Tournai, known as
Tornacum, was a place of minor importance in
Roman times, a stopping place where the
Roman road from
Cologne on the Rhine to
Boulogne on the coast crossed the river
Scheldt. It was fortified under Emperor
Maximian in the 3rd century AD, when the Roman
limes was withdrawn to the string of outposts along the road. It came into the possession of the
Salian Franks in 432. Under King
Childeric I, whose tomb was discovered there in 1653, Tournai was the capital of the
Frankish Empire. In 486,
Clovis moved the center of power to
Paris. In turn, a native son of Tournai,
Eleutherius, became bishop of the newly created
bishopric of Tournai, extending over most of the area west of the Scheldt. In 862,
Charles the Bald, first king of
Western Francia and still to become
Holy Roman Emperor, would make Tournai the seat of the
County of Flanders. After the partition of the Frankish Empire by the Treaties of
Verdun (843) and of
Meerssen (870), Tournai remained in the western part of the empire, which in 987 became France. The city participated in 11th-century rise of towns in the
Low Countries, with a woollen cloth industry based on English wool, which soon made it attractive to wealthy merchants. An ambitious rebuilding of the cathedral was initiated in 1030.
Odo of Orléans was appointed at the cathedral school of Tournai in 1087. Under Odo's leadership,
Saint-Martin Abbey flourished and by 1105 had 70 monks. The commune's drive for independence from the local counts succeeded in 1187, and the city was henceforth directly subordinated to the French Crown, as the
seigneurie de Tournaisis, as the city's environs are called. The stone over the Scheldt, with defensive towers at either end, was built in 1290, replacing an earlier wooden structure. In 1340, as a part of the Hundred Years' War,
Edward III of England gathered a large army and
besieged Tournai for a month. The operation was unsuccessful, bankrupting Edward and forcing him to sign the
Truce of Espléchin. During the 15th century, the city's textile trade boomed and it became an important supplier of
tapestry. The art of painting flourished too:
Jacques Daret,
Robert Campin and
Rogier van der Weyden all came from Tournai. It was
captured in 1513 by
Henry VIII of England, making it the only Belgian city ever to have been ruled by England. It was also
represented in the 1515
Parliament of England. The city was handed back to French rule in 1519, following the
Treaty of London (1518). In 1521,
Holy Roman Emperor Charles V added the city to his possessions in the
Low Countries, leading to a period of religious strife and economic decline. During the 16th century, Tournai was a bulwark of
Calvinism, but eventually it was conquered by the Spanish governor of the Low Countries, the
Duke of Parma, following a prolonged siege in 1581. After the fall of the city, its
Protestant inhabitants were given one year to sell their possessions and emigrate, a policy that was at the time considered relatively humane, since very often religious opponents were simply massacred. One century later, in 1668, the city briefly returned to France under King
Louis XIV in the
Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle following the
siege of Tournai. The city was
besieged by the
Duke of Marlborough during the
War of Spanish Succession in 1709. At the end of the war in 1713, under terms of the
Treaty of Utrecht the former
Spanish Netherlands, including Tournai, came into possession of the
Austrian Habsburgs. The city was again successfully
besieged by France in 1745. In 1794, France annexed the
Austrian Netherlands during the
French Revolutionary Wars and Tournai became part of the
department of
Jemmape. From 1815 on, following the
Napoleonic Wars, Tournai formed part of the
United Netherlands and after 1830 of
newly independent Belgium. Badly damaged in 1940 during
World War II, Tournai has since been carefully restored. ==Main sights==