We come to you armed with the facts. It is only these unanswerable witnesses that we have wished to oppose to the gratuitous affirmations of our colleagues beyond the Rhine. We might have taken you into the mazes of twenty frightful dramas, for _at every place where the German troops have advanced they have trodden under foot the rights of mankind and counted as nothing the civilization and the patrimony of nations_. We have thought it wiser to limit ourselves to the relation of certain events bearing the seal of certainty. Not all the cities which may have suffered have as yet opened their gates to our brothers. Not being able to collect authentic testimony there we prefer, then, not to speak of them--for the moment. But in all those evacuated by the enemy, commissions[7] have hurried to ascertain the losses on the spot. It is from these legal examinations that we have written this report, which, in impartial fashion, makes you the judges. [Footnote 7: Throughout this work we shall often have recourse to the reports of these commissions. At the end of the present volume will be found certain of these documents, unpublished till now.] Unhappy cities have been tortured in body and soul, that is to say, in their population and in the works built by their hands, the immortal relics of the dead. Of the miseries the people have suffered it is not permitted us to speak. But as to those noble houses built with art which have been destroyed, as to those constructions erected by our ancestors for the edification of men of all classes, of all times, and all countries, which are today but ruins; as to those masterpieces in which all the elegant poetry of our race was realized and that belonged to the civilized world, of which they were a glory and an ornament, and which subsist as nothing but a mournful heap of debris--of these we are not bound to keep silent. But not one exaggerated word shall be uttered by us. The account we shall give is established by high testimony and by irrefutable documents. But let us cease all this preparation and come to the events of Rheims. (Page 59 of the book.) DOCUMENTARY EVIDENCE. APPENDIX I. No. 1. AT RHEIMS. _M. Henry Jadart, Librarian of the City of Rheims and Curator of the Museum of that city, was present at the bombardments of the 4th and the 19th of September. He was well placed to enlighten us on the destruction accomplished at the time._ _He was kind enough to send us the communication which we publish below. From the testimony of M. Jadart, it will appear how many monumental constructions at Rheims were mutilated or destroyed, and how these attest, not less than the ruins of the cathedral, the vandalism of the German armies:_