One of the emigrants did not get far from home.  He was a man of seventy, Louis Denet by name.  He left Vareddes with his wife, in a farm-cart, driving a cow with them.  They went a day’s journey, and put up for a few days at the farm of a friend named Roger.  On Sunday the 6th, in the morning, four Germans arrived at the farm.  They went away and came back again in the afternoon.  They called all the inmates of the farm out into the yard.  Denet and Roger appeared.  “You were three men this morning, now you are only two!” said one of the Germans.  And immediately they took the two old men a little distance away, and shot them both, within half a mile of the farm.  The body of Roger was found by his wife the day after; that of Denet was not discovered for some time.  Nobody has any idea to this day why those men were shot.  It is worth while to try and realise the scene—­the terror-stricken old men dragged away by their murderers—­the wives left behind, no doubt under a guard—­the sound of the distant shots—­the broken hearts of the widow and the orphan.

But that was a mere prelude.

On Friday, September 4th, a large detachment of Von Kluck’s army invaded Vareddes, coming from Barcy, which lies to the west.  It was no doubt moving towards the Marne on that flank march which was Von Kluck’s undoing.  The troops left the village on Saturday the 5th, but only to make a hurried return that same evening.  Von Kluck was already aware of his danger, and was rapidly recalling troops to meet the advance of Maunoury.  Meanwhile the French Sixth Army was pressing on from the west, and from the 6th to the 9th there was fierce fighting in and round Vareddes.  There were German batteries behind the Presbytere, and the church had become a hospital.  The old Cure, the Abbe Fossin, at the age of seventy-eight, spent himself in devoted service to the wounded Germans who filled it.  There were other dressing stations near by.  The Mairie, and the school, were full of wounded, of whom there were probably some hundreds in the village.  Only 135 dead were buried in the neighbourhood; the Germans carried off the others in great lorries filled with corpses.

By Monday the 7th, although they were still to hold the village till the 9th, the Germans knew they were beaten.  The rage of the great defeat, of the incredible disappointment, was on them.  Only a week before, they had passed through the same country-side crying “Nach Paris!” and polishing up buttons, belts, rifles, accoutrements generally, so as to enter the French capital in grande tenue. For whatever might have been the real plans of the German General Staff, the rank and file, as they came south from Creil and Nanteuil, believed themselves only a few hours from the Boulevards, from the city of pleasure and spoil.

What had happened?  The common cry of men so sharply foiled went up.  “Nous sommes trahis!” The German troops in Vareddes, foreseeing immediate withdrawal, and surrounded by their own dead and dying, must somehow avenge themselves, on some one.  “Hostages!  The village has played us false!  The Cure has been signalling from the church.  We are in a nest of spies!”