r the little town,
however, than Soissons, dominated by the twin towers of its ancient
cathedral, became a target for the concentrated fire of the Germans,
whose artillery, it will be remembered, had been supplemented that
morning by the huge guns brought on from Maubeuge by the magnificent
forced marches of General von Zwehl. By noon the lower half of that once
lovely city was in flames. On every hand walls collapsed as though they
had been made of pasteboard. Women and children were buried beneath the
ruins or blown to pieces as they fled into the streets. One of the
towers of the cathedral was damaged, and there was not a corner of the
town that was safe from fire. The French batteries tried to cover the
city and silence the batteries opposing them on the north front of the
river, but the odds were too great.

All day long, and throughout the greater part of every night, for the
first three days of the battle of the Aisne, September 13, 14, and 15,
1914, the bombardment of Soissons was continual, and, in addition to
being a wreck, the town became a shambles.

Closely allied to the Soissons bombardment, and occurring simultaneously
with the battle of the Aisne, was the series of engagements occurring in
the quarries around Autreches and Coucy-le-Chateau, fought by advanced
bodies in front of the right wing of the German army encamped on the
ridge of the Aisne. These engagements developed the illuminating fact
that during times of peace German capital had been invested in these
quarries and with their usual intrigue the Germans had fortified these
quarries, so that they were veritable fortresses, and indeed, formed a
continuation of that line of defense the crowning point of which was the
Aisne cliff near the plateau of the Craonne. During the days when the
British First Army Corps, under Sir Douglas Haig, was performing the
astounding feat of crossing the Aisne and holding the land thus gained
against a veritable tempest of counterattack, these stone quarries were
taken and lost again every few hours. The French infantry of General
Manoury's army, far less exhausted than the harassed regiments of
General von Kluck's forces, found little difficulty in forcing the
Germans back from Autreches, but, no sooner were they well established,
than the roar of the combined guns of General von Kluck and General von
Zwehl would make the position untenable, and under cover of that
appalling rain of death, the German infantry would