better still, on horseback, by leisurely detours over the hills and valleys back from the river, he would find at every step new beauties to delight the eye and at every turn a fresh variation in the smile of nature. Reversing the American method, in the town the Frenchman surrounds his houses and gardens with walls; in the country he leaves his farms and woodlands utterly open. Hence the Haute-Marne countryside, for example, is a paradise for the cross-country rider, being as free from fences as the rolling prairies of the old American West. Indeed, save for the greater abundance of timber, it is very similar in the general appearance of its landscapes to the country adjacent to the Missouri River in Nebraska, Where Dreams the Still Canal 121 Missouri, Iowa, and South Dakota. One might set forth on a much-traveled main road and, reaching the top of the hills by its dusty course, turn off at the first branching way, defined only by the tracks of farm carts. Up over a bit of stony ground it goes and then across a level bit of blue grass dotted with crimson clover. Take the gallop and fly over a half- mile of upland meadow with small pine woods at a distance on either hand, to slow down across a marshy brook and find yourself skirting the mossy wall of an old chateau park, with bosky woods across the way. On again, ignoring a main road which your cart track crosses at right angles, and out between fields of golden wheat. Perhaps in the distance a farmer is driving his reaper, and shocks of bundles dot the sunny field with some rooks solemnly stalking about them and among the poppies and corn- flowers, which everywhere dash the dull gold of the stubble with vivid crimson and blue. The cart track fades to a bridle path but it is trotting ground always as the path winds be- tween the small individual grain patches which, in sum, make one great field. The edge of the cultivated ground is reached. Across a bit of grass the path points toward a woodland, its border of outbending branches seeming impenetrable. But no fear; plunge in. A moment and you find that the path is a cool, green tunnel, arched over by great tree limbs and fair shrubbery, so dense by the wayside that it seems a wall, yet so well trimmed that it is always possible to trot if one wishes with rarely a branch to whip one across the face. Down a steep hillside where the ground is richly green with a dense, glistening carpet of ivy and the tree trunks have been turned to pillars of jade by its creeping vines, and here is a little brook bubbling over the stones in a bed shadowed almost to twilight by the dense foliage above. Up the oppo- 122 The Marne, Historic and Picturesque site hillside and perhaps a tumbled mass of squared stones with vestiges of ruined wall, glimpsed between the trees, causes one to wonder whether here is the ruin of some long- forgotten chateau or that of an ancient hermit's priory, for in this land of countless ruins investigation might prove either supposition correct. It may be that at the top of the hill the path comes out in a carrefour, or meeting place of several woodland roads, marked, very likely, by a stone pillar. Among the various tracks leading off between the trees, one must be chosen for further progress, but the uncertainty of results merely adds zest to such a journey. You choose, and go on. After a time you come out suddenly into a section of the forest which is being lumbered. But it is not being slashed down merci- lessly, the chosen logs snaked away and the ground left lit- tered with shorn branches, crushed and dying saplings and mutilated undergrowth, as is too often the case in a lumbered area of an American forest. Every pine capable of yielding dimension timber has been marked with record numbers in blue chalk and is being carefully sawed preparatory to re- moval. Every particle of small branches is piled up neatly for use as fuel and every sapling whose future growth is desired has been preserved. The road winds on through another section of standing forest and then, all at once, comes out upon the high crest of an open hill from which, in full view ahead, breaks the vision of the green Marne Valley, jeweled at intervals with the clustered red roofs of villages, while on the far hills beyond, in a sea of sunshine, islands of cloud shadows slowly drift. In the other direction, beyond a fold of higher ground, clothed with rippling alfalfa, rises through treetops the spire of a village church. Over the woods and fields rests the hush Where Dreams the Still Canal 123 of the summer afternoon, broken only by the far-off cawing of a rook. Then suddenly up from the heart of the alfalfa shoots straight toward the sky a little fluff of liquid melody. It is a skylark. Up and up he goes, a hundred, two hun- dred feet, his ecstatic carol pouring down like shaken drops from a fountain of music. Then, reaching at once the apex of his flight and of his song, like a plummet he drops again into the grass, to repeat his performance after a moment's interval. Such excursions as the one just described, with infinite variations and additions, may be made anywhere among the hills of the Marne, not alone in its upper reaches but all the way to Paris, and the knowledge that on every hand such scenes lie awaiting the pleasure of the wayfarer, lends to the whole land a never-ending charm. As the junction on the railway between Chaumont and St. Dizier at which a branch line runs off to Andelot and Neufchateau, the village of Bologne is of some importance, as it was in a different sense as early as 757, when a Count of Bologne already held the country as a vassal of Pepin the Short, founder of the Carlovingian dynasty and father of Charlemagne. The place received its name from Ste. Bol- ogne, a virgin martyr of the fourth century A. D., who met her death on the territory of Roocourt-la-C6te, on the oppo- site shore of the Marne. As has been mentioned in an earlier chapter, the counts of Bassigny and Bologne were the earliest lords of Chaumont and one of them, Geoffrey, was made the first Count of Champagne by Hugh Capet about the year 987. The place lies prettily along the left bank of the Marne which, near the village, is again crossed by the canal on an aqueduct. But the special importance of Bologne today resides in the fact that it possesses extensive loading platforms and bar- 124 ^^^ Marne, Historic and Picturesque racks at its military railway station, this being one of the assembly points for troops destined for service on the east- ern frontier, in the event of mobilization. It is scarcely possible as we proceed down river toward Joinville to pass a village with whose past there are not con- nected more or less historical facts or traditions of interest. Thus Roocourt-la-C6te, which was once in the fourth century destroyed by Ptolemy, a Roman general of the Emperor Julian the Apostate, shows a chapel marking the reputed site of the martyrdom of Ste. Bologne. At Vieville was once uncovered by farmers working in their fields, an immense vault made of bricks each nearly two feet square, laid in very hard cement, which when opened disclosed a fortune in Roman coins. Up the deep valley of a little brook entering the Marne from the west, lies Vignory, whose parish church, completed early in the eleventh century, is considered the finest example of Romanesque church architecture in the Department of the Haute-Marne because it preserves so per- fectly the architecture and sculpture of its primitive period. At Villiers-sur-Marne, whose cottages, containing less than 300 inhabitants, lie in a deep bend of the river and canal just off the main Chaumont-St. Dizier road, the writer stopped for lunch one hot and dusty day in August, 191 9. Beside the house wall, whose shadow broke the heat of the sun, the table was set in the courtyard of the villager who was at once the local blacksmith and proprietor of the modest cafe and hotel. Near the door of the blacksmith-shop, hard by, stood a primitive reaper and a huge two-wheeled farm cart, with other farming implements awaiting repairs, and across the court, just beyond a wall clothed with carefully trimmed grapevines, rose the low edifice and squat, gray tower of the village church. Where Dreams the Still Canal 125 While the hostess, smiling with pleasure at having Amer- icans as guests once more, was preparing and serving the luncheon of crisp fried potatoes, feathery omelette, bread and butter, and St. Dizier beer, a fox terrier belonging to the family displayed an unusually keen interest in the visitors, rubbing against their olive-drab trousers and licking their olive-drab sleeves with an unmistakable air of welcome. The family addressed the little animal as " Miss," a name strangely English to the ear, and inquiry disclosed the fact that she had been, until a few months before, the mascot of one of the batteries of the American Fifty-eighth Coast Artillery Corps, which had billetted in Villiers-sur-Marne in January and February, 19 19, after the departure of Batteries A and B, Fifty-ninth Coast Artillery Corps. Upon leaving the humble Marne village, which was in the center of the Eigh- teenth American Training Area, the men of the Fifty-eighth Regiment bequeathed " Miss " to the family of the black- smith and cafe-keeper to whose children she was a boon companion, although on her part evidently cherishing fond recollections of her departed American masters. The hill country in the region of Villiers-sur-Marne, hav- ing rather sterile soil, has been largely left in forests, among which are some of the most extensive in the Haute-Marne. Between Bologne and Donjeux, in addition to numerous smaller areas, lie, to the east of the river, the Foret du Heu, the Bois des Grandes Combes and the Foret du Pavilion, while to the west of it lies the Foret de I'Etoile. Each of these contains in the neighborhood of 25 square miles, or 16,000 acres, of timber. Communal woodlands and National forest alike are intersected by frequent roads and paths, mak- ing every portion of them readily accessible. Here and there among the great stretches of pine, fir and cedar, oak, beech, 126 The Marne, Historic and Picturesque maple, elm, ash, buckthorn, hornbeam, and other varieties of trees, are almost always to be found spots of romantic interest ; a spring surrounded by a sculptured fount and basin, dedicated to some saint; a crucifix of local repute; the ruined oratory of an ancient hermit or, perhaps, the scattered and decaying stones of a medieval chateau or the hunting pavil- ion of long-dead king or duke or count. The villages of Gudmont, Rouvroy, and Donjeux lie close together in a series of bends of the Marne and the canal, of which the latter is now quite active with barges. In the two villages last named, early in 19 19, were billeted the por- tions of the Fifty-eighth and Fifty-ninth Coast Artillery Corps which were not stationed at Villiers-sur-Marne. Don- jeux, which boasts iron works and a cement factory, possesses also a handsome church of the twelfth century with an ogival porch and some well-preserved sculptures of that period. The River Rognon, coming from the southeast, adds its con- siderable volume to the Marne just below the village. Across the widened valley thus created, on the crest of a massive hill east of the Rognon, clothed with vineyards and orchard trees, stands a chateau built in the eighteenth century on the site of a medieval structure which belonged to the family of Joinville, whose most illustrious member, Jean, Sire de Join- ville, the historian of King Louis ix, we will meet when we come to the city of Joinville. St. Urbain, named in honor of Pope Urban i, the saint and martyr whose bones were deposited in the abbey there in 865, is noted for the delicacy of its wines, in the production of which most of its inhabitants make their livelihood. In- deed, in the sixteenth century it boasted a unique official, bear- ing the title of " Gourmet, Taster of Wines." But in St. Urbain the tiny facet upon which the light of history glows Where Dreams the Still Canal 127 is the day of February 24, 1429, when Jeanne d'Arc, escorted by her faithful guardians, Jean de Novelonpont and Bertrand de Poulangy and four others, rested there and heard mass at the abbey after her first night's march from Voucouleurs, through a hostile country, on her ever-memorable journey to the court of the Dauphin at Chinon. One more small village, Fronville, is passed and then, on a hill crest where the road bends above Rupt, is disclosed across billows of orchard and vineyard, a charming view of Joinville, at a distance down the valley ahead, with the slender spire of Notre Dame Church thrusting up at the base of the bold hill whose summit supports the ruins of the Cha- teau de Joinville. A few hundred yards more through Rupt, whose own chateau with its curiously peaked and sloping roofs is not without interest, and the high-road parts with its bordering poplars, passes between the first outlying houses of Joinville into its long main street and by that into the Rue du Grand Pont. The latter, stretching eastward from the railroad station, is the main business thoroughfare of the city. CHAPTER VIII JOINVILLE-EN-VALLAGE THE little city of less than 4,000 people which today looks across the varied verdure of the Marne Valley to the gradual slopes of the eastward heights, carpeted with varicolored blocks of field and vineyard and woodland, harks back for its origin to the reign of the Roman emperor. Vale- rian, whose cavalry general Flavius Valerius Jovinus, is said to have erected on the hill of Joinville a strong tower as a defense against the Germans. The town grew up at the foot of the fortified hill and was itself fortified by King Louis the Fat, that staunch friend of the communes, in the first half of the twelfth century. At this period the Join- ville family became the feudal lords of the chateau and sur- rounding territory, remaining in power until the end of the fourteenth century. Then a daughter of the house. Mar- guerite de Joinville, carried the heritage into the family of Lorraine, from which it passed to the Dukes of Guise and finally to the Orleans family, of which the third son con- tinued to bear the title. Prince of Joinville, until the over- throw of royalty in France. Students of American history will recall that during our Civil War, which occurred while Napoleon iii was emperor of the French and, consequently, while the Orleanists were still active pretenders to the throne of France, the most important members of the family, the Count of Paris, the Duke of Chartres, and the Prince of Joinville, came to America in the autumn of 1861 and served through the Peninsular campaign of the following year as volunteer aides-de-camp on the staff of General George B. Mc- Clellan, commanding the Army of the Potomac. A few years 128 Joinville-en-Vallage 129 later the Count of Paris published a history of the American Civil War to the close of 1863, which, in all the voluminous literature on the subject, has rarely been equaled as a mili- tary study of that portion of the great American conflict. The Sire Jean de Joinville, who was the most illustrious native of the little city by the Marne, is a figure of some interest to Americans and especially to the people of St. Louis, Missouri, because he was the historian of the great St. Louis, that king of France for whom the city of St. Louis was named. The Sire de Joinville preserved in his writings the greater part of the facts which are known today concerning that gallant crusader who was at once the most chivalrous gentleman and the most just and conscientious monarch who ever occupied the throne of France. The bio- grapher who, in writing his intimate story of the good king's life, incidentally earned for himself an immortal place in literature, was not, under the feudal system, a direct vassal of the King of France but of the Count of Lorraine. Con- sequently he never consented to swear fealty to the king. But in 1248 he answered Louis' call to the Sixth Crusade, though he left his ancestral home above the pleasant valley of the Marne with heart burnings so keen that, as he has recorded in his works, he dared not trust himself as he rode away with his knights and men-at-arms to look back at the chateau and the town, the green fields and tree shadowed river from the last point on the road which disclosed that gentle view. Serving the king with unswerving devotion during the six unfortunate years which followed the first brief success at Damietta and the disastrous defeat of Mansourah, in Egypt, he had the joy of returning to his home in 1254. Thenceforward he declined to be lured far from France and the simple and congenial duties and pleasures of a country 130 The Marne, Historic and Picturesque nobleman, either upon crusades or other matters. He was already a very old man when he began his Histoire de Saint Louis, which he completed several years later, in 1309. In 13 1 5, at the age of ninety-one, he showed his doughty spirit by responding to the summons of King Louis X to bear arms against the Flemings. Surviving, with astonishing vitality, the rigors of the campaign, he returned to Joinville, where he died in 13 19 at the age of ninety-five. A man of amusing candor and much homely shrewdness was the Sire Jean. In 1282 he was one of the chief witnesses before the council at St. Denis which approved the canoni- zation of St. Louis and he was present when the body of the crusader king was exhumed in 1298. But, though entirely devoted to his leader in the Sixth Crusade and as brave as the bravest in battle, the good Sire took no pains in his writ- ings to picture himself as a man of heroic mold. Frequently he admits that in perilous situations he was very much afraid and states that on one occasion when a retainer proposed that he court the glorious death of a martyr by riding forth and defying some of the Saracen champions to single com- bat, he ignored the suggestion entirely. He makes no plaus- ible excuses, as a crafty man would have done, for declining to accompany King Louis on his last and, as it proved, fatal crusade, flatly declaring his conviction that it was better to be in mortal sin than to get the leprosy. For his personal consumption he avowed a strong preference for undiluted wine. But once, when he regaled his retainers with a large quantity of good wine, he saw to it that the wine which was given to the soldiers was well watered. That which went to the men-at-arms was less diluted and the beverage served to the knights was in its pristine state but, by way of a hint, each goblet was accompanied by a flagon of water. J oinville-en-V allege 131 Those who attended the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis in 1904 will recall that the memory of King Louis IX received signal honors there and that his retainer and biographer, the Sire de Joinville, was likewise commem- morated by statues and otherwise. The statue in his native city presents him not as a soldier but in the " right clerkly robes" of a scholar and as such he is best remembered in his own country. Above the far end of the street in Joinville on which stands the statue of the Sire Jean towers up the great hill along the crest of which are traced, beneath the trees, the ruined gray walls of the old chateau in which he passed the greater part of his long life. This imposing structure was demolished early in the eighteenth century and about 1793 the magnificent tombs and the carven coats of arms of the Sires de Joinville and the Princes of Lorraine, situated in the still existing Chapel of Ste. Anne, in the cemetery, were utterly wrecked by the revolutionists who, in their ill-con- sidered zeal for their new-found liberties, thus deprived their country of some of its most notable works of art because these were conceived to embody the spirit of political or religious tyranny. A much later chateau, erected by Duke Claude of Guise as a pleasure resort, is still standing in the midst of lovely gardens, among whose ancient trees, mossy and ivy-clad, are scattered tiny artificial waterfalls, lakes, fountains, formal flower beds, and groups of statuary. The spot is today a city park, open to the public. The chateau itself is a fine example of the art of the Renaissance, and its exterior is handsomely decorated with applied columns and many delic- ately carved bas-reliefs. During their ascendancy the Joinvilles erected in the city 132 The Marne, Historic and Picturesque several hospitals and convents and a college. Today these have all disappeared with the exception of the Hospital of Ste. Croix, a long stone structure almost barnlike in its simpli- city which, in the capacity of a museum, contains some inter- esting antiquities. The Church of Notre Dame, built in a combination of Gothic and Renaissance styles, presents in its unusually tall and slender spire the most striking feature in the panorama of the city. But the church is neither of great age nor of exceptional interest save for its magnificent Holy Sepulchre, the work of Antoinette de Bourbon, which was removed to Notre Dame from the former Convent of Sainte Anne. But the old quarter of the city around the church, with its narrow, crooked streets, among them the Rue des Chanoines, once the site of several religious houses; the Rue de I'Auditoire, reminiscent of the days when Joinville was the capital of the Vallage region, and the Rue des Marmou- sets, where are still to be seen in angular corners of some of the walls the grotesque stone figures, marmousets, is full of old buildings, some of them built of wood, which are most quaint and interesting. Many more such buildings were un- doubtedly destroyed when the city was devoted to pillage and flames in 1544 by the Germans under the Emperor Charles v. An artificial branch of the Marne, the Canal des Moulins, designed for manufacturing purposes, runs through the lower part of the town and achieves its primary purpose by operat- ing a large flour mill and various foundries and other facto- ries. But a portion of it called the Quai des Peceaux has be- come a residence quarter, usurping the place of industrial plants, and here are tiny gardens riotous with flowers and grapevines clambering up the walls of the gray old homes and over the summer houses built above the edge of the water, while mossy stone steps lead down to the boat landings below. CHAPTER IX ART IN THE IRON INDUSTRY THE hills of the Marne, from Joinville northward to St. Dizier, though verdantly clothed in orchards and vineyards, yield a greater wealth from the iron ore which is mined in their depths and converted to metal in the high furnaces of the region and then to commercial ironware in its various foundries. Although a few of the plants men- tioned exist in Joinville the town itself is not essentially a manufacturing center and smaller places in its vicinity are more active industrially. Thus, in descending the Marne, Thonnance-le- Joinville on the east bank and Vecqueville on the west, have stove factories and rolling mills. But it is only in the region of St. Dizier that the industry reached really great proportions before the World War, for the reason that it is there only that the ore was sufficiently rich to com- pete with the ore of the Meurthe-et-Moselle iron district around Briey, which the Germans occupied throughout the war and which they intended to hold permanently had they been victorious. Most of the small foundries and furnaces near Joinville have disappeared but they have left behind them pretty vil- lages, embowered in trees. Thonnance, in the Middle Ages, possessed a great chateau fort with wide and deep moats and drawbridges. This strong place passed through some severe struggles, particularly in the wars with the Germans in the sixteenth century. At that time one of the high hills farther down the valley gained the name, La Perche, by which it is still known, owing to the fact that the sentinel who was always stationed there was accustomed, upon observing the approach 133 134 -^^^ Marne, Historic and Picturesque of a body of hostile troops, to lower a white pole, or perche, as a signal to the garrison of the chateau to be prepared for battle. At Vecqueville, which, though close to Joinville, is hidden from the latter by a hill, stands one of those rural churches which are so often interesting by reason either of their archi- tecture or of certain relics within. The church at Vecque- ville claims attention on both scores, as it contains a painting of the baptism of Clovis by St. Remi, executed by Henri Lemoine in 1610, while the sanctuary of the church itself is an excellent piece of architecture of the fourteenth century, the remainder of the structure being of later date and in no sense noteworthy. There is an interesting explanation of the fact, observable in a great number of the French village churches, that the nave is frequently very inferior in workmanship to the choir and chancel. When these churches were built the local seig- neur as an act of religious devotion often paid for the con- struction of the choir and the chancel. Thus pride, if no higher motive, usually impelled him to build as handsomely as his wealth would permit. The nave, on the other hand, was left to the means of the inhabitants of the parish and, since they were usually poor, it was often correspondingly simple and inexpensive. These circumstances explain, fur- ther, why the naves of so many churches, falling into decay, had to be reconstructed at later periods, sometimes in poor imitation of the original design and again in some new fashion, out of harmony with the older and more substantial choir and chancel. Quarries of excellent building stone are in the hills ad- jacent to Chatonrupt, a village which nearly eleven hundred years ago had a certain monastery of St. Brice which was Art in the Iron Industry 135 demolished under Charles Martel. This place lies on the west side of the river and like Curel, on the opposite bank, and the other villages of this section, was originally within the principality of Joinville. The local lord of Curel in the twelfth century, M. de Hennequin, bore the sonorous title, Count of Fresnel, Baron of Curel, Chevalier of the Holy Roman Empire, and First Hereditary Senechal of the Prin- cipality of Joinville. The red-roofed village of today has little to commend it to attention excepting the fact that it is the nearest railroad and canal point to the noted Val d'Osne foundries, which lie about 4 kilometers to the east, in the narrow valley of the Osne brook. It is a location most unpropitious for an industrial plant, with neither railway nor canal facilities closer than the Marne Valley. But when the foundries were established by M. Andre in 1834 neither railroad nor canal existed and the location was dictated by the proximity of the iron mines and of the Forest of Baudray, which at that time furnished fuel for the works. Since then the trademark of the Val d'Osne upon its products has become so widely known that its value more than compensates for the inconveniences of location. Hidden away among the green hills, of which those lying nearest to the works are blackened by the smoke and gasses from the chimneys and cupolas, here is found an industry which probably could exist nowhere else than in France. The reason is that its prosperity rests chiefly upon the service of art. The ateliers of the Val d'Osne could not be better de- scribed than in the words of the indefatigable traveler and graphic writer, M. Ardouin-Dumazet, in the volume of his Voyage en France descriptive of the Haute-Champagne and Basse-Lorraine. In telling of his visit to the foundries a number of years before the war, M. Ardouin-Dumazet says: 10 136 The Marne, Historic and Picturesque In the court, into which I am conducted by the porter, the ground is heaped with objects in cast metal. I observe cupids, a fountain, a crucifix standing head downward, a great stag carrying his antlers superbly. The appearance of the director arrests my contempla- tion of that multitude of busts, statues, madonnas, and artistic de- signs. Very courteously he gives me permission to visit the factory An employee conducts me through the works. We enter the molding shop. In its center rises superbly a bull of cast iron, the work of Rosa Bonheur and her brother, Isidore, of which the Emperor of Russia and the Viceroy of Egypt have already pur- chased reproductions in bronze. The copy which I see today is destined for Roumania. Seated upon the animal a workman, armed with a chisel, is removing the imperfections of the molding, seem- ing thus to excite the ferocious beast until he is ready to leap. We come, then, into the warehouse, which is fantastic and marvelous. A broad alley extends through its length, defined by two lines of railway track. On each side rises a row of statues, some of them colossal ; Virgins destined to crown the hills, statues of the Republic for cities of South America such as Caracas and Buenos Aires. All the decorations of mythology are there, modern works or copies of the antique; abundant representations of Venus; Apollo and Neptune accompanied by an Eloa, as inspired by the poem of Alfred de Vigny. The works of contemporary artists; Carrier-Belleuse, Mathurin Moreau, Jacquemart, Pradier, and twenty others, give a more modern note in the midst of classical repro- ductions. Upon a space 100 meters long and 10 meters wide there are assembled a thousand objects of art in cast metal. Monumental fountains for cities, animals, and escutcheons, produce an extraor- dinary effect in this museum by reason of the confusion of the subjects. It is true that the foundry produces, in addition to objects of art. a great deal of work of an ordinary commercial nature, such as structural iron, piano frames, columns, manhole covers, gutters, candelabra, benches for city parks, grilles, and ornamental fences, etc. Nevertheless its reputation rests chiefly upon its production of works of art. M. Ardouin-Dumazet relates further: The principal creator of that part of the industry of the Val Art in the Iron Industry 137 d'Osne is M. Mignon, who has always directed the efforts of the foundries into that channel. The appeal is to artists for the mold- ing of the beautiful works of the Louvre and of Versailles. When the plant was founded in 1834 molders from the Museum of the Louvre had already been procured to organize the work in this obscure valley. Today it possesses 40,000 models, of which 800 are human statues and 250 statues of animals. Such an abundance of art objects are already fabricated that cities are able, as by magic, to provide themselves with statues, busts, fountains, and candelabra. Thus Liege, wishing to celebrate the completion of some great public work, was able to find at the Val d'Osne five statues which still embellish the opulent Belgian city and, by contrast with other objects of art there, speak highly of the superiority of our indus- try. The Val d'Osne, moreover, obstinately refuses to make cheap articles hastily executed. Thus it has been able to contract for works in cast iron where it seemed that wrought iron had the monopoly as, for example, in the case of the beautiful bannister of the stairway of the Tuileries. As one finds his way back along the wooded road from the Val d'Osne to Curel and thence to Rachecourt and Che- villon, the timber becomes small and scattering on the hills bordering the valley and the steep, stony slopes, clothed with sparse grass, are marked by many winding sheep paths while here and there ruined walls trace the outlines of the plots of ground where at one time vineyards have existed. Rache- court on the Marne, once a railhead for the Thirty-second Division when the "Red Arrows" were billeted in this area, is an uninteresting village, but Chevillon, a somewhat larger place, lying up a deep ravine east of it in the midst of impor- tant quarries of white stone, is more picturesque. The town once was a part of the immense estates of the Joinville fam- ily. It possesses few reminders of its medieval days but at the head of its single long street, which travels in serpentine fashion up the sloping ground, the stone church of massive construction, presents an imposing appearance which is ac- centuated by its elevation. 138 The Marne, Historic and Picturesque Immediately upon entering Chevillon the writer was wit- ness to a touching incident well illustrating the bonds of sympathy by which the World War has bound together the people of all parts of France. His chauffeur on his journey of exploration along the Marne was a young Frenchman named Paul. As a speed artist with a Ford which had seen all of its best days his accomplishments have rarely been excelled, while a residence of eight years in the United States previous to the war as a mechanic in the Ford factories had given him such uncanny intimacy with the interior of the animal that, given a nail and a piece of baling wire, he could make it navigate, whatever happened. At the outbreak of the great war, Paul had promptly returned to his native coun- try and served in the French Army throughout the conflict. During that long four years he had been at different times in countless villages of France, both along the front and in the rear areas, and had once, in 19 16, passed several weeks in Chevillon when his division was in rest in that region. Since his sojourn of the dark days of the war he had not been back. But as we drove up the winding street and stopped before a modest house under the shadow of the church, a middle-aged woman came to the door, who for a moment regarded Paul with the indifference of a stranger. Then a light of recognition dawned in her eyes; with a startled ex- clamation she sprang forward and grasped his hands, pour- ing forth a torrent of welcoming words, for hers was the house in which he had been billeted nearly three years before. Very happily she led us through the house, showing us the room which he had occupied, all the while recalling to his memory other townspeople whom he had known and questioning him eagerly concerning certain soldiers of his unit who had been at Chevillon at the same time, some of Art in the Iron Industry 139 whom, as she learned with obvious sorrow, had afterward been killed. Here were a Parisian and a villager of a remote region of the Haute-Marne drawn together by crowding re- collections of dark days spent under the same roof. It is hardly possible to imagine a New Yorker and a woman of an Oklahoma village, for example, possessing a fund of mutual memories capable of thus instantly renewing cordial friendship after a lapse of years. As we finally drove ofif down the street, Paul's former hostess stood in her doorway waving her farewells until we turned a corner and passed from sight. Three or four kilometers down the broad, smooth river road brings one through Sommeville to Fontaines-sur-Marne. On the way the track skirts a charming little waterfall, where the river foams over a semicircular dam and then dances away in silvery ripples that sway the reeds and grasses over- growing the shallows below the fall. Just under the shore where the river whispers past Fontaines we stumbled upon one of the loveliest spots imaginable for the labors of a work- a-day world. Down a steep, shingly bank under the shadow of the stone bridge and sheltered from the summer sun by trees so dense that they make a leafy tunnel of twilight for the flowing tide, there was a broad stone platform on which a dozen women of the village were, at the moment of our advent, doing their week's washing. Though smilingly averse to having their pictures taken with sleeves rolled up and soap- suds on their arms, they seemed very content, as well they might be, performing this heavy part of their household duties in surroundings so cool and attractive rather than in a hot and steaming kitchen or basement. The lavoir by the river or brookside is an institution in every French village and it is surprising what immaculate laundry work comes, usually. 140 The Marne, Historic and Picturesque from such primitive washing places, where the appHcation of vigorous and wilHng human muscles still holds precedence over every modern labor-saving device. Near Fontaines, on a rough bit of open ground overlook- ing the river, stands one of the most massive and mystifying relics of the remote past which is to be found anywhere — the Menhir, or Haute-Borne. It is a huge, rough-hewn stone of the texture of marble, about 6.5 feet broad at the base and 2 feet thick, standing upright in the ground and rising in a slightly tapering form to a height of nearly 20 feet. Held in awe and veneration by the people of the Mid- dle Ages as the emblem of some godlike protector of the region, the Haute-Borne would seem unquestionably to be a religious monument of the Druids were it not for the fact that about midway of the shaft are still to be de- ciphered, despite the weathering of the storms of long cen- turies, some deeply graven Roman characters forming the one complete word : VIROMARVS, and fragments of some others. The best opinion of archaeolo- gists seems to be that sometime during the period of Roman dominion in Gaul, this immense stone was raised as a boun- dary monument between the territories of two of the Gallic tribes, and that the original inscription probably meant, trans- lated into English : " The general, Viromarus, has fixed here the frontier of the State of the Leuci." Strength is lent to the theory that the Haute-Borne is of Roman and not of Druidical origin by the fact that a short distance from it, in the commune of Gourzon, is a high hill called the Montagne du Chatelet which has yielded \— -. r^'^i.-^ •^ ' ^^■Ov i ^ ■ "<^\^ ^S' H . s '^ -? n ^^i'.--. / '^^ The "lavoir" by the river is an institution in every Marne village \Pa