--The inhabitants are thus enabled to avail
themselves of the different streams which intersect it.
Tradition refers the origin, as well as the name of Pont-Audemer, to a
chief, called Aldemar or Odomar, who ruled over a portion of Gaul in the
fifth century, and who built a bridge here.--These legendary heroes
abound in topography, but it is scarcely worth while to discuss their
existence. In Norman times Pont-Audemer was a military station. The
nobility of the province, always turbulent, but never more so than
during the reign of Henry Ist, had availed themselves of the opportunity
afforded by the absence of the monarch, and by his domestic misfortunes,
to take up arms in the cause of the son of Robert. Henry landed at the
mouth of the Seine, and it was at Pont-Audemer that the first conflict
took place between him and his rebellious subjects. The latter were
defeated, and the fortress immediately surrendered; but, in the early
part of the fourteenth century, it appears to have been of greater
strength: it had been ceded by King John of France to the Count of
Evreux, and it resisted all the efforts of its former lord during a
siege of six weeks, at the end of which time his generals were obliged
to retire, with the loss of their military engines and artillery.
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