“It was last Saturday, Sept. 5, that about 15,000 Uhlans arrived in the village with the intention of marching on Provins on the morrow.  They probably learned during the night that the British and French lay in force across their road, and perhaps they may now have received orders to fall back.

“At any rate, early Sunday morning they started to retire, when they met at the entrance to the village a regiment of chasseurs.  This was the beginning of fighting which lasted all day.  Under the pretext that we had learned of the presence of the French troops and had helped them to prepare a trap, the Germans sacked the whole of the village.

“Naturally there was a panic.  All the inhabitants—­mostly women and children, because since the mobilization there have been only nine men in Courtacon—­rushed from their cottages and many of them, lightly clad, fled across the fields and hid themselves in the neighboring woods.

“In several cottages Germans, revolvers in hand, compelled the poor peasants to bring matches and themselves set fire to their homes.  In less than an hour the village was like a furnace, the walls toppling down one by one.  And all this time the fighting continued.  It was a horrible spectacle.

“Several of us were dragged to the edge of the road to be shot, and there we remained for some hours, believing our last day had come.  A young village lad of 21 years, who was just going to leave to join the colors, was shot.  Then the retreat was sounded, the Germans fled precipitately, and we were saved.”

I asked whether the cottages had not been fired by artillery.

“Not a cannon shot fell here,” he replied.  “All that”—­pointing to the ruined huts—­“was done by incendiaries.”  And then he added: 

“Last Tuesday two French officers came in automobiles and brought with them a superior German officer whom they had made prisoner.  They compelled him to become a witness of the mischief of which his fellow-countrymen had been guilty.”

A peasant woman passed, pushing a wheelbarrow containing some half-burned household goods and followed by her two small children.

“Look,” she said, “at the brutality of these Germans!  My husband has gone to war and I am alone with my two little ones.  With great difficulty we had managed to gather our crop, and they set fire to our little farm and burned everything.”

Half an hour later we were at La Ferte Gaucher, a small town on the Grand Morin, now first made famous by the fact that it was here that the German flight began after the severe fighting last Monday.  The invaders had arrived only on Saturday and had the disagreeable surprise of finding that the river bridges had been broken down by the retreating French.  The German commandant informed the municipal officials that if the sum of 60,000 francs ($12,000) was not produced he would burn the town.  Then he compelled the people to set about rebuilding the bridge, and they worked day and night at this job under the eyes of soldiers with revolvers and rifles ready to shoot down any shirker.