At Baccarat it was the same. Everything that the German soldier thought right to take was taken. They took wine and flour. At the glassworks the finest articles, cut-glass services, were packed up with a care which showed every characteristic but blind violence, and packed on wagons directed to Sarrebourg. Carts laden with furniture also took the same road.
At Barbery and at Charmont men forced their way into the rooms of private houses, having first turned out the residents. Furniture and family property—all were taken, and thrown out of the windows or carried off. The village of Bussières, near Château-Thierry, was completely destroyed, of set purpose. The Prussians pillaged there everything they could find. The remainder was destroyed, pulled about, broken up, carried off, smashed to atoms by a kind of savagery. Then it was set on fire, and the flames finished the work of devastation.
At Albert, Captain Zirgow from the 30th August authorised the soldiers under his command to visit, so he said, unoccupied houses. This was as much as to give them carte blanche for pillage and theft. Consequently the booty taken by the Germans in this district was of great value.
The town of Coulommiers was widely pillaged; silver, linen, boots were taken away, especially from deserted houses, and many bicycles were packed on motor-lorries.
At Rebais a jeweller’s shop was sacked.
At Nomény, before burning the town the Germans took out of the dwelling-houses all that they thought worth carrying away. They sent everything to Metz. At Beauzemont, the château was looted by officers of the German general staff, accompanied by their wives; at Drouville, at Hériménil, at Jolivet, there was systematic pillage. In the last locality a sum of 600 francs was stolen by a German.
At Choisy-au-Bac, in Valois, the German soldiers, in presence of their officers, gave themselves up to general pillage, the fruits of which were carried off in carriages stolen from the inhabitants. Two military doctors wearing the Red-Cross brassard with their own hands pillaged Mme. Binder’s house.
At Trumilly the looting was carried out in perfect order. A non-commissioned officer on the general staff of the 19th regiment of Hanoverian Dragoons robbed Mme. Huet of 10,000 francs’ worth of jewels. The German colonel, to whom this lady made complaint, approved of the non-commissioned officer’s action. Another German soldier of the 91st infantry regiment was guilty of several thefts to the value of 815 francs. And these cases were not the only ones clearly proved in this district.
Looting of Louvain
During the days which followed the burning of Louvain, the houses which remained standing and whose inhabitants had been driven out were handed over to be looted under the very eyes of the German officers.