In the sixth century Tournai figured prominently in the narrative of the furious wars between Fredegonda and Brunehault, one of the great epics of the early Middle Ages. Fredegonda, who was the daughter of a bondsman, became by virtue of her beauty and imperious will the wife of Chilperic, King of the Franks. Brunehault, equally beautiful, but a king's daughter as well as the wife of a king--Sigebert, brother of Chilperic--began the contest to avenge the death of her sister Galeswintha, whom Fredegonda had caused to be slain. Chilperic and Fredegonda were besieged at Tournai in 575, but the latter caused the murder of Sigebert, upon whose death the besieging army dispersed. Incidents in this siege are depicted in the stained-glass windows of the cathedral. The contest between the two fierce queens lasted more than half a century, Brunehault at the last being torn to pieces by wild horses, when more than eighty years old, by the son of her life-long rival. In 880 the Norsemen fell upon the city and its inhabitants fled to Noyon, where they remained for thirty-one years. In its subsequent history the old town sustained more than its share of sieges, the common lot of all frontier places, and changed hands oftener than any other European city. For many generations it was subject to the early Counts of Flanders. Philip Augustus then annexed it to France, to which it belonged until the reign of Francis I. In 1340 occurred the most famous of all its sieges. It belonged at that time to France and was attacked by the English under Edward III, a huge army of Flemings under Jacques Van Artevelde, the Duke of Brabant and the Count of Hainaut with their followers and many others--a host estimated by Froissart at one hundred and twenty thousand men. That delightful historian devotes more than a dozen chapters to a gossipy account of the siege, which lasted more than eleven weeks and was only raised by the approach of a French army when the supply of provisions was reduced to three days' rations. In 1513 Tournai was captured by Henry VIII, who gave the see to Cardinal Wolsey, but soon sold it back to the French. The huge round tower a little distance to the right as one enters the city from the railway station was erected by the English King during his short rule. In 1521 the city was captured by Charles the Fifth, becoming a part of his domains, and in 1581 it sustained another famous siege. In common with the rest of Flanders and the Low Countries, the city had revolted against the atrocities of Philip II. It was besieged by the Prince of Parma and heroically defended by Christine, Princess of Epinoy, whose statue stands in the Grande Place. She was herself wounded and had lost more than three-fourths of the garrison before she surrendered.