The first kings of France, attracted by the hunting in the surrounding country, frequently stayed at Senlis.
It was in Senlis Castle (see p. [61]) that Hugues Capet was elected king by the assembly of lords in 987.
The Capetians often returned to the birthplace of their dynasty and it is to them that the town owes its chief buildings.
Taken by the peasants in the war of the Jacquerie in 1358, besieged by the Armagnacs in 1418, it fell into the hands of the English and was delivered by Joan of Arc in 1429. Senlis knew great vicissitudes in the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries.
After Henri IV., who interested himself greatly in Senlis and lived in its old castle, the kings of France gradually forsook the town in favour of Compiègne, Fontainebleau and Versailles.
Occupied in 1871 by the Germans, it reappears in history in September 1914. The burning of the town and the summary executions which took place there will be recalled in the course of the visit (pp. [38]-[52]).
SENLIS IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY.