Breteuil

Breteuil grew around a castle and the Benedictine abbey of Notre-Dame, founded in the eleventh century between Beauvais and Amiens. Its inhabitants received a communal charter around 1226. The castle and abbey made the small town a local centre of lordship and religious life, but also exposed it to the wars that crossed Picardy.

During the Hundred Years' War, the fortress was held for Charles VII by La Hire, a companion of Joan of Arc, and was progressively dismantled after the Treaty of Arras in 1435. The abbey was pillaged and much of the town burned during the Wars of the League around 1589. At the Revolution the abbey's lands and buildings were sold, while the common marshes beside the Noye were divided among the inhabitants.