PERONNE.

Taranaki Daily News, 22 March 1917, Page 3

PERONNE.

[INTERESTING PARTICULARS OP RECAPTURED TOWN. Peronne, a town of Northern Prance, capital of an arrondissement of the department of Somme, as the guidebook would have it, is not to-day so much ( making as repeating history, and that by no means for the first time. Almost from tlie clays when the Prankish kings had one of their country villas there, on the banks of the slow-moving ... no, . the town has been the scene of periodic struggles between various contending forces. When this prince was not striving with that prince for its possession, the tenants of the region round about were struggling with the landlord and the State for the maintenance of the famous form of tenant-right, the droit de marche. These rights have long since received legal sanction, but the struggle for (hem, in which the whole farming community of the countryside was leagued together, was long and severe. No measures were too harsh against the interloper, and the man who suffered loss, because of his resistance to authority, was always sure of having it more than made good to him by his neighbors. | But about Peronne in particular It has been said that the Prankish kings were wont to sojourn there, and it was one of these king's, Clovis 11, who gave I his villa to Erchinoaldis, Mayor of the I palace, who after the manner of those | days promptly founded a monastery at ' Peronne, built a great collegiate church, and so laid the foundations of one oi those wealthy ecclesiastical establishments which survived until the revolution. It was the scene of the tragedy of 921), when Charles the Simple fell into the hands of the Count de Vermandois, and after passing under the government of various rulers, it. escheated to the 'French crown in 1209, during the reign of Philip Augustus, from whom it received a charter. The next important event in the history of Peron/ie wa3 the treaty of Arras, ' in 1453, by which it was handed over to the Burgundians. It was subsequent- | ly bought back, by Louis IX, but in 1405 the redoubtable Charles the Bold, i of Burgundy, descended upon the - c-itfc ! and took it. Charles, moreover, at that i time was contemplating marriage with | Margaret of York, sister of Edward IV :of England. Louis was anxious about his growing power, and repaired to Peronne to negotiate with him. He arrived on the banks of the Somme at an inauspicious time. Hardly had he reaclii ed Peronne than news arrived that the I people of Liege had risen in revolt ; against Charles, and that nothing w&3 heard in the town but the cry "Vive la France.' This was too much for Charles. He suspected Louis' share in the trouble at Liege, and determined there and then to get reparation for it. Louis was accordingly seized, imprisoned in the same. tower of the castle which, five centuries before, had held Charles the Simple, and forced to sign the famous treaty of Peronne. It was a famous treaty, not by reason of its importance—Louis had no intention when he signed it of adhering to the undertakings it contained—but it was famous because, for years afterwards, every tame jay and magpie about the town was taught to cry "Peronne" as a reminder of the rdyal discomfiture. In 1477, however, Loui3 won his own back again, and captured the town. For the next sixty years the history of Peronne was comparatively uneventful, but in the year 1536 the _ Emperor Charles V besieged it, and this constituted one of the most remarkable incidents in its long history. Charles V was used to succeeding, but he did not succeed at Peronne. There arose in the town a veritable Joan of Arc, in the person of Marie Foure,- arid Peronne successfully resisted all the Emperor's attempts to subdue it. Peronne was taken by the Duke of Wellington in ISIS, by the GerI mans in 1914, and now,\ in 1917, by the British.

Peronno was evacuated by the enemy as the indirect result of the recent British advances in the St. Pierre Vaast Wood and on. the Malasseae ridge just

soutli of it, which crippled the powerful gun positions on Mont S. Quentin. Once that stronghold lost its power by having its guns exposed to direct fire, Peronne became untenable. The Germans had at once not only to evacuate Peronne, but to withdraw from the ground on the west side of the Somrae. They have already done so to the extent of giving up about three miles of the western bank and a strip of the ground extending along the whole front as far as Chaulnes, the reason of the retreat being that the British, once they reached Peronne, could effectively command at least three miles of the river and stop the enemy's communications. The capture of Peronne (with the crossing of the Tortille, which preceded the occupation) is an incident of which the effect is likely to be very far-reaching. It brings a severe menace to the'whole of the German-held country west of the river and canal line between Peronne and Laon, and a symptom of tiie urgency of this menace is the German retreat between Roye and Noyon. In this region the Germans have withdrawn on a front of about ten miles to a depth of up to four miles, and the captured ground includes Roye itself, which was, in its situation, almost another Bapaume. The evacuation of the great south-west salient lias, in effect, begun. But it is a mistake to assume that the Allies' victory of arms in the West has begun with it. The Germans are busy evading it.