Valenciennes

Valenciennes stands on the Scheldt in Hainaut, a town whose position tied it to the politics and commerce of the Low Countries. In 1259 Dominican scholars including Thomas Aquinas met here to establish a programme of studies for their order. By the sixteenth century Valenciennes had become an early centre of Calvinism in the Spanish Netherlands.

In 1562 townspeople freed Protestants condemned to the stake, and in 1566 iconoclasts attacked religious images. Spanish forces besieged and captured the city in 1567, punishing the resistance; the preacher Guido de Brès was among those executed. Rebels briefly took Valenciennes again in 1572. Louis XIV's army captured it in 1677, and the Treaty of Nijmegen assigned it to France the following year. The city endured another siege during the revolutionary wars in 1793.