CORBEIL  , a

town of northern France, capital of an arrondissement in the department of Seine-et-Oise, at the confluence of the Essonne with the Seine, 21 m . S. by E. of Paris on the Orleans railway to Nevers . Pop . (1906) 9756 . A bridge across the Seine unites the main part of the town on the left bank with a suburb on the other side; handsome boulevards lead to the village of Essonnes (pop . 7255), about a mile to the south-west . St Spire, the only survivor of the formerly numerous churches of Corbeil, dates from the 12th to the 15th centuries . Behind the church there is a Gothic gateway . A monument has been erected to the brothers Galignani, publishers of Paris, who gave a hospital and orphanage to the town . Corbeil is the seat of a sub-prefect, and has tribunals of first instance and commerce and a chamber of commerce . It has important flour-mills, tallow-works, printing-works, large paper-works at Essonnes, and carries on boat and carriage-building, and the manufacture of plaster . The Decauville engineering works are in the vicinity .

There is

trade in grain and flour . From the loth to the 12th century Corbeil was the chief town of a powerful countship, but it was united to the crown by Louis VI.; it continued for a long time to be an important military post in connexion with the commissariat of Paris . In 1258 St Louis concluded a treaty here with James I. of Aragon . Of the numerous sieges to which it has been exposed the most important were those by the Huguenots in 1562, and by Alexander Farnese, prince of Parma, in 1590 .