The Foret de Compiegne as a historic wildwood goes back to the Druids who practiced their mysterious rites under its antique shade centuries before the coming of the kings, who later called it their own special hunting preserve. Stone hatchets, not unlike the tomahawks of the red man, have been found and traced back--well, definitely to the Stone Age, and supposedly to the time when they served the Druids for their sacrifices. [Illustration: _Cours de Compiegne_] The soldiers of Caesar came later and their axes were of iron or copper, and though on the warpath, too, their way was one which was supposed to lead civilization into the wilderness. Innumerable traces of the Roman occupation are to be found in the forest by those who know how to read the signs; twenty-five different localities have been marked down by the archeologists as having been stations on the path blazed by the Legions of Rome. After the Romans came the first of the kings as proprietors of the forest, and in the moyen-age the monks, the barons and the crown itself shared equally the rights of the forest. Legends of most weird purport are connected with various points scattered here and there throughout the forest, as at the Fosse Dupuis and the Table Ronde, where a sort of "trial by fire" was held by the barons whenever a seigneur among them had conspired against another. Ariosto, gathering many of his legends from the works of the old French chroniclers, did not disdain to make use of the Foret de Compiegne as a stage setting. During the reign of Clothaire the forest was known as the Foret de Cuise, because of a royal palace hidden away among the Druid oaks which bore the name of Cotia, or Cusia. Until 1346 the palace existed in some form or other, though shorn of royal dignities. It was at this period that Philippe VI divided the forests of the Valois into three distinct parts in order to better regulate their exploitation. The Frankish kings being, it would seem, inordinately fond of _la chasse_ the Foret de Compiegne, in the spring and autumn, became their favorite rendezvous. Alcuin, the historian, noted this fact in the eighth century, and described this earliest of royal hunts in some detail. In 715 the forest was the witness of a great battle between the Austrasians and the Neustrians. Before Francis I with his habitual initiative had pierced the eight great forest roads which come together at the octagon called the Puits du Roi, the forest was not crossed by any thoroughfare; the nearest thing thereto was the Chaussee de Brunhaut, a Roman way which bounded it on the south and east. Louis XIV and Louis XV, in turn, cut numerous roads and paths, and to the latter were due the crossroads known as the Grand Octagone and the Petit Octagone.