“During the whole week which the German occupation of Château-Thierry lasted,” wrote the Temps of the 25th October, 1914, “shops and rooms were methodically pillaged; jewellers and bazaar owners were plundered most of all. Patients under treatment in the Red Cross hospital whose wounds did not prevent them walking, went through the town all day, thieving here and there, and then returned in the evening with their booty to sleep in hospital.
“One day they offered Mlle. X some bonbons which they had just stolen, and they appeared much surprised when the young Frenchwoman refused their present.
“Lorries loaded with stolen articles were lined up on the road to Soissons as far as the eye could reach. A non-commissioned officer and four men were seen to drag along a little English cart, nicely fitted, quite loaded with booty.
“Needless to say, the cellars were completely emptied. Not a single pot of preserve at Château-Thierry; blankets, sheets, table-cloths, napkins—everything was carried off. The Château of Belle-Vue, which belongs to M. Jules Henriet, was not burnt, but everything in it was plundered. Chests, desks, all the furniture were forced open. As for silver, for the most part it disappeared from the houses that were sacked.”
Serbia and Russia
The same kind of thing took place in Poland and Serbia. At Chabatz the shops were broken open and the goods which they contained stolen.
In the Report of the Serbian Commission of Inquiry it is said that at Prngnavor and in the outskirts all the furniture of the inhabitants, such as beds, chests, chairs, tables, sewing-machines, and even stoves had been completely smashed and thrown outside the houses. The Commission also declared that all the domestic animals which had not been used for food or taken away were slaughtered.
Theft of Pictures and Various Objets d’Art
Objets d’art of every kind and pictures were several times stolen in this way both in Belgium and in France. The review Kunst und Künstler, in an article from the pen of Professor Shaeffer, who goes so far as to specify the pictures which ought to figure in German museums, proclaimed the right to take possession of such articles and bring them to Germany.