Arras

Arras was the capital of Artois, on the Scarpe, where cloth-makers wove tapestries so famous that the English simply called them arras. With some thirty-five thousand inhabitants it was among the great cloth towns of the north, trading as far as the East. From 1384 it belonged to the Burgundian dukes, and in 1435 the Peace of Arras reconciled Philip the Good with Charles VII, ending the long breach between the houses of Valois and Burgundy.

After the death of Charles the Bold in 1477 Louis XI took the city. In 1479 its people were driven out and settlers from other French towns were brought in to replace them; the old inhabitants gradually returned after the Treaty of Arras of 1482. Artois went back to the Habsburgs in 1493 and later belonged to the Spanish Netherlands. In 1640 Louis XIII's army, with Richelieu, besieged Arras until the Spanish garrison surrendered, and the Treaty of the Pyrenees in 1659 confirmed French possession. Vauban then built the citadel between 1668 and 1672.