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Updated: May 5, 2025
Writing on September 16, the fourth day of the battle, a special correspondent behind the British lines by Senlis and Chantilly, said: "I have passed through a smiling land to a land wearing the mask of death; through harvest fields rich with great stacks snugly builded against the winter to the fields of a braver harvest; by jocund villages where there is no break in the ebb and flow of everyday life to villages and towns that despoiling hands have shattered in ruins.
"Some are set in a collar of turrets at their base, held in a circle of pinnacles, like the points of a Magian king's diadem; this we see in the bell-tower of Senlis.
But that was only one incident. Senlis was already an old, old town, and as much entitled to call itself a capital of France as was Paris. Not for nothing had the Gallo-Romans given it walls twenty feet high and thirteen feet thick! They could not have builded better had they meant to attract posterity's attention, and win for their strong city the admiration of kings.
Of this abnormal excitability, the old Curé of Senlis gave one or two instances which struck me. We came across him by chance in the cathedral the beautiful cathedral I have heard Walter Pater describe, in my young Oxford days, as one of the loveliest and gracefullest things in French Gothic.
North and east of Compiègne lie the zones of the respective armies, all linked up by telephone, and here we had to exchange our passes, for even a Staff officer may not enter one zone with a pass appropriate to another. But our first objective was Senlis, which lay to the south of us between Compiègne and Paris.
All the odds were against them; they had fought the hardest of all actions along the way of retreat; they knew and told me that the enemy were fighting at Senlis, within ten miles of the Parisian fortifications, but they had an absolute faith in the ultimate success of their allied arms. One of the French soldiers gave me his diary to read.
Beside himself with anger, Lucien immediately hired a hundred post-horses for himself and friends; and without delay he and Madame Jouberthon, with these friends and the people of his household, took carriages for the chateau of Plessis-Chamant, a pleasure-house half a league beyond Senlis.
So two German officers went to the ward where the nineteen Frenchmen lay, all helpless cases, and a scene followed very like that in the hospital at Senlis. One drew his revolver and covered the beds, the other walked round, poniard in hand, throwing back the bedclothes to look for arms. But they found nothing "only blood!
The road ran straight as an arrow. As we neared Senlis I was struck by the complete absence of all traffic upon the roads; no market carts came and went, neither did any wayfarer appear. Not a wisp of smoke arose from the chimneys above the screen of trees.
"Mesdames know better than any persons the deference due to your orders." "I assure you," replied the king, "that it will be an unpleasant quarter of an hour for me to pass." "Well, sire, then charge one of us with the mission: the bishop of Senlis, for instance, or M. de la Vauguyon.
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