ine (13th and 16th centuries) with some
fine Renaissance stained glass, and St Jacques (13th and 15th
centuries), need alone be mentioned. The remains of the ancient abbey of
St Corneille are used as a military storehouse. Compiegne, from a very
early period until 1870, was the occasional residence of the French
kings. Its palace, one of the most magnificent structures of its kind,
was erected, chiefly by Louis XV. and Louis XVI., on the site of a
chateau of King Charles V. of France. It now serves as an art museum. It
has two facades, one overlooking the Place du Palais and the town, the
other, more imposing, facing towards a fine park and the forest, which
is chiefly of oak and beech and covers over 36,000 acres. Compiegne is
the seat of a subprefect, and has tribunals of first instance and of
commerce, a communal college, library and hospital. The industries
comprise boat-building, rope-making, steam-sawing, distilling and the
manufacture of chocolate, machinery and sacks and coarse coverings, and
at Margny, a suburb, there are manufactures of chemicals and felt hats.
Asparagus is cultivated in the environs. There is considerable trade in
timber and coal, chiefly river-borne.

Compiegne, or as it is called in the Latin chronicles, Compendium, seems
originally to have been a hunting-lodge of the early Frankish kings. It
was enriched by Charles the Bald with two castles, and a Benedictine
abbey dedicated to Saint Corneille, the monks of which retained down to
the 18th century the privilege of acting for three days as lords of
Compiegne, with full power to release prisoners, condemn the guilty, and
even inflict sentence of death. It was in Compiegne that King Louis I.
the Debonair was deposed in 833; and at the siege of the town in 1430
Joan of Arc was taken prisoner by the English. A monument to her faces
the hotel de ville. In 1624 the town gave its name to a treaty of
alliance concluded by Richelieu with the Dutch; and it was in the palace
that Louis XV. gave welcome to Marie Antoinette, that Napoleon I.
received Marie Louise of Austria, that Louis XVIII. entertained the
emperor Alexander of Russia, and that Leopold I., king of the Belgians,
was married to the princess Louise. In 1814 Compiegne offered a stubborn
resistance to the Prussian troops. Under Napoleon III. it was the annual
resort of the court during the hunting season. From 1870 to 1871 it was
one of the headquarters of the German army.

COMPLEMENT