Hesdin

Hesdin's history belongs to two sites on the Canche. The old fortified town was a favoured residence of the counts of Artois and dukes of Burgundy, with a castle and a great park stretching towards the Ternoise. Its position on the frontier of the Habsburg Netherlands also made it a French stronghold in a fiercely disputed region.

In 1553 the imperial army captured the old town of Hesdin and Charles V ordered the town and castle destroyed. A new fortified town was founded the following year several kilometres downstream, near the confluence of the Canche and the Ternoise. For a time it was called Hesdin-Fort and belonged to the Spanish side of the frontier; the older site became known as Vieil-Hesdin.