Bombardment of Pont-à-Mousson
This began on the 11th August, continued the following day, then on the 14th August and finally became intermittent. The firing on the town was resumed more than a hundred times. It was an open town, however, and the French army were not defending it, further than that the bridge over the Moselle had been put in a state of defence at the outbreak of hostilities by the 26th light infantry battalion.
Moreover, the bombardment of Pont-à-Mousson took place without previous warning, and was not preceded by any notice, nor any occupation by the German troops, who did not even show themselves (on the 11th, 12th and 14th August) before the town. The operation was carried out by means of guns placed in concealment on the other side of the frontier. The firing was directed by an airship flying over the batteries.
Acts of this kind are the proof of a deliberate and premeditated desire to destroy and to terrorise. In this case destruction is here not the inevitable sequence to attack and defence, but an end pursued for its own sake in contravention and defiance of established laws. Thanks to the signals given by the airship, the German batteries were able to damage the St. Martin quarter, on the right bank of the Moselle, and the site of the new hospital and the college. The hospital was flying the Red Cross flag, but was struck precisely for that very reason: a shell burst near the bed in which a wounded Saxon officer was under treatment. Fortunately, no one in the hospital was wounded, though not less than seventy shells struck the building during the 14th August. In the rest of the town forty people were killed and as many wounded. They were women and children.