Erchinold, the Mayor, erected a monastery near by for Scotch monks, presided over by St. Fursy. Not a trace of this now remains. It is said to have contained the tomb of Charles the Simple, who died of famine at the hands of Hubert in a dungeon. When Philip d'Alsace, Count of Vermandois, was killed in the Crusades (1199) the towns of Péronne and St. Quentin were united to the crown of France, and so remained. Charles V, in 1536 unsuccessfully besieged Péronne, and during this siege a young woman named Marie Fourré performed prodigious deeds of heroism which history records.
The great Ligue of 1577 was proclaimed here, following its announcement at Paris. Until the Duke of Wellington captured it on his way to Paris' after the battle of Waterloo, Péronne-la-Pucelle had never been taken by an enemy.
In the Franco-Prussian War, 1870-71, Péronne was sacked and burned after a most memorable siege, in which many of the remarkable old buildings were destroyed, but in 1910 the town, when I last saw it, was one of the quaintest in all Picardy. There was a remarkable old church here, that of St. Jean, which dated from the sixteenth century, which had a portal of three Gothic arches and arcades surmounted by a great flamboyant rose-window, the glass of which, though modern, was of fine quality and workmanship. It had a tower flanked by a "tourelle" of beautiful proportions, and in the interior the vaulting, pulpit, and the stained glass windows were pronounced by experts to be well-nigh faultless.
This church, and the most singular and picturesque Hôtel de Ville (sixteenth century), a sketch of which I made in 1910, the invaders took great pains entirely to destroy in April, 1917, when they made their celebrated "victorious retreat." The latest accounts say that not a trace of these two remarkable monuments now exists, that for a week or more before the retreat, the German engineers used tons of explosives to destroy them.
The gray old square before the Hôtel de Ville is now a yawning pit, bordered by shapeless piles of stone and ashes.
At this time we know not what other mischief the invader has committed in this neighborhood. There are endless opportunities for destruction and pillage, and we may be fully prepared for irreparable damage and losses in all of this region before the Iconoclasts are driven back to their last line of defenses.
All of Champagne, of Picardy,—all of Flanders were filled with exquisite villages, towns, and cities, each of which was unique in works of art and antiquity. These have shriveled like a garden of flowers before a heavy frost. This great catastrophe has so stunned humanity, that we are only beginning to realize what it means.
The invader says contemptuously that no cathedral is worth the life of one German soldier. So Rheims has been destroyed; so St. Peter's of Louvain; so—but why enumerate here?—The list is recorded in letters of fire.