Here in this beautiful region around Laon and Chauny and Coucy, the story of those evil days is told almost as instructively by the properties which then escaped ruin as by those which, like the estate of the Saportas, were confiscated and broken up.
In the eighteenth century it was full of fine buildings--châteaux, churches, monasteries, hospitals. Go where you please, you come upon the sites of edifices, once local centres of civilisation, which were pillaged, burned, and demolished, while the 'national agents' ruled the provinces for the benefit of the speculators at Paris. Here stood the stately Château de Molerepaire, of which nothing now remains but a farmhouse; there, the ancient parish church of St. Paul at Mons-en-Laonnois, one of the finest in the district, now utterly gone, all its materials having been sold for the profit of certain 'national agents' in 1794. Wissignicourt possessed in 1789 one of the most beautiful churches in Northern France and two considerable châteaux. The church of St.-Rémi was first robbed of all its ornaments, and finally, in 1793, completely demolished.
The Château de la Cressonnière, built in the sixteenth century by Claude de Massary, and inhabited by his descendants as resident landlords until the Revolution, has entirely disappeared. Of the Château de Wissignicourt, founded in the twelfth century by a baron of the great Picard family of De Hangest, some portions still exist. But this little commune, which occupies one of the most naturally charming sites in the Laonnois, between Anizy and Laon, is indebted to the 'patriots' of Chauny, who domineered over it during the Revolution, for the annihilation of local features, which in these days of railway travel and picturesque tourists would have materially enhanced the value of its not very fertile territory. These buildings, these châteaux and churches, were part of the accumulated capital of France, and certainly not the least important part of the accumulated capital of the commune of Wissignicourt. If they had been destroyed in the heat of conflict, as so many such buildings were destroyed in this country during the wars of religion, and in Germany, and even in Great Britain, the philosophers might have some plausible pretext at least for citing their favourite proverb that you 'cannot make an omelette without breaking some eggs.' And we might be invited to set off, against this loss of accumulated capital, certain important gains in the way of more liberal institutions and an enfranchised industry. But this is not the case. The vandalism of the Revolution of 1789 was perpetrated in cold blood. I speak, of course, now of the real authors of it all, at Paris, not of the mere mobs in the provinces, hot with the sordid lust of plunder or with personal spites and rancours--and it was perpetrated for the profit of those who promoted it. The bronzes and brasses and lead and hammered iron of the desecrated churches were turned into money, and the money went into the pockets of the 'patriots.' Monuments that would now be priceless were destroyed, for example, at St.-Denis, not in the least that the metal might be cast into cannon--I am told the military records show that the republican armies fought their battles, when finally they got to fighting them, exclusively with the artillery of the monarchy--but that the metal might be sold in the markets, and the proceeds confiscated by the vendors. Certain rogues at Chauny and their employers in Paris were doubtless the richer a hundred years ago for the desecration of the Church of St.-Rémi and the pillage of La Cressonnière and the Château de Wissignicourt. But Wissignicourt and its people are the poorer to-day for these performances.