To-day the fair white city of Soissons lies a scene of desolation, only to be likened to a wrecked town of old-time barbarism. They say that Soissons Cathedral is more damaged than if a geological convulsion had wrecked it. Deliberately was it taken as a target, though, as French troops held the highlands round the flat town, there can be no excuse that the towers were used as posts of observation. The westernmost bays are ruined; the north side of the big church has been riddled with projectiles; flying buttresses have been cut off; great rents show in roof and sides; the vaulting hangs in air; a pier lies prone, its stones scattered like a pack of cards; the aisles are dismantled, and the windows, some of which Blanche of Castile gave in 1225, have been reduced to powdered dust. In one week of January, 1916, over three hundred projectiles fell on the church, said the old priest, who lived in the midst of the wreckage, to a visitor to whom he spoke gently of God's mercy. In the once "sweet and tranquil provincial city, whose soul was the daughter of honorable simplicity, grass grows in the street. Soissons is a dead city. Its casementless windows fix you like the eye of the blind." Always has it lain in the path of war, this ancient capital of Clovis that has ever been part of the very heart of France, but never war such as this! Here, in 486, Clovis won the battle of Soissons that annihilated the last remnant of Rome's empire in Gaul, and conquered the land to the Loire. In the evil days of the Hundred Years' War, Soissons suffered. So depopulated was it by the XVI-century religious wars that it took over a century to recover. Nor did the Revolution spare the seat of the ancient monarchies of France. In 1814 occurred an explosion of gunpowder that wrecked precious windows in the cathedral, some of them the gifts of Philippe-Auguste. In 1870 the Prussian bombardment of Soissons devastated what remained of the abbey church of St. Jean-des-Vignes, whose Flamboyant Gothic spires have been mutilated again in the World War.[62] Under the southern flank of the shattered cathedral nestles the diamond of Primary Gothic art in France, the transept arm built by the crusading bishop, Nivelon de Chérisy. As by a miracle it has escaped. The most exquisite thing in France, many of us hold it to be. It has drawn its devotees back to Soissons time and time again, this perfect thing so little heralded. They would test a second and a third time the overpowering first impression it had made. Perhaps it had been some happy mood, some subtle lingering shadows of the late afternoon, that had touched it momentarily to an ethereal grace. And then standing face to face again with its small and stately beauty, those who love this early-Gothic monument of France know that its power is not a chance or borrowed comeliness.