“The sight of flames devouring a wonder which took not less than 150 years to build, and which was respected throughout numberless wars which took place in this part of France, was one which both alarms and haunts the mind. It seemed as if one were present at an attack by some supernatural power, outside humanity: it was like the vision of a work of hell.
“The fire began between four and five o’clock on Saturday afternoon (19th September). All day shells fell in the town. A whole district of the town, 100 metres in extent, was devoured by the fire, and in the majority of streets only blazing houses and buildings were to be seen.
“Even on the evening before (18th September) some shells had accidentally struck the cathedral. On Saturday morning the German batteries of Nogent l’Abbesse, eight kilometres to the east of Reims, started aiming at the cathedral. Shells discharged regularly and without intermission made a breach in it. These huge blocks of stone, which had resisted the storms of several centuries, and might still have braved the assaults of time, sank with a fearful crash like the roll of thunder.
“At 4.30 the scaffolding on a part of the cathedral where repairs were going on took fire. In a moment this mass of woodwork and scaffolding began to blaze like straw. Sparks falling on the roof carried the fire to the old oak beams which support this part of the building. Soon the roofs of the naves and the transepts were nothing but a blazing brazier, and the flames darted out and licked the towers. One of the burning beams fell on a bed of straw which the Germans, as soon as they occupied the town, had spread inside the cathedral to lay their wounded on. At once the confessionals, the chairs, and everything which happened to be inside the building took fire.
“I had left Paris at midday and I had made a detour round Meaux. I did not get as far as Reims until sundown. It was too late to enter the town, but from the hills which surround it, it was possible to get a still more impressive view of the town than what I should have been able to see in the streets themselves.
“From the gaping roof rose red fire and black smoke, and the reflection of the flames glanced upon the glasswork. At last the dead of night came on, but it was not undisturbed for long. At two o’clock in the morning the German batteries reopened fire. By day it is the smoke of the shell which calls attention to the explosion. By night the swift red flashes make a still more terrible spectacle.
“The dawn came, grey and gloomy with a cold rain, and when the shadows were dispelled and light at length glimmered through the dismal leaden-coloured clouds, which rose and brought the plain into view again, the sight of the ravaged city with its ruined cathedral, the walls of which smouldered among houses still in flames, was a spectacle so dismal that the sun in his course can have seen none more wretched in any quarter of the world.”
Damage to the Cathedral of Reims
According to the report of the Commission of Inquiry, which had as President the French Under-Secretary for Fine Arts, and whose task was to prepare official accounts of the damage done to the Reims Cathedral, the following were the results of the bombardment—