Editing Soissons (section)

==<FONT COLOR="#000099">'''HISTORY OF SOISSONS'''</FONT>==

Soissons enters written history under its Celtic name (as later borrowed in Latin), '''Noviodunum''', meaning "new hillfort". At Ancient Roman contact, it was a town of the Suessiones, mentioned, by Julius Caesar. Caesar (''B.C.'' 57), after leaving the Axona (modern Aisne), entered the territory of the Suessiones, and making one day's long march, reached Noviodunum, which was surrounded by a high wall and a broad ditch. '''The place surrendered to Caesar'''. From 457 to 486, under Aegidius and his son Syagrius, '''Noviodunum was the capital of the "Kingdom of Soissons"''', until it fell to the Frankish king Clovis I in the Battle of Soissons (486).

Part of the Frankish territory of Neustria, the Soissons region, and the Abbey of Saint-Médard, built in the 8th century, played an important political part during the rule of the Merovingian kings (A.D. 447-751). '''After the death of Clovis I in 511, Soissons was made the capital of one of the four kingdoms into which his states were divided'''. Eventually, the kingdom of Soissons disappeared in 613 when the Franks lands were amalgamated under Clotaire II. In 744 the Synod of Soissons met at the instigation of Pippin III, and Saint Boniface, the Pope's missionary to pagan Germany, secured the condemnation of the Frankish bishop Adalbert and the Irish missionary Clement.

During the Hundred Years' War, French forces committed a notorious massacre of English archers stationed at the town's garrison, in which many of the the French townsfolk were themselves raped and killed. The massacre of French citizens by French soldiers shocked Europe, and Henry V of England, noting that '''the town of Soissons was dedicated to the saints Crispin and Crispinian''', claimed to avenge the honour of the saints when he met the French forces at the Battle of Agincourt on St Crispin's Day 1415. 

In 1999, the town was on '''the main path of totality for Solar eclipse''' of August 11, 1999.

'''''More informations about the History of Soissons on the [[wikipedia:Soissons]] !'''''