Voltaire, in his Dictionnaire philosophique (1769), wrote an article Torture, in which he set out an account of the martyrdom of the Chevalier de La Barre: When the Knight of La Barre, grandson of a lieutenant general of the armies, young man of great wit and great hope, but with the giddiness of unbridled youth, was convicted of having sung ungodly songs, and even to have passed before a procession of Capuchin without removing his hat, the judges of Abbeville, comparable to the Roman senators, ordered, not only that his tongue be torn out, his hand was cut off, and his body be burned slowly; but they still applied torture to find out how many songs he had sung, and how many processions he had seen pass the hat on the head.

André Maurois, in Les Silences du Colonel Bramble (1918) amusingly described the intact commercial spirit of the inhabitants of Abbeville in the last months of the war.

Christian Morel de Sarcus [fr], in his novel Déluges, Éditions Henry, November 2004 (2005 Prix Renaissance), evokes the bombing of 1940 and the floods of the Somme of 2001.

[24] Decree of 2 June 1948: "Beautiful city, victim of the two World Wars, holder of the Croix de Guerre 1914–1918, was the scene of violent fighting in 1940, during the Battle of the Somme.

(3 June 1948 Olympics) Citation to the order of the army of 12 August 1920: "By its military situation has been the object of repeated attacks by enemy aviation; despite its suffering and its mourning it has kept its patriotic faith intact."

(14 August 1920 Olympics) Details: Charles V granted to Abbeville, by letters patent of 19 June 1369, Vincennes, to focus on its coat of arms the chief of France and the motto: "Fidelis".

[29] In the 7th century, the Benedictine monks of Saint-Valéry, Saint-Josse, Saint-Saulve de Montreuil, Forest-Montiers, Balance and Valloires cleared the woods that were close to their monasteries.

The Frankish king Dagobert I then gave part of the forest of Crécy, the hermitage became the Abbey of Saint-Riquier [fr]: it is the Act of birth of the abbatial field of Abbeville.

With the rapid development of the salt trade (from Rue), woad (waide in Picard) and industry of wool cloth, the bourgeois increased in number and political importance: They asked for a charter granted in the course of the 12th century and which was confirmed in 1184[3][28] by Count John I of Ponthieu who died in Palestine.

In 1259, the Estates-General of the Kingdom stood at Abbeville and Henry III of England has met with Louis IX of France to sign the Treaty of Paris, which settled the question of the conquests of Philip Augustus.

Ringois, a bourgeois of the city, refusing to take the oath of obedience to Edward III of England, was taken to English soil and hurled from the top of the Tower of Dover Castle into the sea in 1368.

In December, by letters patent, he confirmed the privileges of the city, attached by his predecessors,[32] but in 1465 Charles the Bold revoked the grant by taking the lead of the League of the Public Weal.

However, Abbeville had embraced the Catholic League and suffered from the Wars of Religion, and it was relieved when it was recognised, by Henry IV in April 1594, despite the clergy who persisted in its resistance.

In 1656, 6,000 soldiers, who had participated in the English Civil War, landed in France and took their quarters in Abbeville from where they left to go and reinforce the army of Turenne en route to Valenciennes.

Shortly after, Balthazar de Fargues[note 3] sold the place to John of Austria and after meeting the price, he refused to deliver it to him, raising troops for himself who were then spread throughout the Ponthieu to ransom the inhabitants.

In 1685, it suffered a serious blow at the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, the Protestant temple was destroyed and the persecuted workers who were the majority of skilled labour left the town, including those of Van Robais.

In July 1766, the Chevalier de La Barre, accused of having, a year earlier, failed to give a due salute to a religious procession for Corpus Christi by refusing to remove his hat and singing ungodly songs.

Abbeville was fairly important in the 18th century, when the Van Robais Royal Manufacture (one of the first major factories in France) brought great prosperity (but some class controversy) to the town.

On 20 February, a column of cavalry forming the vanguard of the 3rd Corps of the Prussian army, commanded by Baron de Geismar, arrived in Doullens, before heading to Abbeville.

Abbeville was the birthplace of Rear Admiral Amédée Courbet (1827–1885), whose victories on land and at sea made him a national hero during the Sino-French War (August 1884 to April 1885).

Courbet died in June 1885, shortly after the end of the war, at Makung in the Pescadores Islands, and his body was brought back to France and buried in Abbeville on 1 September 1885 after a state funeral at Les Invalides a few days earlier.

On May 31, 1918, American war poet John Allan Wyeth was a Second Lieutenant in the 33rd U.S. Infantry Division, which was largely composed of soldiers from the Illinois Army National Guard.

On 12 September 1939 a conference in Abbeville took place in which France and the United Kingdom decided to not continue the attack on Germany, which resulted in a tougher situation on eastern front.

In the development of the 1940 Battle of France, the Germans had massed the bulk of their armoured force in Panzer Group von Kleist, which attacked through the comparatively unguarded sector of the Ardennes and achieved a breakthrough at Sedan with air support.

[citation needed] Charles de Gaulle (17–18 May 1940), then a colonel, launched a counterattack in the region of Laon (see the map) with 80 tanks to destroy the communication of the German armoured troops.

After Laon (24 May), de Gaulle was promoted to temporary general: "On 28 May (...) the 4th DCR attacked twice to destroy a pocket captured by the enemy south of the Somme near Abbeville.

The operation was successful, with over 400 prisoners taken and the entire pocket mopped up except for Abbeville (...) but in the second attack the 4th DCR failed to gain control of the city in the face of superior enemy numbers.

[30] Wulfram, its patron saint who is celebrated on 20 March, was born c. 650 AD, in Milly (Gâtinais), and was Lord at the Court of Chlothar III, Abbot of Fontenelle, Archbishop of Sens in 682, and an evangeliser of Frisia.

The Boucher de Perthes Museum [fr] is partly situated in the now unused bell tower of the 13th century which is inscribed on the World Heritage list.

Located near the station, next to the bridge on the Somme canal, the La Barre Monument is an annual rallying point, on the first Sunday of July, for defenders of secularism and freethinkers.