Editing Bayeux Tapestry (section)

=== Recorded history ===
The first reference to the tapestry is from 1476 when it was listed in an inventory of the treasures of Bayeux Cathedral. It survived the sack of Bayeux by the [[Huguenots]] in 1562; and the next certain reference is from 1724.<ref name="musset">{{cite book|last=Musset|first=Lucien|title=The Bayeux Tapestry|publisher=Boydell Press|year=2005|isbn=1-84383-163-5}}</ref> Antoine Lancelot sent a report to the ''Académie Royale des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres'' concerning a sketch he had received about a work concerning William the Conqueror. He had no idea where or what the original was, although he suggested it could have been a tapestry.<ref name="stenton">{{cite book|last=Bertrand|first=Simone|title=The Bayeux Tapestry|publisher=Phaidon Press|year=1965|editor-last=Stenton|editor-first=Frank|editor-link=Frank Stenton|edition=revised|location=London|pages=88–97|chapter=The History of the Tapestry|orig-date=1957}}</ref> Despite further enquiries he discovered no more.

[[File:MontfauconHaroldEye.jpg|thumb|upright=1.3|[[Bernard de Montfaucon|Montfaucon]] / Benoît drawing showing King Harold's death]]

The Benedictine scholar [[Bernard de Montfaucon]] made more successful investigations and found that the sketch was of a small portion of a tapestry preserved at Bayeux Cathedral. In 1729 and 1730, he published drawings and a detailed description of the complete work in the first two volumes of his ''Les Monuments de la Monarchie française''. The drawings were by Antoine Benoît, one of the ablest draughtsmen of that time.<ref name="stenton" />

The tapestry was first briefly noted in English in 1746 by [[William Stukeley]], in his ''Palaeographia Britannica''.<ref>Brown 1988, p. 47.</ref> The first detailed account in English was written by [[Smart Lethieullier]], who was living in Paris in 1732–3, and was acquainted with Lancelot and de Montfaucon: it was not published, however, until 1767, as an appendix to [[Andrew Ducarel]]'s ''Anglo-Norman Antiquities''.<ref name="stenton" /><ref>Brown 1988, p. 48.</ref><ref>Hicks 2006, pp. 82–84.</ref>

During the [[French Revolution]], in 1792, the tapestry was confiscated as public property to be used for covering military wagons.<ref name="musset" /> It was rescued from a wagon by a local lawyer who stored it in his house until the troubles were over, whereupon he sent it to the city administrators for safekeeping.<ref name="stenton" /> After the [[Reign of Terror]], the Fine Arts Commission, set up to safeguard national treasures in 1803, required it to be removed to Paris for display at the [[Musée Napoléon]].<ref name="stenton" /> When [[Napoleon]] abandoned his planned invasion of Britain the tapestry's propaganda value was lost and it was returned to Bayeux where the council displayed it on a winding apparatus of two cylinders.<ref name="stenton" /> Despite scholars' concern that the tapestry was becoming damaged the council refused to return it to the cathedral.<ref name="stenton" />

[[File:Stothard Bayeux 41 42 Plate 10.jpg|thumb|upright=1.3|right|[[Charles Alfred Stothard|Stothard]] / [[James Basire|Basire]] engravings: scenes showing the Norman troops crossing the Channel and landing in Sussex]]
In 1816, the [[Society of Antiquaries of London]] commissioned its historical draughtsman, [[Charles Alfred Stothard|Charles Stothard]], to visit Bayeux to make an accurate hand-coloured [[facsimile]] of the tapestry. His drawings were subsequently engraved by [[James Basire]] jr. and published by the Society in 1819–23.<ref>Brown 1988, p. 153.</ref> Stothard's images are still of value as a record of the tapestry as it was before 19th-century restoration.

By 1842, the tapestry was displayed in a special-purpose room in the Bibliothèque Publique. It required special storage in 1870, with the threatened invasion of Normandy in the [[Franco-Prussian War]], and again in 1939–1944 by the [[Ahnenerbe]] during the [[German occupation of France during World War II|German occupation of France]] and the [[Normandy landings]]. On 27 June 1944 the [[Gestapo]] took the tapestry to the [[Louvre]], and on 18 August, three days before the [[Wehrmacht]] withdrew from Paris, [[Heinrich Himmler|Himmler]] sent a message (intercepted by [[Government Code and Cypher School|Bletchley Park]]) ordering it to be taken to "a place of safety", thought to be Berlin.<ref name="hicks" /> It was only on 22 August that the [[SS]] attempted to take possession of the tapestry, by which time the Louvre was again in French hands.<ref name="hicks" /> After the [[liberation of Paris]], on 25 August, the tapestry was again put on public display in the Louvre, and in 1945 it was returned to Bayeux,<ref name="stenton" /> where it is exhibited at the Musée de la Tapisserie de Bayeux.