While not yet a town at the time of Julius Caesar, the region was occupied by the Nerviens. Near the Fauroeulx gate of the town in 1933, Roman pottery was discovered. Under the Merovingian and Carolingian, we find no evidence of a major population centre in the vicinity. However, the historian Jacques de Guise, claims that at that time the town was founded by a brave knight named Aymond, who lived around the year 800: "This Aymond was Count of Faumars (Famars) and Ardennes, also by his loyalty to the king, he and all four sons tended the deep wood, where they made a fortress and a place called Carcetus, Le Quesnoy. The legendary story of the epic by Renaud of Montauban "the horse Bayard and the four Aymond sons" is still known today from the Ardennes forest to the forest of Orleans."