Avallon

Avallon occupies a steep high spur above the valley of the River Cousin, at the edge of the Morvan. Its walls guarded a town contested by the French crown and the dukes of Burgundy, while the collegiate church of Saint-Lazare stood opposite the nearby ducal castle. The fifteenth-century clock tower served as the town's belfry.

In 1433 soldiers fighting for Charles VII took Avallon, which was then recovered by Philip the Good of Burgundy. The town repelled an assault by the Protestant Duke of Zweibrücken in 1569, but the Catholic League occupied it in 1590; royal troops retook it four years later. In the seventeenth century new religious communities, including the Minims in 1607, Capuchins in 1653 and Visitandines in 1660, established themselves in the outskirts.