[3] Montargis is the seventh most populous commune in the Centre-Val de Loire région, and the second in the Loiret département after Orléans.

Though the town is known to date to ancient times, during the Renaissance, fanciful etymologies were invented to account for the place name Montargis, whether as mons argi, Mount of Argus, the place where the jealous goddess Juno charged Argus Panoptes with guarding her rival Io, or connected with the chieftain Moritas mentioned by Julius Caesar, in his Gallic Wars.

Eleanor Plantagenet, second daughter of King John of England and wife of Simon de Montfort, 6th Earl of Leicester (killed at the Battle of Evesham), died here on 13 April 1275.

During the siege the residents of Montargis sabotaged the dikes of numerous ponds in the district, causing flooding and drowning many of the besieging Plantagenets.

On 5 September a French force of 1600 men led by Jean de Dunois and La Hire, commanders who would go on to lead the army of Joan of Arc, broke the siege.

This privilege was renewed by his successors and Montargis remained free of taxes for three centuries until it was revoked during the French Revolution.

In the story, Aubry de Montdidier, a courtier of King Charles V of France, was murdered around 1400 in a forest near Montargis by Robert Macaire, an envious knight.

[5] A dramatic bronze statue of this fight is in the courtyard of the Girodet Museum in central Montargis,[6] and the contest is depicted in a stained glass window in a local church as well.

The most famous of them, Deng Xiaoping, was a worker producing rubber galoshes in the Hutchinson factory of Châlette-sur-Loing for eight months from mid-February to mid-October 1922.

[9] In 2023, riots following the death of Nahel Merzouk caused extensive damage in the city centre, including burning buildings and looted shops.