Chaumont-en-Vexin

Chaumont-en-Vexin grew around a royal fortress in the historic Vexin, a borderland long disputed by the French and Norman rulers. The king granted the town a communal charter in 1182, and Chaumont came to be regarded as a capital of the district. Its castle remained a valuable position in later wars.

Henry V of England took Chaumont in 1419 during the Hundred Years' War, leaving a garrison in the castle for thirty years, until 1449. Under Francis I the town became the seat of a bailliage, a royal judicial district. Charles IX moved it to Senlis in 1563, but Henry III restored it to Chaumont in 1576. The old courthouse had a medieval cellar beneath its sixteenth-century façade, which bore carved shields from that period.