Place d'Armes

“ The centre of the city they call the Arsenal; which has a spacious building, and being two miles in circumference, it forms a strong castle. Here naval armaments and cannons are daily manufactured and repaired; and the wrecks of fleets, the arms taken from pirates, old vessels, and colours, being deposited in this place, are exhibited to visitors. ”

“ The top of the summit is flat tableland, and afforded a very eligible site for strong military works. It was first occupied by the Americans early in 1776, when they commenced the erection of batteries, barracks, and houses, with the view of making it a place of general rendezvous, and a recruiting station for the army of the north. ”

“ About this time a most amusing episode was witnessed by one of our Subalterns who was doing a liaison with the infantry at a battalion headquarters. This place was situated most unpleasantly, and was well known to the enemy, consequently accommodation had to be sought underground as much as possible. ”

“ When an army takes the field, every stronghold or fortress which supports its operations by affording a safe retreat to its depots, heavy artillery, magazines, hospitals, etc., is called a place of arms. In offensive operations, those lines are called places of arms, or parallels, which unite the different means of attack, secure the regular approaches, etc., and contain bodies of troops who either do duty in the trenches, protect the workmen, or are destined to make an impression upon the enemy’s outworks. ”

“ As for the part of the German column which had not been able to cross the bridge, this was taken under the fires of the guns, and was, as we have already said, dispersed in all directions, endeavouring to seek refuge in the houses at Dixmude. The reserve garrisoned in the flour mill, awaken by the noise of the fighting and being at once acquainted with the situation, remained in place, ready to intervene. ”

“ Every available and even unavailable place was secured long beforehand, and from the Battery to Union Place one was obliged to run a gantlet of eyes more effective and more dangerous than any artillery battery. This display of female beauty, conjoined to the great array of flags, banners, and mottoes, made us think of a Roman carnival. To the pet military regiments, the Montreal artillery, and the officers and crews of the Niagara and Gorgon there was given a most splendid greeting all along the line. Everywhere we heard cheers for Field, Hudson, Everett, and their British coadjutors. ”

“ The whole army of Paris is to strike. A third of the army is bearing down upon the barricades in which you now are. There is the National Guard in addition. I have picked out the shakos of the fifth of the line, and the standard-bearers of the sixth legion. In one hour you will be attacked. ”

“ Facing away from Paris, one looked over a valley, and in the distance could distinctly hear the boom of guns in action.
We were now at the outer line of the defense zone, within which all the roads, bridges, and valleys were held by infantry working in conjunction with the large forts placed at intervals in the great circle. Outside of this zone is open country in which battles are being fought ”

“ To-day the redoubtable citadel in which so many kings have sojourned is a military establishment, which includes an artillery arsenal, barracks, hospitals, a cannon foundry, a factory of arms, a château, a church, and a great number of store-rooms. Its precincts are immense. Other fortresses are hidden in the immediate vicinity, and guard the approaches. Artillerymen incessantly go and come between the fortress and the village and the village and the practice-ground. ”

“ The peasants, unused to war and lacking all military training, streamed in and out at pleasure, leaving the gates wide open, and taking no precautions against the enemy. Suddenly, to their surprise and alarm, they saw a strong [Pg 97] body of armed men entering the open gates and marching boldly into the court-yard of the stronghold, the heedless garrison gazing with gaping eyes at them from the windows and the inner courts. It was a body of English men-at-arms, two hundred strong, who had taken the unguarded fortress by surprise. ”

“ There was no battlefield in the old idea of the world. How often must one say this to people at home who think that a modern army is encamped in the fields with bivouac fires and bell tents? The battle was spread over a wide area of villages and broken towns and shattered farmhouses, and neat little homesteads yet untouched by fire or shell. The open roads were merely highways between these points of shelter, in which great bodies of troops were huddled—the internal lines of communication connecting various parts of the fighting machine. ”

“ We were visitors, also, to the other world—the world behind the lines, in G.H.Q., in Army Corps and Divisional Headquarters, in training schools and camps, and casualty clearing stations and billets in the “rest” areas, remote from the noise and filth of battle. From the private soldier standing by a slimy parapet to the Commander-in-Chief in his comfortable château, we studied all the psychological strata of the British armies in France, as few other men had the chance of doing. ”

“ It has, including its large garrison, eighteen or twenty thousand inhabitants, and with its pleasant atmosphere, extended views, charming mountain excursions, peasants in a variety of costumes, soldiers in a variety of uniforms, excellent music, and many things of historical interest to see, is a very enjoyable place. ”

“ That the army should march out of the camp with all the honors of war and its camp artillery, to a fixed place, where they were to deposit their arms and leave the artillery; to be allowed a free embarkation and passage to Europe, from Boston, upon condition of their not serving again in America during the present war; the army not to be separated, particularly the men from the officers; roll-calling, and other duties of regularity, to be permitted; the officers to be admitted on parole, and to wear their sidearms; all private property to be retained, and the public delivered upon honor ”

“ Some few miles of the original battlefields showing the opposing fronts, the original trenches, the deep pock-marks of the shell holes, no man's lands with its markings of secret, nightly warfare should be kept intact in order that posterity may appreciate in some little measure what life in the front line meant in the Great War.
Everywhere as one goes through the battle area, there can be seen one ever-recurring mark of battle that will endure—the graves of those who fell. The war area is in truth one vast cemetery. ”

“ The city lay without a light, its ancient citadel rising from amid the sombrely moonlit forest of buildings like a great shadow. Only the searchlights playing from the forts gave signs of life and watchfulness. They travelled across the positions where the enemy had placed his artillery; and swept fitfully over the intervals of trampled country, where round ruined buildings and broken walls, in ditches, and amid entanglements multitudes of dead remained unburied.
Of course, the German commander knew that great activity must be going on in the fortress. ”

“ In the dozen great fortresses that surround the walls of Paris, thousands of fortress artillery are stationed. In the suburbs and outlying villages artillery and regiments of heavy and light cavalry have their permanent barracks—dragoons, cuirassiers, chasseurs-à-cheval, field batteries, and mounted batteries. At Saint Cloud are dragoons and remount troopers; at Versailles the engineers and cuirassiers rule the region; and the entire Department of the Seine is patrolled by gendarmes, mounted and on foot. ”

“ There was our forward zone, consisting of an outpost line and redoubts, very cleverly sited, and a line of resistance. Well behind it were the trenches which formed the battle-zone. Both zones were heavily wired, and we had plenty of machine-guns; I wish I could say we had plenty of men who knew how to use them. ”

“ Far behind the front line trenches the ramifications of the services extend; for though a brigade may be holding a frontage of a couple of thousand yards, its section runs back through miles of land crowded with reserves, with light and heavy artillery, with transport services, hospitals and depots, and all the paraphernalia of modern war. ”

“ The vast system of subterranean chambers and passages is capable of entombing a brigade, but denies all necessary tactical freedom of action to a battalion."
The fortress of the future will probably be in the nature of an intrenched camp. The interior of the position will provide casemate accommodation for an army of considerable strength. Its defences will consist of a circle at intervals of about 2500 yards, of permanent redoubts which shall be invisible at moderate ranges for infantry and machine guns, the garrison of each redoubt to consist of a half battalion. ”

“ These troops could reach Paris in one day's march. There you have fifteen thousand men in trained and equipped corps, cavalry, infantry, and artillery, devoted to the Republic and the Convention; troops equal in number to your fifteen thousand insurgents. We can number the Jacobin population of the suburbs and the Sections, and the hordes of the federations, at thirty thousand—scamps, armed with pikes or guns, and provided with cannon as well! ”

“ The Champ de Mars forms a huge camp ground; tentes abri, guns, waggons, tumbrils, horses, and men crowd the space so named. Infantry of the line there are in battalions, many of them undergoing the earlier stages of military drill, their style and general aspect far from realizing the British idea of what is soldier-like. ”

“ But people do not carry their thoughts so far—by that time the enemy will be driven back over the frontier, or annihilated in the country. Now the whole people are joining the army of the fatherland. Every one offers himself for the service, or is pressed into it; and all the firemen in the country were called in to join the garrison of Paris. ”

“ The batteries of artillery had commenced to disgorge through the Great Rock gate when the bourgeois guard which was in line halted, and, deploying before its banner, advanced, with leveled guns and quickened pace, upon the multitude, which recoiled before it. At the same instant the cavalry entered at a rapid trot by the gate near the Military School, while the other column poured in by the bridge over the Seine. ”

“ But, though their existence as forts was at an end, the remains of them, with one exception, were still in the hands of the French, protected no longer by their bastions and the guns in their dismantled cupolas, but by the rifles of the men in the trenches, the real flesh and blood rampart of the Republic. ”

“ To start for the battlefield from a busy, peaceful city, to run for miles through suburbs as quiet and lacking in martial aspect as the regions beyond the Harlem, at home, was a thing that seemed almost unreal; but only for a brief moment, for war has come very near to Paris, and one may not travel far in Eastern France without seeing its signs. ”

“ Within our circle of forts we have, in material, the whole resources of the nation in artillery, military stores, small-arms, and ammunition; and as regards the personal, we include the head-quarters of the artillery, our picked troops, the Guards, the Engineers, the largest companies of Volunteer corps in the country, and, finally, a population of 8,000,000 from which to recruit: and with such a position to defend, every man might be a soldier. ”

“ Our divisional column, with its trim, sturdy, infantry battalions, its jingling cavalry and artillery, its real live staff, and its imposing transport train, sets us thinking, by sheer force of contrast, of that dim and distant time seven months ago, when we wrestled perspiringly all through long and hot September days, on a dusty barrack square, with squad upon squad of dazed and refractory barbarians, who only ceased shuffling their feet in order to expectorate. ”

“ The headquarters of each division is pushed as far forward as possible without coming within range of the enemy's artillery. In the neighbourhood of divisional headquarters we first see signs that fighting is going on. The soldiers themselves we cannot see, because they are hidden away in villages, in woods, or in folds of the ground. But we shall probably see houses wrecked by the enemy's shells, and strings of wagons moving along the roads with food and ammunition for the fighting men. ”

“ Several Territorial units now began to be landed in France, amongst others the Artists' Rifles, the Honourable Artillery Company, the Queen's Westminsters and Hertfordshire Territorials, and the Warwickshire Battery of Horse Artillery. I spent a morning riding about amongst them, and was deeply impressed by the wonderful spirit which pervaded them. The only thought they had was to prepare themselves in the shortest possible time to take their part in the fighting at the front. ”

“ INVADING THE WAR ZONE PARIS, August 8, 1916.
rance to-day is sharply divided into two sections; within the greater you can come and go almost as freely as before the war. All that is necessary is a sauf conduit easily obtained from your commissaire de police, which you are never called upon to exhibit. But the other, the Zone des Armées, in common parlance the war or military zone! There is only one thing in France more difficult of contact, and that is a member of the middle or lower bourgeoisie. ”

“ With the British, as with the French and German armies in the field, you will sometimes find Headquarters Staffs housed in a château. A Staff wants plenty of elbow-room, it wants quarters away from the noise and dust of the high-road and the bustle of a town; it has to choose a fairly secluded spot, so as to escape the vigilant eyes of enemy airmen and the bombardment which inevitably follows detection. ”