After several vicissitudes of this kind, Evreux was in 1404 finally joined to the Crown of France, though it still seems to have been tossed about in the most confusing way, and we hear of it as belonging now to France, now to Navarre, then sold to the Darnley Stuarts and back again to France; and so on until Napoleon, having divorced Josephine, presented her out of his imperial bounty with a part of the Comté d'Evreux as a compensation for her trials. The modern town, however, has not at all the air of having been the plaything of kings and states. The only noticeable traces of its ancient warfare are the machicolated walls of the bishop's palace, and the moat below, running between the palace and the Boulevard Chambaudin. The moat is now filled up by a kitchen-garden--a striking example of how peace has succeeded war in Evreux--but it is easy to imagine how it must have looked in the old days; the dark, still water, the steep walls rising up to their turrets, the treacherous machicolations, apparently ornamental but in reality only too useful, and above it all the grey towers of Notre Dame.
The interior of the Cathedral extends in date from the Romanesque to the Renaissance period. The nave bays offer examples of what is known as "skeleton construction"; they consist of a Romanesque pier arch (said to be the remaining work of Lanfranc) surmounted by a large clerestory and small glazed triforium; the clerestory wall, as Mr. Bond points out, is so shallow that it "ceases to exist _quâ_ wall." It is in some way analogous to the choir of Gloucester in its "attenuated construction." The lights are filled in with glass, apparently of the late fifteenth century. As Whewell says, the transepts and part of the choir are most remarkable and most ancient examples of the Flamboyant style. The choir, burnt down in 1346, was restored in the second half of the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries; the transept was finished about 1450. The English took possession of the town in 1418, but this did not in any way hinder the work from being carried on. In 1422 Tchan le Boy was made _maître de l'oeuvre_, and to him is attributed the Lantern Tower, springing from a beautiful vaulted base. The _vitrail_ of the Saintes Maries and its mouldings, probably designed by Le Boy, follows the English type.