In the Department of the Marne, as everywhere else, the German troops gave themselves up to general pillage, which was carried out always under similar conditions and with the complicity of their leaders. The Communes of Heiltz-le-Maurupt; Suippes, Marfaux, Fromentieres, and Esternay suffered especially in this way. Everything which the invader could carry off from the houses was placed on motor lorries and vehicles. At Suippes, in particular, they carried off in this way a quantity of different objects, among these sewing machines and toys. A great many villages, as well as important country towns, were burned without any reason whatever. Without doubt these crimes were committed by order, as German detachments arrived in the neighborhood with their torches, their grenades, and their usual outfit for arson. At Lepine, a laborer named Caque, in whose house two German cyclists were billeted, asked the latter if the grenades which he saw in their possession were destined for his house. They answered: "No, Lepine is finished with." At that moment nine houses in the village were burned out. At Marfaux nineteen private houses were burned. At le Gault-la-Foret seven or eight houses were burned. Of the Commune of Glannes practically nothing remains. At Somme-Tourbe the entire village has been destroyed, with the exception of the Mairie, the church, and two private buildings. At Auve nearly the whole town has been destroyed. At Etrepy sixty-three families out of seventy are homeless. At Huiron all the houses, with the exception of five, have been burned. At Sermaize-les-Bains only about forty houses out of 900 remain. At Bignicourt-sur-Saultz thirty houses out of thirty-three are in ruins. At Suippes, the big market town which has been practically burned out, German soldiers carrying straw and cans of petrol have been seen in the streets. While the Mayor's house was burning, six sentinels with fixed bayonets were under orders to forbid any one to approach and to prevent any help being given. All this destruction by arson, which only represents a small proportion of the acts of the same kind in the Department of Seine-et-Marne, was accomplished without the least tendency to rebellion or the smallest act of resistance being recorded against the inhabitants of the localities which are today more or less completely destroyed. In some villages the Germans, before setting fire to them, made one of their soldiers fire a shot from his rifle so as to be able to pretend afterward that the civilian population had attacked them, an allegation which is all the more absurd since at the time when the enemy arrived the only inhabitants left were old men, sick persons, or people absolutely without any means of aggression.