Soissons

Soissons, a fortified town of North France, dep. Aisne, on the Aisne, 65 m. NE. of Paris; has a 12th-century cathedral and ruins of a famous abbey; chief industries are brewing and the manufacture of various textiles; was a place of much importance in early times, and figures in the wars of Clovis and Pepin, frequently in the Hundred Years' War, and in 1870 was captured by the Germans; is considered the key to Paris from the Netherlands side.

Population (circa 1900) given as 11,000.

Definition taken from The Nuttall Encyclopædia, edited by the Reverend James Wood (1907)