THE CATHEDRAL AFTER THE FIRE OF SEPT. 19, 1914
In the 17th and 18th centuries only repairs rendered necessary by the wear of the stone were effected. In the 19th century, beginning in 1845, important restorations, principally by Viollet-le-Duc, were carried out with regularity.
The Cathedral's approximate measurements are 480 feet long (it is the longest church in France), and 160 feet wide at the intersection of the transept. The vaulting, less lofty than that at Beauvais (156 feet) and Amiens (143 feet), is 123 feet in height. The towers are six in number (as in the cathedral at Laon), of which the four situated at the extremities of the transept have never had more than one storey. The principal towers are about 266 feet in height, or about 60 feet higher than those of Nôtre-Dame in Paris.
The plan of the Cathedral is in shape a Latin cross, with radiating chapels. It is built entirely of stone from the neighbourhood of Rheims. Forty pillars support the vaults, which are further sustained by fifty buttresses. Three great doorways and eight secondary doors give access to the interior, which is lighted by a hundred windows and rose-windows; 2,303 figures of all sizes decorate the exterior and interior.
THE CATHEDRAL PHOTOGRAPHED FROM AEROPLANE IN 1916
The Cathedral During the War
In revenging themselves on Rheims for their disappointments and failures, the Germans seem to have been particularly determined to destroy the building which is at once one of the most precious artistic treasures of France and one of the most ancient evidences of her history. In 1814 the then Allies bombarded Rheims but respected the Cathedral. It is true that there were Germans who found fault with this respectful forbearance. One of them, Johann Joseph Goëres, author of a voluminous work entitled "Christian Mysticism," dared to write in April, 1814: "Destroy, reduce to ashes, this Rheims basilica, where Chlodoric was consecrated, and where was born that empire of the Franks, those turncoat brothers of the noble Germans; burn the Cathedral." In the course of the recent war the Germans followed the vindictive advice of Goëres, although, less frank than he, they did not dare, in face of the indignation of Christendom and of the whole world, boast of their vandalism.