SOISSONS, a city of France, capital of an arrondissement in the department of Aisne, 65 m. N.E. of Paris by the railway to Laon. Pop. (1931) 17,012.
Soissons is generally identified with the oppidum of Gallia Belgica, called Noviodunum by Caesar. Noviodunum was the capital of the Suessiones, whose king, Divitiacus, had extended his authority beyond the sea among the Britons. In 58 B.C. Galba, king of the Suessiones, separated from the confederation of the Belgians and submitted to the Romans.
At the beginning of the empire Noviodunum took the name of Augusta Suessionum, and afterwards that of Suessiona, and be came the second capital of Gallia Belgica, of which Reims was the metropolis. The town had walls and a citadel, and became the starting-point of military roads (to Reims, Château-Thierry, Meaux, Paris, Amiens and St. Quentin). Christianity was intro duced by St. Crispin and St. Crispinian. In 297 their successor, St. Sinitius, became the first bishop of Soissons.
After the barbarians had crossed the Rhine and the Meuse Soissons became the metropolis of the Roman possessions in the north of Gaul, and on the defeat of Syagrius by Clovis in 486 the Franks seized the town. Not till the time of Clotaire II., was the kingdom of Soissons incorporated with that of Paris. Pippin the Short was at Soissons proclaimed king and was there crowned by St. Boniface, before being crowned at Saint Denis by the pope himself. In 923 Charles the Simple was defeated outside the walls by the supporters of Rudolph of Burgundy, and Hugh the Great besieged and partly burned the town in 948. The communal charter of the town dates from 1131. The town suffered severely during the Hundred Years War. It was sacked by Charles V. in 1544 and in 1565 by the Huguenots, who held the town for six months. During the League Soissons joined the Catholics. In 1814 Soissons was captured and recaptured by the allies and the French. In 187o it capitulated to the Germans after a bombard ment of three days. During the war of 1914-18 Soissons was for most of the time just behind the Franco-British lines but the Ger mans passed it in 1918 in their thrust for Paris (May 27) ; it was retaken in the Franco-British offensive of July 18, 1918.
In the middle ages Soissons was the chief town of a countship belonging in the loth and nth centuries to a family which ap parently sprang from the counts of Vermandois. In 1625 the
countship passed to the house of Thomas Francis of Savoy. In 1734 the male line of Savoy-Soissons became extinct and the countship was ceded to the house of Orleans who held it until i780. Soissons stands on the Aisne, the suburbs of St. Vaast and St. Medard lying on the right bank. The cathedral of Notre-Dame, partly ruined in the World War, was begun in the 12th century and finished by the end of the 13th.
There are still remains, though damaged, of the fine abbey of St. Jean-des-Vignes, where Thomas Beckett resided for a short time. These include the ruins of two cloisters (13th century) and the facade of the church, with three portals (13th century) ; the two unequal towers (230 and 246 ft.) of the 15th and early 16th centuries are surmounted by stone spires. The 13th century church of St. Leger, also damaged, formerly belonged to an abbey of the Genovefains. Beneath are two Romanesque crypts. Before the war a barrack occupied the royal abbey of Notre-Dame, founded in 66o for monks and nuns by Leutrade, wife of Ebroin, the cele brated mayor of the palace. The number of the nuns (216 in 858), the wealth of the library in manuscripts, the valuable relics, the high birth of the abbesses, the popularity of the pilgrimages, all contributed to the importance of this abbey. The wealthiest of all the abbeys in Soissons was that of St. Medard, founded about 56o by Clotaire I., beside the villa of Syagrius, which had become the palace of the Frankish kings. It was there that Childeric III., the last Merovingian, was deposed and Pippin the Short was crowned by the papal legate, and there Louis the Pious was kept in captivity in 833. The abbots of St. Medard coined money, and in Abelard's time (12th century) were lords of 220 villages, farms and manors. In 153o St. Medard was visited by 300,00o pilgrims. The religious wars ruined the abbey, although it was restored by the Benedictines in 1637. Little remains of the abbey buildings except for the 9th century crypt and the dungeons.
Soissons is the seat of a bishop and a sub-prefect, and has a tribunal of commerce. Among the industrial establishments are iron and copper foundries, and factories for the production of boilers, agricultural implements and other iron goods, rubber goods, glass and sugar. There is a large trade in grain for the provisioning of Paris.