the best of a bad business, and, with all
their friends and followers, withdrew into an hotel in the town. There
all their property was brought from the castle and delivered to them,
which, having been done, the good people of Chauny 'with one accord fell
to work to slight and demolish the said fortress, and this with such
good-will that in a few days' time it was wholly razed and destroyed
from top to bottom.'

The bailli and his brother soon departed out of the place, and 'Messires
Hector de Flavy and Waleran de Moreul,' who were sent to govern it by
the Comte de Luxembourg, 'found the citizens much more stiff and
disobedient than they had ever been before the desolation of the
aforesaid castle!'

After Joan of Arc had driven the English out of the realm, Charles VII.
had the good sense to pardon the citizens of Chauny for destroying the
castle, and it was never rebuilt. The Spanish occupied Chauny after
their victory of St.-Quentin in 1557. Five years afterwards Conde and
his Huguenots took the place, and did so much proselytising there that
in 1589 Chauny was one of the first towns in France to recognise Henry
of Navarre as King of France. It stood out for him when Laon and other
important towns in this region had joined the League, and during his
long struggle with the House of Guise it was a central point about which
the hostile forces constantly manoeuvred. Henry himself came here
often, and during the siege of La Fere 'La Belle Gabrielle' kept him
company at Chauny, Sinceny, and Folembray.

In the next century the French and the Imperialists fought all around
the place, to the great disgust of the poor peasants, who hid themselves
as eagerly in the woods from the troops of their own sovereign as from
those of his imperial enemy; and in 1652, Chauny, after a sharp but
short siege, surrendered to the Spaniards, who, however, agreed, by the
terms of the capitulation, to 'maintain the burgesses in all their
goods, rights, privileges, charges, and offices.' The Mayor of Chauny,
Claude le Coulteux, behaved so well in the siege, that Louis XIV.
ennobled him; and the cure of the church of St.-Martin, it is recorded,
fought at the ramparts, and 'pointed the cannon with his own hand.'

This was the last deed of arms in the annals of this little city, though
the fortune of war has twice put Chauny under foreign rule. In 1814 the
allies, and in 1870-71 the victorious Germans, occupied it, and laid it
under contribution