1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Le Cateau

LE CATEAU, or Cateau-Cambrésis, a town of northern France, in the department of Nord, on the Selle, 15 m. E.S.E. of Cambrai by road. Pop. (1906) 10,400. A church of the early 17th century and a town-hall in the Renaissance style are its chief buildings. Its institutions include a board of trade-arbitration and a communal college, and its most important industries are wool-spinning and weaving. Formed by the union of the two villages of Péronne and Vendelgies, under the protection of a castle built by the bishop of Cambrai, Le Cateau became the seat of an abbey in the 11th century. In the 15th it was frequently taken and retaken, and in 1556 it was burned by the French, who in 1559 signed a celebrated treaty with Spain in the town. It was finally ceded to France by the peace of Nijmwegen in 1678.