United States or Montenegro ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
For that plan was now his dominant aim, while the repulse of Blücher was chiefly of importance because it would enable him to stretch a hand eastwards to his beleaguered garrisons. But Blücher was not to be thus disposed of. While withdrawing from Soissons to the natural fortress of Laon, he heard that Napoleon had crossed the Aisne at Berry-au-Bac, and was making for Craonne.
But the doctor was uncomfortable at court; he preferred going back to his little place at Laon, where he soon afterwards died; and eleven years later, in 1405, nobody took any more trouble about the king. He was fed like a dog, and allowed to fall ravenously upon his food. For five whole months he had not a change of clothes.
For forty-seven years after the charter of Louis the Fat the town of Laon enjoyed the internal peace and the communal liberties it had thus achieved; but in 1175 a new bishop, Roger de Rosoy, a man of high birth, and related to several of the great lords his neighbors, took upon himself to disregard the regimen of freedom established at Laon.
This, she learned from the code book wrapped under the cover of her thermos bottle, meant that she was to report to the general commanding the German forces at Soissons. From Italy she passed through Switzerland, and, after leaving Basle, on military trains was rushed north to Luxemburg, and then west to Laon.
All the day of the insurrection and all the following night armed bands wandered about the streets of Laon searching everywhere for relatives, friends, or servitors of the bishop, for all whom the angry populace knew or supposed to be such, and wreaking on their persons or their houses a ghastly or a brutal vengeance.
Laon was at the end of the eleventh century one of the most important towns in the kingdom of France. It was full of rich and industrious inhabitants; the neighboring people came thither for provisions or diversion; and such concourse led to the greatest disturbances.
June 8th, we left Laon at sunrise, and took the road to St Quentin. For a few miles the road passes through the plain in which the town is placed, after which it enters a pass, formed between the sloping hills, by which its boundary is marked.
She served well with Charles's army in the capture of Laon, Soissons, Compeigne, Beauvais, and other strong places; but in a premature attack on Paris, in September 1429, the French were repulsed, and Joan was severely wounded in the winter she was again in the field with some of the French troops; and in the following spring she threw herself into the fortress of Compeigne, which she had herself won for the French king in the preceding autumn, and which was now besieged by a strong Burgundian force.
After these, in order of rank, came a body royally attired representing the lay peers of France; it consisted of three princes of the blood, and La Tremouille and the young De Laval brothers. These were followed by the representatives of the ecclesiastical peers the Archbishop of Rheims, and the Bishops of Laon, Chalons, Orleans, and one other.
Near Laon, and towards the frontiers of French Flanders, the condition of the peasantry appeared exceedingly comfortable. Their dress was very neat, and their houses much more substantial, and, in some parts, ornament was added to strength.
Word Of The Day