The town of Arras was included, during the month of October, in the theatre of military operations. The Germans found a pretext for destroying it by two bombardments, one on the 6th, the other on the 20th and 21st October, which sowed destruction and death in this town.
The first bombardment of Arras, which may be compared to that at Reims, was meant to destroy the town hall, a miracle of Flemish art, built at the beginning of the seventeenth century, one of the finest ornaments of northern France.
“On the 6th October, at six a.m.,” said the Liberté of the 16th October, “the first shells fell near the railway station. A little afterwards a bomb fell on the roof of the town hall. All day long the guns belched forth death, destruction and terror. The inhabitants took refuge in the cellars, and even the wretched wounded also had to be brought down into them, for, disregarding the Red Cross, the Germans plied with machine-guns all the streets round the town hall, in which there were several hospitals and ambulances.
“The Hôpital St. Jean was the scene of a frightful accident. A whole storey collapsed under the shells. A nun and some wounded happened to be in the storey below, and were buried underneath the ruins. It was not possible to recover their bodies until the evening, when the assassins of the Kaiser had ceased bombardment.
“The musée, the cathedral, the Church of St. John the Baptiste, the old Convent of the Holy Sacrament, with its seventeenth-century campanile, and the Ursuline belfry (a reproduction of the old reliquary of the Holy Candle) were damaged. The shells fired at the cathedral pierced its roof in two places and laid bare the vault.”
The town hall alone was struck by nine-tenths of the explosive shells thrown at Arras. Finally, the two old towers, so stately and so peculiar in appearance, which were all that was left of the old abbey founded by Saint Eloi, in the village of that name near Arras, were demolished by the Germans, who bombarded them without any excuse, for the mere pleasure of destruction.
The Germans cannot pretend that they did not know the site of all these monuments, nor that of the hospitals of Arras, for they had occupied the town one day in the beginning of September. No more can they allege that the French had made use of the quarter destroyed by them for attack or for self-defence, for this part of the town is in a hollow, which an army would never try to utilise.
As for the second bombardment of Arras (20th to 21st October), it was aimed at the belfry, the incomparable monument of the town which alone remained standing above the centre of the town hall. The building fell on the 21st, at eleven a.m., having been cut off close from the ancient roof of the structure round about it.