Poligny

Poligny lies beneath the heights of the Jura, where the castle of Grimont guarded a town of the county of Burgundy. Its walls and religious houses stood in a region contested between France and the Habsburg rulers of the county. The seventeenth century brought repeated sieges and a particularly devastating fire.

French forces took Poligny and its fortified castle in 1595 and demanded a ransom from the town and returned during the Ten Years' War, capturing the town again in 1638. The fortress of Grimont was dismantled in 1643. A great fire struck Poligny in 1673, damaging among other buildings the Ursuline convent established around 1648. The town surrendered to France again in 1674, and the Treaty of Nijmegen in 1678 later confirmed French possession of the county.