The Bombardment of Rheims In several ways the city of Rheims is celebrated.

Some know her only through her cathedral, where were crowned all but six of the kings of France, and where the stained-glass windows, with those in the cathedrals of Chartres and Burgos, Spain, are the most beautiful in all the world.

Children know Rheims through the wicked magpie which the archbishop excommunicated, and to their elders, if they are rich, Rheims is the place from which comes all their champagne.
On September 4th the Germans entered Rheims, and occupied it until the 12th, when they retreated across the Vesle to the hills north of the city.
On the 18th the French forces, having entered Rheims, the Germans bombarded the city with field-guns and howitzers.
Rheims is fifty-six miles from Paris, but, though I started at an early hour, so many bridges had been destroyed that I did not reach the city until three o'clock in the afternoon.

At that hour the French artillery, to the east at Nogent and immediately outside the northern edge of the town, were firing on the German positions, and the Germans were replying, their shells falling in the heart of the city.
The proportion of those that struck the cathedral or houses within a hundred yards of it to those falling on other buildings was about six to one.

So what damage the cathedral suffered was from blows delivered not by accident but with intent.