EPERNAY  , a

town of northern France, capital of an arrondissement in the department of Marne, 88 m . E.N.E. of Paris on the main line of the Eastern railway to Chalons-sur-Marne . Pop . (1906) 20,291 . The town is situated on the left bank of the Marne at the extremity of the pretty valley of the Cubry, by which it is traversed . In the central and oldest quarter the streets are narrow and irregular; the surrounding suburbs are modern and more spacious, and that of La Folie, on the east, contains many handsome villas belonging to rich wine merchants . The town has also extended to the right bank of the Marne . One of its churches preserves a portal and stained-glass windows of the 16th century, but the other public buildings are modern . Epernay is best known as the principal entrepot of the Champagne wines, which are bottled and kept in extensive vaults in the chalk rock on which the town is built . The manufacture of the apparatus and material used in the champagne industry occupies many hands, and the Eastern Railway Company has important workshops here . Brewing, and the manufacture of sugar and of hats and caps, are also carried on . Epernay is the seat of a sub-prefect and has tribunals of first instance and of commerce, and communal colleges for girls and boys .

Epernay (Sparnacum) belonged to the archbishops of

Reims from the 5th to the loth century, at which period it came into the possession of the counts of Champagne . It suffered severely during the Hundred Years' War, and was burned by Francis I. in 1544 . It resisted Henry of Navarre in 1592, and Marshal Biron fell in the attack which preceded its capture . In 1642 it was, along with Chateau-Thierry, erected into a duchy and assigned to the duke of Bouillon .