Fire at Reims Cathedral

On 19 September 1914 German artillery shelled the centre of Reims, and shells struck the Gothic Cathedral of Notre-Dame. In the afternoon the wooden scaffolding around one of the towers caught fire, and the flames spread to the roof and the interior of the church. The British chronicle of the war describes the event as the first bombardment of the cathedral. In fact shells had been falling near it for several days already, but it was on 19 September that the cathedral went up in flames. The image of the burning church, in which the kings of France had been crowned for centuries, shocked the world.

The coronation cathedral

Reims Cathedral was one of the finest works of Gothic architecture. Construction of the present church began in 1211. Its façade was adorned with more than two thousand sculptures. For the French, however, it meant more than art. According to tradition Clovis, the first Christian king of the Franks, was baptised at Reims, and from the Middle Ages until 1825 almost all the rulers of France were crowned there. In 1429 Joan of Arc stood in the cathedral during the coronation of Charles VII. It was therefore a symbol of national history, not just one monument among many.

In 1913 wooden scaffolding was put up around the north tower, because conservation work was planned. No one imagined that a year later it would cause a catastrophe.

A hospital in the nave

The Germans occupied Reims at the beginning of September. On 12 September, as they prepared to retreat after their defeat on the Marne, they set up a hospital for the wounded in the cathedral. A thick layer of straw was spread on the floor of the nave, and soldiers were laid on it. The archpriest of the cathedral, Abbé Maurice Landrieux, later Bishop of Dijon, protested, but to no avail. The next day the French entered the city, and some of the German wounded who were unable to march remained in the cathedral as prisoners.

The German troops left Reims, but withdrew only a few kilometres, to the heights around the city. As early as 14 September their artillery began shelling the city. Over the following days the shells grew more numerous. On 18 September one of them hit the archbishop’s palace next to the cathedral, killing three people.

The fire

On 19 September the bombardment was exceptionally violent. According to French accounts, at about 3 p.m. a shell hit the scaffolding by the north tower and set it alight. The dry pine wood caught fire instantly. The heat blew out the glass in part of the great rose window, and sparks fell inside, onto the straw spread in the nave. Within moments a second fire broke out inside.

The fire spread to the roof. Beneath the lead covering lay a huge timber roof frame, called “the forest” by its builders. It burned completely. Hundreds of tonnes of lead melted and poured through the gargoyles into the streets. The bells melted too. The burning scaffolding collapsed onto the square in front of the cathedral, and the roof frame burned until evening. The heat and falling beams seriously damaged the stone walls, sculptures and stained glass. The clergy, however, managed to save the treasury and the relics.

The most dramatic scenes took place inside. Wounded German prisoners lay on the burning straw. Some of them died in the fire, about fourteen according to French sources. The rest were carried out by priests and nuns. Outside, an angry crowd of townspeople and soldiers was waiting, wanting revenge on the Germans for the shelling of the city. Landrieux and other clergy shielded the prisoners with their own bodies and would not let them be lynched. German propaganda later claimed that it was the French who had prevented the wounded from escaping the burning church.

The smiling angel

Among the damaged sculptures was a statue that became the symbol of the whole tragedy. On the north portal of the façade stood a 13th-century angel with a gentle, slightly ironic smile, known as the “Smiling Angel” (Fr. l’Ange au Sourire). A falling, burning beam from the scaffolding struck off its head. The head fell more than four metres and broke into more than twenty pieces.

The next day one of the priests gathered up the fragments and hid them in the cellars of the archbishop’s palace. They were found there at the end of 1915. Photographs of the mutilated angel went round the press and became one of the most effective images of French propaganda. It was called “the smile of Reims”. After the war the sculpture was restored from the original fragments and a plaster cast made before the war. The angel returned to its place in February 1926.

Accusations and explanations

The German side explained that it had not been aiming at the cathedral. It maintained that the French had set up an observation post on its towers from which artillery fire was directed, and had placed batteries nearby. That, it argued, made the church a legitimate target. The French firmly denied this. According to their accounts a Red Cross flag flew over the cathedral, and wounded Germans lay inside.

The cathedral fire came less than a month after the Germans destroyed Leuven with its famous university library. For public opinion in France, Britain and the neutral countries, the two events became proof that Germany was waging war on European culture itself. Artists, scholars and clergy from many countries protested. The French writer Romain Rolland devoted a celebrated article to the destruction of the cathedral, in which he spoke of a crime against the heritage of all humanity. The name “Reims” (in the English spelling of the time, “Rheims”) came to serve in Allied propaganda as a symbol of German barbarity. The image of the burning cathedral appeared on posters, postcards and newspaper illustrations all over the world.

Four years under fire

19 September 1914 was only the beginning. Reims remained a front-line city until the autumn of 1918, and the ruins of the cathedral were shelled many times, despite the appeals of Pope Benedict XV. The city came under particularly heavy fire in the spring of 1917. According to French calculations nearly 300 shells hit the cathedral during the war. By the end of the war the building stood in ruins: without a roof, with damaged vaults, mutilated sculptures and destroyed stained glass. Even so, its walls and towers survived.

Reconstruction

After the war there was talk of leaving the ruins as a memorial to the devastation of war, but the decision to rebuild prevailed. Work began in 1919 under the architect Henri Deneux. A large part of the cost was covered by gifts from abroad, above all from the American philanthropist John D. Rockefeller Jr. Deneux designed the new roof frame from light, prefabricated reinforced-concrete elements that could no longer burn.

In July 1938, in the presence of the President of France, Albert Lebrun, the cathedral was solemnly restored to worship. Conservation work, however, went on for decades. Many mutilated sculptures were replaced with copies, and some of the destroyed stained glass was replaced with new windows designed in the 20th century by modern artists, among them Marc Chagall.

Significance

The fire at Reims Cathedral was one of the most notorious events of the first months of the war. It had no military significance, but enormous moral and propaganda significance. It strengthened the conviction in France that the country was fighting for the survival of its own civilisation, and abroad it damaged Germany’s image, especially in the neutral United States. Today the marks of the fire are still visible on the cathedral’s stones, and the smiling angel is among the most famous sculptures in France.