Beauvais

Beauvais, a bishop's city north of Paris, is dominated by the immense Gothic choir of Saint-Pierre. Its builders sought exceptional height, but part of the vault collapsed in 1284. Reconstruction added new supports and continued into the fourteenth century, leaving the cathedral a monument to both ambition and the difficulty of realizing it.

In 1472 Charles the Bold of Burgundy besieged Beauvais. Men and women joined the defence, and tradition remembers Jeanne Laisné, called Jeanne Hachette, for seizing an enemy standard during an assault. The citizens held out until royal reinforcements arrived and the duke withdrew. Louis XI ordered an annual procession in gratitude, with women at its head. The bishop's palace, damaged during the siege, was rebuilt in Renaissance style in the early sixteenth century.