[7]: 101 The forest of Compiègne is famous for its picturesque natural attractions, with its arrays of oak and beech trees projecting a "noble and ordered beauty".

[10] Since the late twentieth century, the North American black cherry tree (Prunus serotina) has spread vigorously throughout the forest, eliciting mixed reactions from local arborists.

[14] The forest sustains a great number of game animals including deer, rabbit and wild boar,[15] and the varied terrain – plateaus cut by valleys and gorges, hills, streams and ponds – makes for challenging hunting.

[2] The oldest ones include a small red mark which shows the direction to the château, relics of an imperial order given during the Second French Empire after the Empress Eugénie found herself lost in the thick woods.

[23] The earliest Frankish kings established the forest as their privileged hunting grounds,[21]: 356  and Clothaire the Great built the first royal residence there in the 7th century,[21]: 357–358  and there he died of a fever.

In the twelfth century, at the age of fourteen, the future King Philip II of France found himself lost in the forest: he came so close to tragedy that his father, Louis VII, felt compelled to make a pilgrimage to the shrine of St. Thomas of Canterbury in England to offer thanks for his recovery.

[21]: 358 Further avenues connected by an octagonal ring were opened through the woods for the formal hunting parties of Louis XIV, and under the Ancien Régime the number of rides was increased to 200.

Additions include a statue of Marshal Foch and the large Alsace-Lorraine Memorial, which depicts an Allied sword pinning down an Imperial German eagle.

A famous memorial tablet placed at the precise location of the cease-fire signing reads (in French), "Here on the eleventh of November 1918 succumbed the criminal pride of the German Reich... vanquished by the free peoples which it tried to enslave.

The car was decorated with old Imperial emblems, redolent of past glories and mutely confirming the resurgence of French power after its defeat in the Franco-Prussian War in 1870.

After the fall of France in World War Two, this same railway carriage was specifically used by the Germans for the armistice of 1940; it was remanded to Germany where it was eventually destroyed by SS troops in Crawinkel, Thuringia, in 1945, and the remains were buried.