The roof fell in, breaking the ceiling of the rooms in which the Museum and Library were installed. Some statues were decapitated, and other works of art mutilated. Books, manuscripts, documents and municipal records were destroyed by the rain which fell through the gaping ceilings.
However, the most valuable works in the Museum were saved, as they had been carried off to Germany. A few famous paintings may be mentioned, including, "The Attack of the Railway Station at Strying," an episode in the battle of Forbach (Alphonse Neuville), another by the same artist, "Hunting in St. Pierre-Vaast Wood," in which De Neuville is shown surrounded by the notables of Péronne; and a painting attributed to Breughel Junior, representing a Conference at the house of an attorney, at Cambrai; objects connected with the local history, an important collection of numismatics, and Gallic, Gallo-Roman and Merovingian antiquities were among the collection.
PÉRONNE. THE HÔTEL-DE-VILLE BEFORE THE WAR.
The Renaissance Façade overlooking the Grande Place, and modern Belfry. On the right: The Rue Saint-Sauveur.
Before the war an old fifteenth century house with statues stood in the Grande Place, at the corner of the Rue du Vert Muguet, near the Hôtel-de-Ville.
PÉRONNE. THE HÔTEL-DE-VILLE IN 1917.
Note the German inscription on the ruined building which the enemy had deliberately blown up. (See text.)
In the Place du Marché-aux-Herbes which adjoins the Grande Place stood a statue of Catherine de Poix, known as Marie Fouché, the heroine of the siege of 1536. This statue—like that of General Faidherbe at Bapaume—was stolen by the Germans during the first occupation of the town. When the 1st Warwickshire Regiment entered Péronne on March 17, 1917, they found a grotesque dummy figure on the pedestal (photo, p. [105]).