Abbeville

Abbeville stands on the Somme in northern France, about twenty kilometers from the mouth of the Somme and roughly midway between Rouen and Lille. Most of the town occupies the east bank and an island in the river. In the Middle Ages this was the lowest dependable crossing of the Somme before the estuary, making the town a gateway between maritime Picardy, Amiens, and the road network of northern France. Abbeville served as the capital of the County of Ponthieu, and its control of the crossing gave it strategic value beyond the size of its population.

War repeatedly passed through the town. In 1346 the army of Edward III crossed the Somme near Abbeville shortly before defeating the French at Crécy. The river also carried commerce and supported a port, canal, and river shipping, but silt eventually reduced the navigable approach. Abbeville’s central location made it a regular stopping place for kings and diplomats. On 3 October 1514 Louis XII married Mary Tudor there, and in 1517 Francis I met Cardinal Wolsey at Abbeville while negotiating the alliance that became the Treaty of London.

The seventeenth century brought both manufacturing and religious conflict. Under Louis XIV, Colbert encouraged the Van Robais family of Dutch textile makers to settle in Abbeville. In 1665 they founded the Manufacture royale des Rames, producing fine linens and tablecloths and making the town a center of royal drapery production. The revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685 then destroyed the Protestant temple and drove away many skilled workers, including people employed by the Van Robais. The population and cloth industry suffered a blow from which the old river economy did not fully recover.

Abbeville remained a regional administrative and market center. Its position on the Somme explains the medieval castle, the canal, the bridges, and the density of shipping and mills, while its churches were rebuilt again and again after centuries of war.