German infantrymen belonging to the Bavarian regiments systematically set fire to the villages through which they passed in the region of Barras, Harbone, and Montreux, for during the engagement no artillery fire could have caused such conflagrations. In the same district they forced the inhabitants to precede their scouts. According to the same report the German troops were daily massacring peaceful villagers, and actually made children march before them when debouching from the villages upon the field of battle. An official report was made by M. Mirman, Prefect of the Meurthe and Moselle, to the French Minister of the Interior, after a visit paid to the districts of Bardonviller, Cirey, and Blamont, in the Luneville area. He stated that it was impossible to cite all the acts of savagery and brutality on the part of the German troops which had come under his notice. He could make out a long list of women, young girls, and old men and women who had been executed without the least reason and upon the slightest pretext. Houses had been systematically burned by order of the German officers as they advanced, and then again as they retreated. Petrol on Burning Houses. At Bardonviller, where one of the Kaiser’s sons was with the troops, eleven of the inhabitants had been murdered, among whom was the wife of the mayor, and a woman with her infant child, while seventy-eight houses were burned with petrol and specially-prepared faggots. After pillaging the town and looting everything they could, they fired on and demolished the church, and took fifteen of the inhabitants, including a magistrate, away as hostages. At Bremeuil the Prefect found a pitiful and shameful state of affairs. There, five inhabitants, one a little lad, were butchered, as well as an old man of seventy-four, who was “trussed and shot like a rabbit.” The Communal building was destroyed, and nearly the whole town swept away, not during battle, but by the soldiers on their arrival. The French troops in Lorraine had seized an entire mail, letters written by German soldiers to their families. In these it was shown that the chief occupation of the troops was eating and drinking, and in more than twenty of the letters it was stated that all French civilians were shot if they only looked suspicious or evil-disposed. All the men, and even boys under age, were shot.