tion, depending altogether for
their prosperity upon the state of commerce in the provincial capital.
Its population consists of about seven thousand inhabitants. Its
position is beautiful, in a small island formed by the Eure, which
divides, in the immediate vicinity of the town, into two streams,
flowing through a valley of the most luxuriant fertility, enclosed by
hills covered for the greater part with extensive forests.

The name of Louviers, in Latin _Locoveris_, occurs upon more than one
occasion, in the early Norman chronicles; and the town, though never
fortified, has obtained a considerable degree of historical celebrity.
When Richard Coeur-de-Lion, escaped from his captivity in the east,
hastened to punish the perfidy with which he had been on all sides
assailed during his absence, and Normandy became the theatre of a most
bloody warfare, Louviers had the honor of being selected as the place in
which these differences were composed. The treaty signed upon this
occasion, in 1195, prescribed new bounds to the duchy; and the old
historians, who always delight in consecrating the recital of any
memorable event by a mixture of the marvellous, tell how, at the moment
when the kings were engaged in the conference which led to this treaty,
a serpent of enormous size darted from the foot of the tree beneath
which they were standing, and approached them with marks of great fury,
hissing violently at both, as if in the act to attack them. The
monarchs, who were alone, instantly laid their hands upon their swords;
and the armies, who stood at a short distance on either side arranged in
battle array, alarmed at such hostile demonstrations, had well nigh
joined in a fresh combat.--Only the following year, Louviers was one of
the towns ceded by Richard to Walter, archbishop of Rouen, by way of
compensation for the infringement of the rights of the see, of which he
had been guilty in the erection of Chateau Gaillard. The possession of
Louviers was peculiarly acceptable to the prelate, as being in the
immediate vicinity of the village of Pinterville, where the archbishops
of Rouen then had their country seat: they continued to occupy the same
till the reign of St. Louis, when that monarch conferred upon them the
castle of Gaillon, which they held till the revolution.

Louviers was taken in 1345, by the English army under King Edward III.
then on his march for Paris, after the battle of Caen; and Froissart, in
relating the ci