The cathedral of Laon was consecrated in 1237. That same century built the treasure hall and the large chapel beside the west façade. The XIV century added side chapels between the buttresses, and in those chapels at Laon appears the academic precision of that skilled but dry period. About the same time was made a new southern portal for the transept, and the wheel window over it was replaced by a big Rayonnant Gothic light.
The hill citadel called by Charlemagne in the _Chanson de Roland_ "my good town of Laon" was held by the invader from August, 1914, to October, 1918. Though the city was shelled by the French, not a piece of glass in the cathedral was broken. St. Martin's abbatial, too, is intact, and the XII-century Templar's church, the only well-preserved monument in France built by the great military Order. The Prussians' horses were stabled at first in the cathedral till a general public protest stopped such a desecration. When the Allies, under General Foch, drove back the German lines in the final weeks of the war, the retreat was too swift for much havoc to be wrought. On October 13, 1918, General Mangin made his triumphal entry into Laon, whose much-enduring citizens flocked around him in the cathedral to chant a solemn _Te Deum_.
The other evening before the ruins of a Cistercian abbey, that once harbored St. Louis and his mother, Blanche of Castile, a group of Alpine chasseurs and Zouaves fell to recounting their daily feats of heroism just as in the times of chivalry the strong, swift strophes of the _chanson de geste_ celebrated knightly prowess. To the north, the cannon thundered.... And the next morning, a Sunday, I assisted at Mass in a Gothic-vaulted hall that had served as _promenoir_ for the monks of Cîteaux. Soldiers filled all the wooden seats, others thronged the threshold, bareheaded in the shadow of the ruins.... Then when the sacrifice of the body and blood of our Lord was celebrated, a song rose in the dawn: "_Kyrie Eleison! God be praised!_" And the soldiers within the chapel and without sang before returning to battle as in the ancient _Chanson de Saucourt: "Kyrie Eleison!"_ Even those harnessing the great cart horses, those saddling their own restive mounts, those extinguishing the fires of the night's bivouac, and those charging the six-wheeled camions, all took up the canticle: "_God be praised! Kyrie Eleison!_".... And the implacable cannonading to the north echoed in the deep quarries, whence had come the stones builded here for God's glory.