Yet it must be obvious that only the regular troops of the French Engineer Corps could have blown up the iron bridge at Creil; the civilians had no hand in it. As an excuse for these massacres, when any excuse is offered, the notebooks usually note that "civilians" or "francs-tireurs" had fired on the troops. But the "scrap of paper" which Germany subscribed—the Convention of 1907—provides in its first article "the laws, the rights, and the duties are not applicable solely to the army, but also to militia and bodies of volunteers" under certain conditions, of which the main one is that they shall "openly bear arms;" while Article 2 stipulates that "the population of an unoccupied territory, which on the approach of the enemy spontaneously takes up arms to resist the invading forces, without having had time to organize as provided in Article I, shall be considered as a belligerent, if they bear arms openly and observe the laws and customs of war."
Figure 3.
In the light of this text, the bearing of the barbarous recitals which follow may be properly estimated:
(a) Notebook of Private Hassemer, (Eighth Corps, Sept. 3, 1914, at Sommepy, Marne.)—Dreadful butchery. Village burned to the ground; the French thrown into the burning houses, civilians and all burned together.
(b) Notebook of Lieut. Kietzmann, (Second Company, First Battalion, Forty-ninth Infantry,) under date of Aug. 18, 1914, (Fig. 3.)—A short distance above Diest is the village of Schaffen. About fifty civilians were concealed in the church tower, and from there fired on our troops with a mitrailleuse. All the civilians were shot.
[It may here be noted, for the sake of precision, that the First Report of the Belgian Commission of Inquiry, Antwerp, Aug. 28, Page 3, identifies some of the "civilians" killed at Schaffen on the 18th of August; among them, "the wife of François Luyckz, 45 years of age, with her daughter aged 12, who were discovered in a sewer and shot"; and "the daughter of Jean Ooyen, 9 years of age, who was shot"; and "André Willem, sacristain, who was bound to a tree and burned alive.">[
(c) Notebook of a Saxon officer, unnamed, (178th Regiment, Twelfth Army Corps, First Saxon Corps,) Aug. 26.—The exquisite village of Gué-d'Hossus (Ardennes) was given to the flames, although to my mind it was guiltless. I am told that a cyclist fell from his machine, and in his fall his gun was discharged; at once the firing was begun in his direction, and thereupon all the male inhabitants were simply thrown into the flames. It is to be hoped that like atrocities will not be repeated.
This Saxon officer had, nevertheless, already witnessed like "atrocities." The preceding day, Aug. 25, at Villers-en-Fagne, (Belgian Ardennes,) "where we found grenadiers of the guard, killed and wounded," he had seen "the curé and other inhabitants shot"; and three days previous, Aug. 23, at the village of Bouvignes, north of Dinant, he had witnessed what he thus describes:
Through a breach made in the rear we get access into the residence of a well-to-do inhabitant and occupy the house. Passing through a number of apartments, we reach a door where we find the corpse of the owner. Further on in the interior our men have wrecked everything like vandals. Everything has been searched. Outside, throughout the country, the spectacle of the inhabitants who have been shot defies any description. They have been shot at such short range that they are almost decapitated. Every house has been ransacked to the furthest corners, and the inhabitants dragged from their hiding places. The men shot; the women and children locked into a convent, from which shots were fired. And, for this reason, the convent is about to be set fire to; it may, however be ransomed if it surrenders the guilty ones and pays a ransom of 15,000 francs.