Around 1424, Eberhard II von der Mark built a manor with two twin towers around a church over a period of six years. When Evrard died in 1440, his son Jean de la Marck began reinforcing the fortress, but it was Robert II de la Marck, the grandson of Jean, who finished the most important work. In 1530, the fortifications of the manor were modernised by the construction of a circular boulevard and terraces with cannons, thickening the 4.5m curtain wall by an additional 26m. The bastions were added during the course of the next century, but some of them were eventually dynamited at the end of the 19th century. In 1699, the principality having been absorbed into France in 1642 (see the Battle of Marfée, during the Thirty Years' War), and the castle having been transformed into a garrison, Vaub