Rocroi

Rocroi Aerial Photo

Location: Ardennes department   Map

Info: 14 pl d'Armes
Tel. 03 24 54 20 06
www.otrocroi.com

 

Description of Rocroi

Rocroi is a town located in the department of Ardennes 30km from Charleville-Mézières in France. The city is linked to a famous battle of 1643, seeing the victory of the French royal armies led by the Duke of Enghien (future Grand Condé), against the Spanish who were besieging the city. Others will remember the fortifications of the city that many believe designed by Vauban .

But Rocroi is much more than that. The first mention of the city dates back to the end of the 12 th century century, where Nicholas IV, lord of Rumigny, had a chapel built on what were only marshes swept by all the winds. The first houses were built in the wake. A few years later, Raul (or Raoul) 1st, inherited these lands, and built a stronghold to protect the place. From there to say that this character is at the origin of the name of the commune, there is only a step that some historians have crossed, without determining for sure what is the good version: for some, the The fact that the city is growing rapidly (Rault-Croit) could be a plausible explanation. For others, the fact that the town is at the crossroads leading to Liège and the Thiérache on one side, the Porcien and the Hainaut on the other, could be at the origin of the name (Rault-Croix).

Already at this time, the inhabitants have a ditch surrounding the city and a rampart of land, which does not prevent Rocroi, like all the border towns of the time, to pay a heavy price to the war.

François 1er, well aware that the danger can come mainly from these north-eastern borders, orders that we find the best place to build a fort. Since Charles V chose the city of Givet to build the Fort Charlemont, it will be at Rocroi that fortifications will be designed from 1552, under the reign of Henry II. It was at this time that Rocroi became "Rocroy" (the Roc du Roy), making believe that the town is named in honor of the King of France.

These fortifications will fulfill their role to perfection when in 1643, the Spanish besiege the city. The reign of young Louis XIV having just begun, the kingdom of France is in danger. This is without counting the genius of the Duke of Enghien, who, on May 19, will take on the back the Spanish cavalry and make them retreat, then launch his infantry against the enemy. Although the Spaniards are superior in number, they are beaten in a few hours.

 

Getting here

By plane
Two airports in Belgium are conveniently located: Charleroi (mainly low-cost airlines) and Brussels-Zaventem International Airport.

By train
Rocroi itself has no rail connection. Nearest train station in Revin, 12km east.

Gare de Revin, Avenue Danton, 08500 Revin. Phone: +33 3635.

In the street
Rocroi is located at the junction of the French autoroute A 304, which branches off at Charleville-Mézières from the autoroute A 34 coming from Reims (partly still N 51 - European route 46) into the N 51 (European route 420), which is known in Belgium as the N 5 /A 5 and leads to Charleroi.

By boat
On the Meuse to Revin.

 

Sights

Local culture and heritage
Places and monuments
We can point out:
The museum of the Battle of Rocroi, located in a former guardhouse;
The Saint-Nicolas church, built in 1844, where there is a painting Christ in the tomb by Victor Mottez (1809-1897), donated by Napoleon III;

The fortifications classified as a historical monument;
At the end of the Hundred Years War, the country ravaged by bands of skinners, the village of Rocroi is protected by a wide ditch filled with water. The village controlling the road linking Charleroi to Mézières will play a role in the war between François Ier and Charles Quint.

Contrary to popular belief, these fortifications were first built before the intervention of Vauban, under Henri II. The choice of the site was made by Martin du Bellay, sent by François Ier, because of its marshy environment which would prevent the enemy from coming to camp there for more than 24 hours. It was Henri II who had the first fortifications built in 1555 to protect the Champagne border against Spanish attacks that could come from the fortresses of Chimay, Philippeville and Charlemont built by Charles V. The place covers Mariembourg which Henri II has just acquired.

The locality was built according to a radio-concentric, star-shaped plan, following the new principles of bastioned fortification, probably by an Italian architect. In the center of a pentagon, a central place, the old place of arms, itself pentagonal is the starting point of ten streets leaving towards the ramparts. Roger de Bussy-Rabutin describes the place as "a pentagon with five fronts, covered and defended by four large boulevards furnished with their flanks, casemates and platforms, and the old fort which forms the fifth". The old fort was a small fort built in 1545 by François Ier and included in the new fortifications. Its peculiar plan has earned it the nickname of the “petrified starfish”.

Construction is monitored by Marshal de Bourdillon. The 1555 contract indicates that its construction was carried out by a master mason from Senlis, Loys Lenthe. The ramparts are grazing. This fortification is not masonry. Rabutin specifies that the population of the open towns located nearby quickly settled in the new city.

The fortress was attacked without success by the Spaniards in 1556 and 1559. François de Clèves, governor of Champagne, quickly completed the place.

During the Wars of Religion, the square was taken by surprise by the troops of Guillaume-Robert de La Marck, Prince of Sedan, in 1586. The Duke of Guise reacted immediately by coming to lay siege to the square which goes to the end of 36 days. This fortified place was bought by Louis XIII in 1614. The curtain walls were reinforced by the addition of five half-moons and the king's bastion was cut off from the town by a ditch to make it a citadel. The scarps are clad in masonry.

It was within cannon range that the Battle of Rocroi took place on May 19, 1643, where the Duke of Enghein, future Prince of Condé, annihilated the Spanish army, which had been undefeated for a century. But in 1653, it was this same Condé who took over the place, on behalf of the Spaniards this time, and kept it until 1660.

The place remained in the front line for the protection of the border until 1888. It was constantly adapted. Vauban included it in the second line of his Pré Carré despite his severe opinion on his plan, which he expressed on March 22, 1673: "I have noticed that the glazes are nothing less than streaked with the fire of half-moons and body of place, especially in front of the great angles of the said glacis where I do not believe that a man on horseback can be seen at the bottom of the glacis of the pieces which must command him. The failure stems in part from the wicked way of fortifying the past.

These fortifications were slightly reworked by Vauban who completed the system of bastions and set up the advances and half-moons of the second line of fortifications. He built, inside the fortifications, a military hospital, a powder magazine, an arsenal, barracks, a large underground passage under the bastion of the king and, on the second line of fortifications, a covered way. This work requires the requisitioning of 500 men per week in the 57 neighboring villages by the corvée system.

Four arrows forming advanced spectacles were added in 1792. The city was occupied by Russian troops between 1815 and 1818.

In 1832, massive earth was added to the bastions to form cavaliers, pincers in front of the curtain walls, counterguards in front of three of the bastions. In 1870, the place suffered German fire for five hours but surrendered when the German commander was about to lift the siege.

The invention of the torpedo shell led to the decommissioning of the square in 1889.

The Bastion du Roy has been listed as a historical monument since 1981, the rest of the ramparts being listed since 1935.

 

Geography

Location

The town borders Belgium, the border of which is 2.5 kilometers north of the city. Rocroi is 28 kilometers north-west of the department's capital, Charleville-Mézières, and 60 kilometers south of the Belgian city of Charleroi.

The municipal territory extends over an area of 5,041 hectares and the highest point of the municipality is 391 meters.

Rocroi adhered to the charter of the Regional Natural Park of the Ardennes, when it was created in December 2011.

 

Geology

Rocroi is located on a plateau, eponymously called plateau or "Massif" of Rocroi. It is in fact a Paleozoic structure, predominantly Cambrian, composed of hard rocks. This structure, about twenty kilometers wide in a north-south direction and about fifty kilometers long in an east-west direction, is intersected by the Belgian border.

 

Town planning

Typology

Rocroi is a rural commune. It is indeed one of the municipalities with little or very little density, within the meaning of the municipal density grid of INSEE. It belongs to the urban unit of Rocroi, an intra-departmental agglomeration comprising 2 municipalities and 2,779 inhabitants in 2020, of which it is the city-centre. The town is also outside the attraction of cities.

 

Habitat and housing

In 2019, the total number of dwellings in the municipality was 1,205, while it was 1,214 in 2014 and 1,149 in 2009.

Of these dwellings, 85.1% were main residences, 3.2% secondary residences and 11.8% vacant dwellings. These dwellings were 77.9% of them individual houses and 21.8% apartments.

The table below presents the typology of accommodation in Rocroi in 2019 in comparison with that of the Ardennes and the whole of France. A striking characteristic of the housing stock is thus a proportion of second homes and occasional housing (3.2%) lower than that of the department (3.5%) but higher than that of the whole of France (9.7%). Regarding the occupancy status of these dwellings, 62.9% of the inhabitants of the municipality own their dwelling (62.6% in 2014), compared to 60.5% for the Ardennes and 57.5 for the whole of France.

 

History

Modern times

In 1545, François I asked Girolamo Marini, commissioner-general of the fortifications of Champagne, to fortify the border of Champagne. He built a small fort near the village of Roulcroix.

Charles Quint decides to build the fort of Charlemont, in Givet in 1552, Henri II responds by having the enclosure of Rocroi built the same year. It was completed in 1556. The city was built in a star with five bastions with orillons. Rabutin describes the place as "a pentagon with five fronts, covered and defended by four large boulevards furnished with their flanks, casemates and platforms, and an old fort which forms the fifth". The old fort is probably the fort built by Marini, transformed into a bastion called bastion du Petit-Fort or bastion du Roy. The construction was entrusted to a master mason from Senlis, Loys Lenthe, by Marshal de Bourdillon. Originally, the enclosure was not built. The city was besieged by the Spaniards in 1556 and 1559, without success. The governor of Champagne, François de Clèves had the defenses reinforced urgently. The place was taken by the Protestants of Sedan on November 20, 1588. They sold it to the Duke of Guise. King Louis XIII bought it in 1614. The initial plan was kept but the bastions were modified when half-moons were added. The King's bastion was cut off from the city by a ditch to become a citadel. The scarps are then covered with masonry.

During the siege of Rocroi by the Spaniards commanded by Francisco de Melo, the famous battle of Rocroi took place on May 19, 1643, which saw the victory of the French over the Spaniards. The head of the French royal army, the Duke of Enghien, later called the Grand Condé, then revealed his military genius to everyone. This decisive victory in the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648) marked France's return to the international scene after a century of defeats and civil wars.

Ten years later, the same Condé, who then commanded the Spaniards, took this town for them, in 1653, but it was returned to France in 1659, by the Peace of the Pyrenees.

Vauban remodeled the square from April 1675. The ramparts were built on the outside. An arsenal was built in 1692. Rocroi was then part of the second line of the Pré Carré.

 

French Revolution and Empire

From the beginning of 1793 to December 15, 1815, 36 "Belgian" villages of Entre-Sambre-et-Meuse (in fact the principality of Liège, for the most part - Philippeville and Mariembourg being already two French towns) were annexed to the Ardennes department. ) of the cantons of Couvin, Philippeville and Givet (here, two municipalities only) and which depend on the district of Rocroi. After the Treaty of Paris (1814), the cantons of Chimay and Walcourt were added.

These municipalities which are French 22 years are Aublain, Boussu-en-Fagne, Cerfontaine, Couvin, Dailly, Doische, Dourbes, Fagnolle, Frasnes-lez-Couvin, Gimnée, Gonrieux, Jamagne, Jamiolle, Le Mesnil, Mariembourg, Matagne-la -Grande, Matagne-la-Petite, Mazée, Merlemont, Neuville, Nismes, Niverlée, Oignies, Olloy-sur-Viroin, Pesche, Petigny, Philippeville, Roly, Romerée, Samart, Sart-en-Fagne, Sautour, Senzeilles, Treignes , Vaucelles, Vierves, Villers-Deux-Eglises, Villers-en-Fagne.

In 1815, at the end of the Napoleonic era, the city was besieged by Prussian troops, defended 400 to 10,000, and largely by militiamen. She surrenders for lack of food having obtained the honors of war.

 

Contemporary period

In 1841, the commune of Taillette was created by dismemberment of the territory of Rocroi.

During the Franco-German war of 1870, the town of Rocroi was a stronghold. She was invested on January 6, 1871.

Work was still carried out on the Rocroi enclosure between 1879 and 1886. The square was definitively downgraded in 1888 during the “torpedo shell crisis”.

 

Agricultural history

A country of poor land, the type of agriculture practiced until the first half of the 20th century was sart. Archetype studied in rural geography, it is an agro-sylvo-pastoral rotation of about 20 years, we practiced as follows:

Debarking of mature wood and sale of the bark to tanneries;
Clear cutting and sale of coppice wood;
The remains of vegetation are burned "smothered", towards the end of spring. This practice is at the origin of the famous "stinking fogs" or "Rocroi fogs".
Sow rye in the days that follow, with respect for the stumps which must reject and form clumps.
Rye harvest the following year.
The broom is left to proliferate for 4-5 years (leguminous plants, providing nitrogen). The copses are protected to prevent animals from destroying stump shoots.
The brooms are cut and provide fodder and litter.
After a while, grazing is allowed in the copses.
After 20 years, the coppice is ready for a new cut.