They broke into the houses, plundered the wine shops, first of all, and
took fifty hostages, of whom twenty-six perished. And at half-past five,
while the fighting was still going on, the punitive burning of the town
began, by a cyclist section told off for the work and furnished with
every means for doing it effectively. These men, according to an
eyewitness, did their work with wild shouts--"_cris sauvages_."
A hundred and seventeen houses were soon burning fiercely. On that hot
September evening, the air was like a furnace. Before long the streets
were full of blazing debris. Two persons who had hidden themselves in
their cellars died of suffocation; yet to appear in the streets was to
risk death at the hands of some drunk or maddened soldier.
At the opening of the French attack, a German officer rushed to the
hospital, which was full of wounded, in search of francs-tireurs.
Arrived there, he saw an old man, a chronic patient of the hospital and
half idiotic, standing on the steps of the building. He blew the old
man's brains out.
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