Dieppe
First recorded as a small fishing settlement in 1030, Dieppe was an important prize fought over during the Hundred Years' War.
Dieppe housed the most advanced French school of cartography in the 16th century. Two of France's best navigators, Michel le Vasseur and his brother Thomas le Vasseur, lived in Dieppe when they were recruited to join the expedition of René Goulaine de Laudonnière which departed Le Havre for Florida on April 20, 1564. The expedition resulted in the construction of Fort Caroline, the first French colony in the New World. Another expedition two years before where Goulaine de Laudonnière was under command of Jean Ribault, a local Huguenot captain, had resulted in the foundation of Charlesfort, now in South Carolina. Dieppe was the premier port of the kingdom in the 17th century.
On July 23, 1632, 300 colonists heading to New France departed from Dieppe.
At the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, Dieppe lost 3,000 of its Huguenot citizens, who fled abroad.
Villeneuve-sur-Yonne
The city was founded in 1163 by Louis VII of France to protect the kingdom of France at the boundary of the Champagne. In 1204 King Philip II Augustus held parliament in the city, and Louis IX resided in the city before departing for the Eighth Crusade. In 1594 the city was burnt down. During the French Revolution the name was changed from "le-Roi" (the king) to "sur-Yonne" (on the Yonne). In 1870 a memorial for the dead was designed by the sculptor Émile Peynot. The city was governed from 1927 till 1935 by the infamous mayor Marcel Pétiot, who was guillotined in 1946, convicted of 27 killings.