35 
surrendered itself to Philip Augustus of France, and became from 
that date, 1204, a French town. The Thirteenth and the first 
half of the Fourteenth Centuries, are remarkable for the number 
of religious edifices erected, among which may be mentioned 
that of St. Pierre. 
Passing over this period and arriving at 1346 we find the 
town once more plunged into the throes of war. In this year 
Edward III. landed in Normandy and marched to Caen, finding 
it in an almost defenceless state; nevertheless he was met by a 
stern resistance by a mere handful of defenders and as 
Edward ITI. stated in a private letter at the time : ‘* The combat 
was long and very much disputed.’’ The years which followed 
this catastrophe were marked by calamities of every description, 
including decimation by the Black Death and pillaging at the 
hands of the marauding bands (The Great Companies) of Charles 
of Navarre. Finally the greatest trial of the town came in 1417, 
when its small garrison of 7,000 men bravely resisted for a month 
against Henry V. of England with an army of 50,000 men. We 
cannot recount in detail, says a historian, these terrible days when 
we imagine the uproar of the bombardment, the cries of the com- 
batants, the ladders against the walls, the stones, the quicklime, 
the boiling water rained down upon the assailants, and the heaps 
of corpses piled up in the ditches. This heroic resistance had its 
moral effect throughout the whole of Normandy, as may be wit- 
nessed by the holding out of Normandy for over six months. 
The English rule at Caen at this date left its impression behind, 
for from it dates the founding of its University by Henry VI., 
which may be taken as a fair example this war-ridden town made 
in its brief intervals of peace. But foreign domination was 
drawing to a close and in 1449 the English Governor, the Duke 
of Somerset capitulated and withdrew, leaving the town in the 
hands of Charles VII. 
The religious wars arising out of the Reformation did not 
escape Caen, and it suffered severely under the contending 
parties, and De Bourgueville narrates that friend and foe alike 
conspired to the ruin of its religious monuments. Admiral 
Coligni, the famous Huguenot, laid siege to the town, and did 
great damage to the Abbey of St. Ktienne. From this period 
continuing to the Revolution, the history of the town has but 
little to narrate of general interest. How it suffered and the 
part it played in the Revolution are ensured of an everlasting 
remembrance by the pen of Carlyle, it being just sufficient to 
remember that it was from here that the ‘ Angelic-demoniac,” 
Charlotte Porday, set out to murder Marat, 
