Evreux

Évreux, a bishop's seat and the capital of its own county, was an important town in eastern Normandy. Its cathedral of Notre-Dame and the abbey of Saint-Taurin stood at the heart of its religious life, while royal officers and the counts of Évreux made it a centre of government. The counts' connections with Navarre drew the town into the politics of two kingdoms.

In the fourteenth century Charles II of Navarre, count of Évreux, pursued his ambitions amid the Hundred Years' War. Fighting between French and Navarrese forces damaged the town, and the cathedral needed repairs after a fire in 1356. English troops captured Évreux in 1418; occupation and destruction were followed by a slow recovery. Work on the cathedral continued through the following centuries and reached completion in the early seventeenth century.