To look at Soissons to-day, with its pleasant walks and modern houses, few people would guess it to have played an important part in the history of north-eastern France. Yet that pleasant, modern appearance is itself a proof of what the town endured in earlier days. So fierce was the struggle it had for existence, that the old Soissons has almost worn itself out, and, seen from the outside at least, a new and prosperous town would seem to have taken its place. It might well be called the city of sieges, for few towns have suffered more in this respect. From Roman days down to the Franco-Prussian war the place has seemed good and desirable from soldiers and conquerors, and has had to pay penalty for its splendid position on the Aisne. Both Cæsar and Napoleon recognised its importance as a military station, though a stretch of eighteen hundred years divided the Soissons of one general to the Soissons of the other. Like Lâon, it was for some time a royal seat; and it was here that Clovis the Frank defeated Syagrius, “Romanorum Rex,” in 486, and turned a Roman into a Frankish kingdom, in which Soissons was for some time the capital. It was in the Abbey of St. Médard, which, except for some subterranean buildings, is now destroyed, that Louis le Débonnair was twice imprisoned by his unnatural children; and on the walls of one of these dungeons have been found some verses, apparently a description of the unfortunate prisoner, but dating only from the fifteenth century. [Illustration: RHEIMS] During the “Hundred Days” Soissons was twice taken and twice retaken in the course of a month. Blücher laid siege to the town in 1814, and but for a sudden surrender on the part of the governor, which gave it into his hands for the time, it would probably have been annihilated by Napoleon, who, as matters turned out, had not time to come up with the Prussian Army. In 1870 another Prussian force entered the town under the Duke of Mecklenburg, after a siege which closes the roll of Soissons’ struggles. On both occasions of our visiting Soissons, we came away with the feeling that the interior of the Cathedral of Notre Dame was even more impressive than that of Rheims. It is, indeed, a worthy rival to its neighbouring sister church; the beautiful proportions of the nave, the simplicity and purity of the carved capitals, the splendid glass, render it one of the most beautiful cathedrals of France. There is a lovely little chapel in the salle capitulaire at the west end, approached by a cloister, early Gothic in design, with its vaulting supported by two graceful columns, which reminds one of some of the chapter houses of our English cathedrals.