* Hare's "Northeastern France."
In the "Place du Huit Octobre" was a very good monument by Barrias, symbolizing the successful defense of the town against the first attack by the Germans on October 8, 1870. We found that the Hôtel de Ville contained a most unusual "Salle du conseil," a large well proportioned room, the roof of which rested upon two circular wooden vaults. This was furnished with a most elaborate mantel or chimney piece in the mixed Gothic and Renaissance styles, and of remarkable workmanship. In the great German retreat of April, 1917, this noble building was blown up with bombs. Perhaps they placed upon it, as they did upon other shattered structures, a sign bearing the inscription: "Nicht Argern, nur Wundern."
There was a noble "Collegiate Church of St. Quentin" near this Hôtel de Ville, considered by architects to be a splendid example of French Gothic of the twelfth to the fifteenth centuries. This was unfortunately so shut in by small buildings as to make a study of it difficult. Its choir, nave, and portal, and its really vast height, formed unusual features, and added to these wonders were the beautiful triforium and terminal windows of the principal transept (there were two of these, "very rare in a Gothic church," says Hare).
The oldest part of the church was easily discovered between these transepts. There were seven absidal chapels; in that of St. Roch was the incised tombstone of "Mahaus Patrelatte," dated 1272.
Under the choir were crypts said to have been of the ninth century, and in one of these was a stone sarcophagus of St. Quentin and SS. Victorious and Gentianus, who were St. Quentin's companions in martyrdom. The west portal of the church was formerly adorned with a large number of statues, vestiges of which were plainly visible. A statue of Quentin Delatour, a famous draftsman in crayon of the eighteenth century, a native of the town, stood before the church; it was by Lauglet the sculptor, and of considerable merit. A collection of Delatour's crayon drawings were in the small museum in the rue du Petit-Origny....
Unfortunate St. Quentin, now once more in ashes, and this time so completely obliterated that nothing remains on the hill but some blackened ragged piles of masonry, was besieged by Philip II in 1558, when war broke out between Picardy and Flanders.
"Philip II had landed there with an army of forty-seven thousand men, of whom seven thousand were English. Never did any great sovereign and great politician provoke and maintain for long such important wars without conducting them in some other fashion than from the recesses of his cabinet and without ever having exposed his life on the field of battle. The Spanish army was under the orders of Emmanuel-Philibert, Duke of Savoy, a young warrior of thirty, who had won the confidence of Charles V. He led it to the siege of St. Quentin, a place considered one of the bulwarks of the kingdom.
"Philip II remained at some leagues' distance in the environs. Henry II was ill prepared for so serious an attack; his army, which was scarcely 20,000 strong, mustered near Laon under orders of the Duke of Nevers, Governor of Champagne; at the end of July, 1557, it hurried into Picardy, under the command of the Constable de Montmorency, who was supported by Admiral de Coligny, his nephew, by the Duke of Enghien, by the Prince of Condé, by the Duke of Montpensier, and by nearly all the great lords and the valiant warriors of France. They soon saw that St. Quentin was in a deplorable state of defense; the fortifications were old and badly kept up; soldiers and munitions of war, as well as victuals were all equally deficient. Coligny did not hesitate, however; he threw himself into the place on the 2nd of August during the night with a small corps of 700 men and Saint Remy, a skillful engineer, who had already distinguished himself in the defense of Metz. The Admiral packed off the useless mouths, repaired the walls at the points principally threatened, and reanimated the failing courage of the inhabitants.
"The Constable and his army came within hail of the place; and d'Andelot, Coligny's brother, managed with great difficulty to get 450 men into it.
"On the 10th of August the battle was begun between the two armies. The Constable affected to despise the Duke of Savoy's youth: 'I will soon show him,' said he, 'a move of an old soldier.'