AVRANCHES  , a

town of north-western France, capital of an arrondissement in the department of Manche, 87 m . S. of Cherbourg on the Western railway . Pop . (1906) 7186 . It stands on a wooded hill, its botanical gardens commanding a fine view westward of the bay and rock of St Michel . At the foot of the hill flows the river She, which at high tide is navigable from the sea . The town is surrounded by avenues, which occupy the site of the ancient ramparts, remains of which are to be seen on the north side . Avranches was from 511 to 1790 a bishop's see, held at the end of the 17th century by the scholar Daniel Huet; and its67 cathedral, destroyed as insecure in the time of the first French Revolution, was the finest in Normandy . Its site is now occupied by an open square, one stone remaining to mark the spot where Henry II. of England received absolution for the murder of Thomas Becket . The churches of Notre-Dame des Champs and St Saturnin are modern buildings in the Gothic style . The ancient episcopal palace is now used as a court of justice; a public library is kept in the hotel de ville . In the public gardens there is a statue of General Jean Marie Valhubert, killed at Austerlitz .

Avranches is seat of a sub-

prefect and has a tribunal of first instance and a communal college . Leather-dressing is the chief industry; steam-sawing, brewing and dyeing are also carried on, and horticulture flourishes in the environs . Trade is in cider, cattle, butter, flowers and fruit, and there are salmon and other fisheries . Avranches, an important military station of the Romans, was in the middle ages chief place of a county of the duchy of Normandy . It sustained several sieges, the most noteworthy of which, in 1591, was the result of its opposition to Henry IV . In 1639 Avranches was the focus of the peasant revolt against the salt-tax, known as the revolt of the Nu-pieds .