TRACES OF SHELLS ON THE CATHEDRAL
We have orders to make of Senlis another Louvain. A terrible example is needed for Paris and for the whole of France.
The vicar implored for mercy for the town, and the officer promised to intervene with his superiors in order to obtain a mitigation of the sentence. Whether he gained his point or whether the giving up of the direct march on Paris caused the part of scape-goat assigned to the peaceful little town to appear of less immediate necessity, the incendiarism was limited to the Rue de la République and the Quartier de la Licorne.
The tourist will visit the Cathedral (see pp. [53]-[59]), Saint-Frambourg (p. [60]), the Castle (pp. [61]-[63]), and will then go down the old Rue du Châtel.
ABBÉ DOURLENT
This road was the scene of an outrage of 1789, famous in the annals of Senlis. The clockmaker Billon, seeing beneath his windows the company of musketeers from which, as usurer, he had been dismissed, raised his musket and killed the commandant and several others. Trapped in his house, he backed from room to room still adding to the number of his victims. At the moment when they seized him the mine that he had prepared exploded, destroying his house and leaving twenty-six dead and forty injured.
The Rue du Châtel ends in the Square Henri IV., in the corner of which stands the Town-hall. Its façade (see below) dates from 1495. Above the door is the bust of Henri IV., with an inscription taken from the letters-patent sent by the king to Senlis as thanks for the town's resistance against the Leaguers:
"Mon heur a prins son commencement en la ville de Senlis, dont il s'est depuis semé et augmenté par tout le royaume."