Between Varreddes and Etrépilly, as we prepare to cross the Ourcq, we pass a little tavern at the left-hand side of the road, which carries on a newly painted sign the name ‘À l’Obus.’ The excuse for this is that on its gable-end, close to a window, it displays an unexploded German shell, rusty and red, which half penetrated the wall and stuck there, without bursting. Similar bombs are already pointed out as curiosities in tree-trunks, and will doubtless be much exploited when tourists begin to be admitted. On the east from Varreddes we had seen, through a screen of trees, the Marne below us, and the great bridge at Germigny-l’Evêque, which the Germans blew up behind them in their final retreat. We are now in the very midst of the worst slaughter of September 6 and 7, 1914, but it is very curious to see how little sign of it is left in the countryside. Occasional remnants of barbed wire, and here and there the trenches of defence, might easily be overlooked by a hasty traveller. He will more readily notice that here are orchards, starred with the rose-colour of ripening apples; there feathery boskage of acacias delicately green; here we run between violently contrasted fields, with the sulphur of mustard on one side, the purple of beetroot on the other; there the oat-harvest descends to little copses of chestnut and beech, that brood over some unseen rivulet. Everywhere the peace of uniform rustic experience, unaltered through the sober centuries, would seem stamped upon the landscape, if the little occasional groups of flapping tricolors were not there to remind us that only two brief years ago the question whether European liberty should or should not be overwhelmed for ever was fought out here with unsurpassable fury and tenacity.
The winding walled hamlet of Etrépilly is bright with the sunshine on its new orange and velvet-brown roofs, by which the damage done by the German shells is concealed. This is not the case with the little village of Vincy-Manœuvres, through which we pass next on our northward course. Vincy was heavily shelled on September 7, and still presents an appearance of dismal dilapidation. Without doubt, this is a matter which depends on the enterprise or wealth of individual proprietors, and it will be curious to see what immediate effect the decision of the Government to repair all private property at the cost of the State will have in these remote communes. It was on September 9, 1914, that the German army made a final stand on the wooded height between Vincy-Manœuvres and Acy-en-Multien, from which they were dislodged next day by the army of Manoury. This was the third and conclusive stage of the great struggle, in the course of which the sixth French army pushed back the half-encircling corps of Kluck’s reinforcements, and here we felt it necessary to bear in mind, as much as the peaceful uniformity of the landscape would permit, the great double line of attack and retreat which we had now twice traversed.
We sped on north, and were now no longer in the department of the Seine-et-Marne, but in that of the Oise. No place was more prominent in the battle than Acy-en-Multien, which we now approached. This must have been, and indeed still is, much the most attractive and picturesque of the villages which the battle of the Ourcq has immortalised. Acy lies in a wooded dimple of the high plateau, and it is scattered broadly over its site, more like an English than a French township. When it is considered with what violence the Germans were hunted out of Acy, it is surprising how few marks of their presence are left. One large house, of château pretensions, is a complete wreck, having been bombed out of existence by German shells, but the beautiful and curious church, with its twelfth-century octagonal tower and its rudiments of earliest Gothic ornament, is, so far as the eye can judge, intact. At Acy a prodigious number of French soldiers are buried in a vast cemetery, which seems to have been improvised for the occasion. The piety of relatives and friends keeps these graves so lavishly covered with nosegays that the cemetery looks like a flower-garden. The epitaphs and sentiments on the tombstones are poignant, and we lingered long and with great emotion in this sacred melancholy place. I was particularly struck by one inscription—that on the tombstone of a certain Charles Schulz, who died as a corporal, leading on his men. He had been, till the war broke out, a Protestant pastor, but in what locality the epitaph does not say. The text chosen for his place of burial—‘il tint ferme, parcequ’il voyait celui qui est invisible’—may well have been the echo of his own sentiments when he exchanged his ministry for the terrible duty of fighting for his fatherland. By his name, he was doubtless an Alsatian, and curiosity was eager to know more of this Protestant pastor-corporal who sleeps in the pretty cemetery of Acy-en-Multien.
In leaving Acy, our motor lost its way up a lane that led only to a farmyard. By this happy chance, in our descent or retreat, we enjoyed an exquisite view of the village, nestled in its grove of chestnuts around the spire of its rather fantastic church—a view which in other conditions we should have missed, since these villages, sunken in folds of the upland, have a strange faculty for making themselves invisible at a little distance. Recovering our route, we continued northward, over the high rounded plateau of the Multien, which is the local name for this part of the department of the Oise. The character of the landscape now changes, and becomes very English. Proceeding from Acy to Nanteuil-le-Hardouin is like traversing the high parts of Gloucestershire; the lie of the land exactly resembles that of the Cotswolds, and I could easily have persuaded myself that we were driving from Stow-in-the-Wold to Burford. It is obvious that this rolling country, here entirely deprived of streams and glens, offers an extraordinary opportunity for the evolutions of troops, but remarkably little shelter for them.
Nanteuil, a gloomy village, almost a town, with winding narrow streets, severely grey, and a great church which towers over the wayfarer, marks the limit of the battle north-eastwards. Although there was a good deal of fighting around Nanteuil, it shows, so far as we could perceive, no trace of injury, even on the picturesque façade of the church. We left it to enter a long avenue of oaks, and there was no mark of any kind to indicate where the battle ended. My companion humorously remarked that it was the duty of the Government to put up a poteau with the inscription, ‘Ici finit le champ de bataille de l’Ourcq’! But in the absence of such a guide-post to aid the imagination of the traveller there was nothing in the rolling agricultural landscape, from which the little flowery flags had now disappeared, to indicate that here there had been any disturbance of the peace of the world.
At this point, therefore, a picture of the battlefields of the Ourcq as they now exist should end. But an impression was awaiting us at the threshold of the very next village, Baron, which was perhaps the most poignant and certainly the most extraordinary of our whole day. As we motored along we noticed, just before reaching Baron, a high wall on the left hand containing a marble plaque, with an inscription in gold letters. Curiosity prompted us to stop and read this inscription, which stated that in the house behind this wall the musical composer, Albéric Magnard, was shot and burned on Wednesday, September 3, 1914. A funereal poem by M. Edmond Rostand described how
Celui-là, qui, rebelle à toute trahison,
had lived there, died to preserve the honour of his art. We were therefore close to the scene of a horrible crime, which the magnitude of the events that closely followed it has somewhat obscured in memory. Albéric Magnard, the author of ‘Guercœur’ and other operas, born on June 9, 1865, was one of the most eminent and successful musicians of France. He had for many years possessed a country-seat at Baron, where he had built a little château, Le Manoir des Fontaines, in which he had brought together a collection of musical instruments and books which was famous.
We were reading the inscription on the wall, when a door in the latter opened and a sad woman appeared, asking us if we would like to see the place where Monsieur Magnard died. She led us through a pergola of climbing plants to a point where we suddenly saw before us what resembled a scene in some opera—a garden blazing with begonias and African marigolds, surrounded on three sides by a graceful balustrade, and velvety with green sward. Below the balustrade a little park, beautifully kept, testified to the elegant taste of the proprietor. But in the midst of this brilliance and neatness the livid shell of the house itself stood untouched since the disaster, producing in the midst of the bright parterres and trim lawns an extraordinary effect of sinister and ironic horror. It was like seeing a skeleton in a ball-dress, or a wreath of roses round a skull.