The castle being thus secured, 'sundry notables of the city went to meet the two knights, and assured them that no harm should come to them or theirs, for that what had been done was done only for the peace and prosperity of the city.' Quite different this from the cowardly murder of the Governor of the Bastille, struck down after his surrender by some of Maillard's confederates, while that scoundrel himself still had his hand upon the unfortunate De Launay's collar.
The 'Messires de Mailly' made 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 Condé 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 manœuvred. Henry himself came here often, and during the siege of La Fère '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 curé 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.
That the Revolution of 1789 left the citizens of Chauny much less determined to do battle for their rights than their ancestors were in the days of the English invaders, may be fairly inferred, I think, from the very curious circumstance that, in 1815, they actually made a public subscription for the purpose of presenting a very handsome gold medal, weighing two ounces, to the Prussian Commander of Chauny, Colonel Von Beulwitz.
This medal bore the inscription, in French, 'The grateful city of Chauny to M. Von Beulwitz, Commandant of Chauny.' The local authorities also asked, and obtained, for their Prussian satrap and his secretary the cross of the Legion of Honour!
All this was no doubt very creditable to the German authorities, and not discreditable to the good people of Chauny. But it certainly seems to show that at the end of the Napoleonic era, the French people in the provinces were thoroughly weary of the Revolution and all its consequences. They welcomed peace at any price from any quarter. The testimony of all impartial contemporary observers accords with the deliberate opinion given by Gouverneur Morris to Alexander Hamilton in 1796, that the French people in general were royalists at heart, and utterly averse to the general overthrow of their institutions by the legislative mob at Paris, or, as Mirabeau comprehensively called them, 'that Wild Ass of the National Assembly.'
At Chauny, in 1816, the inhabitants held a meeting under the presidency of the mayor, at which they declared, with great unanimity, that 'the people of Chauny had never, in fact and of their own free will, adopted the impious and seditious principles introduced in France by a factious minority, and that they regarded the death of the most Christian king, Louis XVI., as the most execrable of crimes.'