St. Juvin
On September 15, 1792, a strong Prussian detachment, under the command of Hohenlohe, drove a small body of French troops from the village, forcing them back on Senuc. Eighty foot-soldiers were taken prisoners and sent to the headquarters at Landres. Among them were several Alsatians whom the Prince of Prussia addressed in German, offering to enrol them in his regiment, but only one of them agreed to serve against France.
In October, 1918, along the St. Juvin—Landres—St. Georges line, the Americans delivered a long series of fierce assaults upon the “Brunehilde” position, or second line of defence which the Germans had prepared in this district. On October 11, 1918, at the time when the Americans approached St. Juvin, the village was in flames. Its recapture proved difficult. On October 14, the Americans outflanked it on the north, and, on the 15th, regardless of their heavy losses, they succeeded in taking it inch by inch, and in gaining the positions of St. Georges and Landres-St. Georges. On the 16th they were fighting in Champigneulle on the west of St. Georges, and holding the Châtillon Hill on the south of Landres. By the 18th they had occupied both these villages.
St. Juvin is dominated by its church—one of the most interesting of the fortified churches in this district—which, in the distance, looks like a fortress. Its high thick walls, with narrow windows and occasional loopholes at the top, form a parallelogram, flanked at each corner by a round tower with corbels.
In the interior of the church there is a well and an oven. Dating from the early part of the 17th century, it was rebuilt between 1615 and 1623 on the site of the old church destroyed under the League about 1552. Some of the relics of the patron-saint of the Parish, St. Juvin, were preserved in a shrine of gilded bronze.
FORTIFIED CHURCH OF ST. JUVIN