After the Romans came the first of the kings as proprietors of the forest, and in the moyen-age the monks, the barons and the crown itself shared equally the rights of the forest.
Legends of most weird purport are connected with various points scattered here and there throughout the forest, as at the Fosse Dupuis and the Table Ronde, where a sort of "trial by fire" was held by the barons whenever a seigneur among them had conspired against another. Ariosto, gathering many of his legends from the works of the old French chroniclers, did not disdain to make use of the Forêt de Compiègne as a stage setting.
During the reign of Clothaire the forest was known as the Forêt de Cuise, because of a royal palace hidden away among the Druid oaks which bore the name of Cotia, or Cusia. Until 1346 the palace existed in some form or other, though shorn of royal dignities. It was at this period that Philippe VI divided the forests of the Valois into three distinct parts in order to better regulate their exploitation.
The Frankish kings being, it would seem, inordinately fond of la chasse the Forêt de Compiègne, in the spring and autumn, became their favorite rendezvous. Alcuin, the historian, noted this fact in the eighth century, and described this earliest of royal hunts in some detail. In 715 the forest was the witness of a great battle between the Austrasians and the Neustrians.
Before Francis I with his habitual initiative had pierced the eight great forest roads which come together at the octagon called the Puits du Roi, the forest was not crossed by any thoroughfare; the nearest thing thereto was the Chaussée de Brunhaut, a Roman way which bounded it on the south and east.
Louis XIV and Louis XV, in turn, cut numerous roads and paths, and to the latter were due the crossroads known as the Grand Octagone and the Petit Octagone.
It was over one of these great forest roads, that leading to Soissons, that Marie Louise, accompanied by a cortège of three hundred persons, eighty conveyances and four hundred and fifty horses, journeyed in a torrential rain, in March 1807, when she came to France to found a dynasty.
A marriage had been consummated by procuration at Vienna, and she set out to actually meet her future spouse for the first time at Soissons. At the little village of Courcelles, on the edge of the forest between Soissons and Compiègne, two men enveloped in great protecting cloaks had arrived post-haste from Compiègne. At the parish church they stopped a moment and took shelter under the porch, impatiently scanning the horizon. Finally a lumbering berlin de voyage lurched into view, drawn by eight white horses. In its depths were ensconced two women richly dressed, one a beautiful woman of mature years, the other a young girl scarce eighteen years.
The most agitated of the men, he who was clad in a gray redingote, sprang hastily to the carriage door. He was introduced by the older woman as "Sa Majesté l'Empereur des Françaises, mon frere." The speaker was one of the sisters of Napoleon, Caroline, Queen of Naples; the other was the Archduchess Marie Louise, daughter of Franz II, Emperor of Austria.
An imposing ceremonial had been planned for Soissons and the court had been ordered to set out from Compiègne with the emperor, in order to arrive at Soissons in due time. When the actual signal for the departure was given the emperor was nowhere to be found. As usual he had anticipated things.