Germans leave Reims

The British chronicle of the war recorded under 14 September 1914 the evacuation of Reims by German troops. In reality the Germans had withdrawn from the city two days earlier, on 12 September, and on the morning of 13 September units of the French Fifth Army entered it. 14 September was, however, the first day on which German artillery began systematically shelling the recovered city. The joy of liberation was therefore very short-lived.

End of the occupation

The Germans had occupied Reims on 4 September 1914, while pursuing the retreating French armies. After the defeat on the Marne, however, their Third Army had to withdraw north. Before leaving, the occupiers took about a hundred prominent citizens of the city as hostages and threatened that they would be executed if the inhabitants undertook any hostile action. The withdrawal passed off quietly, and the hostages were released. On 13 September the troops of General Louis Franchet d’Espèrey marched into Reims, greeted by the inhabitants with enormous relief.

On the hills around the city

The Germans did not go far, however. They halted a few kilometres north and east of Reims, on the hills that surround the city. They occupied old French forts built after the war of 1870, among others at Brimont, Nogent-l’Abbesse and on the hill of Berru. Fortifications meant to defend Reims now became German observation posts and artillery positions. French attempts to drive the Germans off these positions in the following days ended in failure.

On the morning of 14 September the first shells fell on the city. From then on the shelling was repeated almost daily. On 19 September shells hit the wooden scaffolding around the north tower of the cathedral, where the kings of France had been crowned. The fire spread to the straw laid out in the nave. A few days earlier the Germans had set up a hospital there for their wounded, and after they left, wounded German prisoners lay there. Some of them died in the flames. Clergy carried the others out of the burning church and protected them from the angry crowd. The roof and the wooden roof frame burned, the bells and the lead roofing melted, and the fire and heat destroyed many sculptures.

A city on the front line

The image of the burning cathedral went round the world. For the French and their allies it became a symbol of German barbarism, like the destruction of Leuven in Belgium a few weeks earlier. The Germans explained that the French had set up an observation post on the cathedral towers, which the French side denied.

Reims remained a front-line city until the autumn of 1918. According to the city archives, it was shelled for more than a thousand days. Of about 14,000 houses, roughly 8,000 were destroyed, and most of the rest were damaged. The rebuilding of the cathedral took decades. It was reopened to worshippers in 1938.