CHAPTER XV

DESTROYING THE PRICELESS MONUMENTS OF CIVILIZATION

THE INEXPIABLE GERMAN CRIME, LOUVAIN -- ART TREASURES OF HISTORIC CITY -- REDUCED TO A HEAP OF ASHES -- PITILESS DESTRUCTION AS TOLD BY TOWN TREASURER -- A MODERN POMPEII -- BURNING OF CITY SYSTEMATIC -- INDIGNANT PROTEST AGAINST MODERN HUNS.

All through Belgium and all through the country of the Franco-German border line are towns and cities filled with treasures of art and history--some of the richest, indeed, that centuries of civilization have amassed. Under the guns of both sides of the mighty conflict these paintings and shrines and storied buildings have been exposed to destruction, and many of them have been wantonly sacrificed, shattered beyond hope of restoration.

Under the latest Hague proposals, Article XXVIII, historic monuments are supposed to be respected even by warring nations, yet both Germany and France have accused each other of violating this convention. The whole of civilized humanity rises in protest against such sacrilege.

Among all the black crimes of the German invasion of Belgium none is blacker than the sack and burning of Louvain, the fairest city of Belgium and the intellectual metropolis of the Low Countries. According to a bitter statement of Frank Jewett Mather, the well-known American art critic, “Louvain contained more beautiful works of art than the Prussian nation has produced in its entire history.”

ART TREASURES OF HISTORIC CITY

There was hardly a building within the ramparts but breathed the air of some romance of the Middle Ages or marked a stepping-stone in its stirring history. Once before war robbed it of its commercial prestige, only to permit it to rise, phœnix-like, as the center of learning during the sixteenth century. At the opening of the present war it still boasted of the largest university in Belgium, in which thousands of antique volumes and prints were stored. Its museums and its churches housed scores of paintings of the old Flemish masters.

Louvain has passed through successive periods of culture and barbarity ever since Julius Caesar established a permanent camp there during his campaigns against the Belgians and the Germans. In the eleventh century it became the residence of the long line of Dukes of Brabant, and was the capital until Brussels wrested this distinction from it during an uprising of weavers against their feudal masters. In the fourteenth century it had gained a population of between 100,000 and 150,000, and there were no fewer than 2,400 woolen manufactories. The weavers were a turbulent lot, however, and when they rose against the Duke Wencelaus he conquered them and forced thousands of them to flee to Holland and England. It was then that Brussels became the capital and Louvain lost its prestige as a center of the cloth-making industry.

Scholars began to pour into the town, however, to glean what learning they could from the old parchments and books which its castles contained. In 1423 Duke John IV of Brabant founded Louvain University. Students flocked there from all over the world. In the sixteenth century it had 4,000 students and forty-three colleges.

The library occupied a large room with fine wood panels, carved in intricate designs. It held 150,000 volumes and thousands of manuscripts, valuable beyond price. It contained a colossal group representing a scene from the Flood, sculptured by Geerts in 1839.

One block to the north of the university is the Grande Place, on which faced the Hôtel de Ville, one of the finest examples of the late Gothic style of architecture in Europe. It surpassed the town halls of Bruges, Brussels, and Ghent in elegance of detail and harmony of design. It was erected in 1448 by Mathieu de Layens, and it was from the upper windows of this building that thirteen magistrates of noble birth were hurled to their death on the spears of the populace in the streets below during the weavers’ uprising.

Across the Grande Place stood the church of St. Pierre, a magnificent type of the Gothic style built on a cruciform plan and flanked by chapels holding reliquaries of the saints, life-sized wooden figures, and priceless carvings and paintings. There might have been seen the works of Van Papenhoven, Roger van der Weyden, Dierick Bouts, and De Layens.

REDUCED TO A HEAP OF ASHES

The notification of the sacking of Louvain was contained in the notice issued by the British Press Bureau on Friday, August 28, 1914, which read as follows: “On Tuesday evening a German corps, after receiving a check, withdrew in disorder into the town of Louvain. A German guard at the entrance to the town mistook the nature of this incursion and fired on their routed fellow-countrymen, mistaking them for Belgians. In spite of all denials from the authorities the Germans, in order to cover their mistake, pretended that it was the inhabitants who had fired on them, whereas the inhabitants, including the police, had been disarmed more than a week before. Without inquiry and without listening to any protests the German commander-in-chief announced that the town would be immediately destroyed. The inhabitants were ordered to leave their dwellings; a party of the men were made prisoners and the women and children put into trains, the destination of which is unknown. Soldiers furnished with bombs set fire to all parts of the town. The splendid church of St. Pierre, the University buildings, the library, and the scientific establishment were delivered to the flames. Several notable citizens were shot. A town of 45,000 inhabitants, the intellectual metropolis of the Low Countries since the fifteenth century, is now no more than a heap of ashes.”

PITILESS DESTRUCTION AS TOLD BY TOWN TREASURER

The town treasurer of Louvain, who managed to escape from the sacked city, gave in the London Times the following account of the destruction:

“At last, on Tuesday night, there took place the unspeakable crime, the shame of which can be understood only by those who followed and watched the different phases of the German occupation of Louvain.

“It is a significant fact that the German wounded and sick, including their Red Cross nurses, were all removed from the hospitals. The Germans meanwhile proceeded methodically to make a last and supreme requisition, although they knew the town could not satisfy it. Toward six o’clock the bugle sounded, and officers lodging in private houses left at once with arms and luggage. At the same time thousands of additional soldiers, with numerous field pieces and cannon, marched into the town to their allotted positions. The gas factory, which had been idle, had been worked through the previous night and day by Germans, so that during this premeditated outrage the people could not take advantage of darkness to escape from the town. A further fact that proves their premeditation is that the attack took place at eight o’clock, the exact time at which the population entered their homes in conformity with the German orders--consequently escape became well-nigh impossible. At 8.20 the full fusillade with the roar of the cannons came from all sides of the town at once.

“The cavalry charged through the streets sabring fugitives, while the infantry, posted on the foot-paths, had their fingers on the triggers of their guns waiting for the unfortunate people to rush from the houses or appear at the windows, the soldiers praising and complimenting each other on their marksmanship as they fired at the unhappy fugitives. Those whose houses were not yet destroyed were ordered to quit and follow the soldiers to the railway station. There the men were separated from mothers, wives, and children, and thrown, some bound, into trains leaving in the direction of Germany. They saw their carefully-collected art and other treasures being shared out by the soldiers, the officers looking on. Those who attempted to appeal to their tormentors’ better feelings were immediately shot. A few were let loose, but most of them were sent to Germany.

“On Wednesday at daybreak the remaining women and children were driven out of the town--a lamentable spectacle--with uplifted arms and under the menace of bayonets and revolvers. The day was practically calm. The destruction of the most beautiful part of the town seemed momentarily to have soothed the barbarian rage of the invaders. On Thursday the remnant of the Civil Guard was called up on the pretext of extinguishing the conflagration; those who demurred were chained and sent with some wounded Germans to the Fatherland, whilst the population had to quit.”

A MODERN POMPEII

Fair Louvain is now a place of desolation and ashes. Its treasures have been madly sacrificed to the god of war. A graphic description of the ruin has been written by Professor E. Gilson, of the University of Louvain, in the form of a letter to the Belgian Minister of Justice. It says in part:

“At the ‘Seven Corners’ Louvain reveals itself to my eyes like a luminous panorama in the glade of a forest. The center of the city is a smoking heap of ruins. Houses are caved in, nothing remains but smoking ruins, and a mass of brick. It is a veritable Pompeii. But how much more tragic and vivid is the sight of this new Pompeii! An oppressive silence everywhere. Everybody has fled; at the windows of cellars I see frightened faces, and at the street corners Prussian sentinels, sordid, immovable and silent.

“In the center stand the walls of St. Pierre, now a grinning silhouette, roof and belfry gone, the walls blackened and caved in. In front stands the Hôtel de Ville, dominating everything and almost intact. Further on, the remains of Les Hales, entirely destroyed, except for the arcade of big pillars of the Salle des Pas Perdus. The library and its treasures are entirely gone.

“In the Petite Rue Louis Nelsens everything is destroyed. At the foot of the statue, in a flower bed all tramped underfoot, there is an irregular hillock covered with a few dead leaves. An old woman, recognizing me, comes out of her cellar and tells me: ‘Monsieur, this is the grave of Monsieur David and his son, the best people that ever lived.’ She cries. They were killed by shrapnel fired upon them as they were leaving their house. The Capuchin brothers made temporary graves for the dead.

“Graves were found nearly everywhere. In front of the statue, near a house, I find traces of fire. ‘In this place,’ the old woman tells me, ‘the Prussians burned a body after soaking it in petroleum. Some men buried the charred remains.’ I pick up a key which must have belonged to the dead man--a memento of this monstrous incident.

“In the center of the city the sight is extraordinarily picturesque--gloomy, abominable, and more so in the evening when the full moon is shining over the mass of ruins, it is really fantastic, diabolical.

“The center of old Louvain, the old city of the Dukes of Brabant, exists no longer; a new city will have to be built in the center of the quarters spared by the torch.

BURNING OF CITY SYSTEMATIC

“A villager told me that the soldiers had two ways of setting fire to the houses: One was to break the windows of the first floor, to throw petroleum on the floor, and throw in torches of burning straw, while others were engaged in shooting at the upper-story windows to prevent the inhabitants from throwing missiles on those setting fire to their homes.”

INDIGNANT PROTEST AGAINST MODERN HUNS

Indignant protest against the outrageous sacrifice of Louvain arose from every quarter of the civilized world. The London Tablet, commenting on the desolation of Belgium and the sacrifice of her temples, said:

“The irreparable crime of Louvain and the ruthless damage done to the Cathedral of Malines while Cardinal Mercier was absent in Rome have left Belgium’s cup of bitterness still unfilled. We do not understand the reason of these remorseless attacks upon venerable places of worship, and particularly upon Roman Catholic churches. We do not fully discern why even the modern Huns should be so eager to violate these peaceful sanctuaries, destroying one, bombarding another with zest, stabling their horses in a third, as they have undoubtedly done. One would almost fancy that the late Professor Cramb was right after all, that Germany regards the Christian creed as outworn, and that she dreams, when she has imposed her will upon the world (if she can), of founding a new religion, with the Kaiser as its inspired expositor. We wonder what the pious people of Bavaria and Austria-Hungary think of this persistent desecration of Catholic shrines. The meaning of the sack of Dinant is, however, sufficiently clear. Thousands of travelers know that pleasant little town, which clustered beneath the old citadel on the banks of the Meuse. They will learn with horror and distress that it has shared the fate of Louvain, that it has been shelled and burned, that many of its defenseless men have been shot, and that its women are hunted and homeless. We have not yet been told, but doubtless shall hear in due course, that the splendid thirteenth-century church of Notre Dame, the most complete example of pointed Gothic architecture in Belgium, has perished amid the general destruction. The reason of this sack and pillage of town after town in Belgium, with every accompaniment of murderous barbarity--Termonde is another melancholy case in point--is becoming obvious. It is due to the resolute resistance of Antwerp. The Germans want to capture Antwerp, but can not spare enough men to invest the fortress, and in any case hope to obtain it without paying the price. They seek to terrorize Antwerp into submission by laying Belgium waste, by razing her undefended cities to the ground, and by shedding the blood of innocent Belgian citizens of both sexes. . . . The wilful devastation of Belgium will have only one definite result. It will increase the chorus of indignant denunciation of German methods of warfare which now rises from every civilized country in the world.”