Dear Peter, I want to thank you very much for all the good articles you put in this list to make us understand history better - and this last one was very good! Together with my husband I spent a few days in the Thierache a part of Picardie-France this summer, to visit the places of origin of some of my huguenot ancestors. It is about half-way from Brussels to Paris, towns in the area are Hirson and Vervins - Laon with a big cathedral is about 40km southwest. It was very interesting to see the "fortified churches" in some of the villages. Between 1550 and 1650 the villagers were so fed up with the constant wars and ravaging, they turned their churches into castles. With a big west tower and small towers at the four corners. These churches served as refuge and also could be defended by armed people in the towers. They had water supply and places to cook meals. Jeantes, the village were my Guillaume FOUQUET came from, has such a church and Cuiry-les-Iviers, where his wife Susanne FIERET was born as well . We also took pictures of such church-castles in La Bouteille, Plomion and Morgny. I bought a booklet about the fortified churches to find out wether those places were fortified by the huguenots, but it didn't tell anything about it, just said …many wars etc.. I remember that the Edict of Nantes had something about the right to have fortified places. If the only reason was the constant wars so why do about 70 villages have such church-castles but hundreds of others in the area don't have them? My almost complete lack of French-language-knowledge kept me from asking to many questions. But maybe one of our listmembers knows more about it. In or around the villages we visited we found the family names (Fouquet, Le Fevre, Le Brun, Maillefert ) still existing - at least on old gravestones. I'm still working on the pictures but hope to add them to my webpages soon. Ina Jonas-Nolte