Lens

Lens was a small fortified town in Artois, caught between the French kingdom and the lands of the Burgundian and later Habsburg rulers. Its position brought it repeated sieges: the town was attacked many times in the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and again during the wars of the seventeenth.

In 1648 a Spanish army occupied Lens, prompting a French force under the Prince of Condé to march against it. The opposing armies met outside the town on 20 August, in the open country of Artois. Condé's victory over the Spanish became one of the last major French successes of the Thirty Years' War. The struggle for Artois continued, but the battle was an important step towards the province's eventual incorporation into France.