Le Mans is a town that is one of the large cities of the French
West, located in the Pays de la Loire region and the Sarthe
department of which it is the prefecture.
The city is located
at the confluence of the Sarthe and Huisne rivers. Former provincial
capital of Maine and Perche from the sixteenth century, it saw the
marriage of Geoffroy V d'Anjou and Mathilde l'Emperesse, daughter of
the King of England, thus laying the foundations of the Plantagenêt
Empire, and the birth of Henri II. Old Mans, called Cité
Plantagenêt, is the historic district of the city. Le Mans is an old
"red city", because of the particular color of its Gallo-Roman wall,
partly preserved, dating from the third century.
In 2017, the
city had 142,946 inhabitants, making it the first city of the
Sarthe, the third city of the Pays de la Loire for the number of
intramural inhabitants after Nantes and Angers and the 23rd city in
France. With 347,626 inhabitants, the urban area of Le Mans is the
28th in France and the 3rd in the region. The city, labeled City of
Art and History, has the Saint-Julien cathedral and many medieval
monuments, such as the Hôtel Dieu Coëffort (12th century), the abbey
of la Couture or the Palace of the Counts of Maine.
The
Automobile Club de l'Ouest organizes each year, the second weekend
of June, the most important automobile race in the world, the 24
Hours of Le Mans, the 2014 edition of which attracted more than
263,000 spectators. The 24 Heures Moto, the leading motorcycle
sporting event in France in terms of attendance and the French
motorcycle Grand Prix are also organized at Le Mans. The city was
the birthplace of the modern automobile of the French Grand Prix in
1906 and the first flight of the Wright brothers.
Economically, the city is marked by the insurer MMA (formerly
Mutuelles du Mans Assurances), the automotive industry (the Renault
ACI factory in Le Mans) and its Novaxis technopoles, the
Université-Ouest and the Technoparc. As for cultural life, the city
of Le Mans notably hosts The Night of Chimeras highlighting the
historical heritage of the city.
The city is the seat of the
University of Le Mans. It has more than 11,000 students, and has a
center of excellence in acoustics, notably with the Acoustics
Laboratory of the University of Le Mans.
Le Mans is considered as the first city to have achieved a
European alliance treaty, with the German city of Paderborn. This
first alliance is sometimes called "the light of Europe". The two
cities signed the first cross-border treaty of brotherhood in Europe
in 836.
Its inhabitants also proclaimed it the first commune
attached to the royal power of France, in 1066.
From the
Neolithic to the end of Antiquity
The first human traces on the
ground of Le Mans date from around 4000 BC. They are first
found on the hill of Vieux-Mans. The first inhabitants left behind
cut stones as well as tools or even timber. A menhir today called
Pierre au Lait remains today, exposed to the public, on the northern
slope of the cathedral which took place on the very site of ancient
pagan cults. These first inhabitants, little known, are invaded and
assimilated by Celts: the Aulerques who settle between Loire and
Seine. A tribe was then born: the Cenomanians. Among the other
Aulerques are the Diablintes (in Mayenne) and the Eburovices
(Normandy). The Aulerci Cenomani are important builders, farmers and
traders. The Sablons treasure, found south of Le Mans in the
eponymous district, proved the importance of trade in the city even
before the arrival of Roman troops in Gaul, and the Cenomanian
monetary productions ditto. Julius Caesar relates in his Gallic Wars
that the Cenomans send 5,000 men to Vercingetorix to fight him, that
is to say a quarter of all the combatants of western Gaul. The
number attests to their power among the other peoples of the West.
The Gallic city of Vindunum or Vindinum (from Celtic
vindo-white) is the capital of the Aulerci Cenomani. It was
conquered in 56 BC by the Roman troops and therefore takes the name
of Civitas Cenomanum or Civitas Cenomanensis (the city of the
Cenomanians) which becomes Celmans, Cel Mans, then Le Mans. The
great traces of the first Roman occupations appear on the margins of
the valley of the Isaac stream, east of Vieux-Mans. From the middle
of the 1st century, the city became Romanized. The peace brought by
the Romans benefits the expansion of the city and already the
suburbs are placed on the right bank of the Sarthe. Two aqueducts
are built to provide water to the inhabitants of the city.
Thereafter, thermal baths were built as well as a forum (current
Place Saint-Michel) and an amphitheater (current Jacobins'
quincunxes). At the end of the third century, the city was
surrounded by an enclosure to be able to face the barbarian
invasions. The enclosed town is limited to 9 ha, ie the limits of
the town's initial hillock. During Late Antiquity, the city was both
the administrative center of the Cenomani civitas and the seat of
the military prefecture, controlling the roads throughout western
Gaul. The city was however taken during the fifth century by the
Franks.
From the High Middle Ages to the Renaissance
In 490 or 510,
Clovis overthrows by force Richomer, brother of King Ragnacaire, to
attach his domain to the kingdom of France. The geographical
location of the city makes it a main point of convergence of two
main roads in Neustria. In order to ensure total control, the
Merovingians placed men of confidence in the city's bishopric, in
order to better control it.
Charlemagne in turn made it a
stronghold of entry into the march of Brittany. It then becomes a
citadel of the new frontier of the Frankish Empire.
The times
of conquest: Bretons, Vikings and Normans
In the ninth century,
the city had a hard time against invaders. After the Bretons, barely
pushed back, it was the Vikings who went up the Loire, Maine and
Sarthe to present themselves at its doors. Twice, in 844 then in
865, they manage to loot it without destroying it. In 836, the
relics of Saint Liboire were put in safety in Germany, in Paderborn,
where there is a royal palace founded by Charlemagne. The two cities
then conclude a "pact of eternal fraternity".
Then came the
time of feudal conflicts. The enmities between the Normans and the
Manceaux ("Angevin" party) are vigorous for many decades, but in a
city located at the confluence of Normandy and Aquitaine,
dissidences are numerous, the counts and the bishops are sold. to
the highest bidder without ever really respecting their commitments.
The King of France never asserts himself, sometimes supporting one
side, sometimes the other.
After the conquest of the city
around 1060, William the Conqueror was hardly reassured by the
people of Manceau, whom he considered as revolted as possible. He
decides to settle down permanently. To do this, he erected the keep
and had two raised clods built: the large and the small Barbet (on
the Petit Barbet, already a Gallo-Roman military training ground,
today is the Montesquieu high school).
Guillaume had to face
three insurrections in Le Mans: in 1063, in 1069 and in 1083. South
of the old town, he changed the entrance from the Saint-Nicolas
suburb, and at the same time had the Saint-Pierre collegiate church
recreated. the courtyard. For the rest of his life, Guillaume only
administered the city from afar. However, the city was the first to
benefit from municipal institutions in France, as early as 1070,
under the aegis of the bishop and in connection with the
institutions inscribed in the peace of God.
The Plantagenêt
dynasty
Geoffroy le Bel receives in 1129, the county of Maine as
a hereditary, with the counties of Anjou and Touraine. He reigned
over these territories from 1128 to 1151. The senechaussees of Maine
were also administered by the seneschals of Anjou and Maine. It was
in 1128 that he married, in Le Mans, Mathilde of England,
granddaughter of Guillaume. She brought him by her ancestry not only
Normandy, but in addition the hopes of one day reigning on the
throne of England. Their son Henri II was born in Le Mans in 1130.
It was he who became king of England in 1154. He administered the
Plantagenêt empire from Angers and Chinon, a larger domain than that
of the king of France, while he is the vassal. But the Plantagenêt
empire ended with the defeat of Le Mans against the Capetian
Philippe Auguste in 1189. He gave the city a dower to the widow of
Richard Coeur-de-Lion, Berengaria of Navarre. Little appreciated
within the city of which she is supposed to be mistress, she must be
wary of everyone. For her, the 26 years spent alone at Le Mans are
years of exile. She spends most of her life at the Royal Plantagenêt
Palace. She was the sponsor of the Abbey of Epau from 1229, where
she brought in the Cistercian monks.
The Hundred Years' War
and attachment to the Crown
The ramparts, still standing, prevent
the English led by the Duke of Lancaster from taking the city in
1356. Du Guesclin entered Le Mans in 1370. On August 5, 1392,
Charles VI left for a visit to the city. He has the first fit of
madness in a forest south of the city. He attacks his own troop and
kills four people before being overpowered. His lucidity returns
after two days, but this is only the beginning, and these fits of
madness multiply.
After Azincourt, the Treaty of Troyes in
1420 put the entire county under English domination. The city is the
place of all excess. Acts of resistance, just as numerous as against
William the Conqueror nearly four centuries earlier, were severely
punished. In 1428, John Talbot seized the city.
The city did not become French again until 1448. The last count
of Maine, Charles V, died in 1481. His property was bequeathed to
the King of France, Louis XI. Maine therefore returns to the royal
domain. Its inhabitants therefore have the right to elect a mayor as
well as aldermen. This is the end of the era of bi-lateral
domination of the city: a religious side with the bishop, and the
other feudal with the count. The bishop in turn becomes in the
service of the king (who appoints him) and the city is managed by a
real municipality, a large part of which is nevertheless chosen by
the royal power.
From the Renaissance to the French
Revolution
Today, the city retains a number of buildings built
between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, such as the houses
of the Red Pillar, the Two Friends, Adam and Eve and the Hôtel de
Vignolles. Guillaume du Bellay's funeral, which took place on March
5, 1543, was a national event.
They notably allow the
gathering in the city of Pierre de Ronsard, Jacques Peletier du Mans
and Joachim du Bellay. Jacques Peletier publishes, in his Poetic
Works, a poem by Joachim du Bellay entitled À la ville du Mans. The
poets from Le Mans Nicolas Denisot and Jacques Tahureau in turn made
their entry into the Pléiade in 1553. René du Bellay was later the
protector of Pierre Belon when he was Bishop of Le Mans. But the
economic and cultural development of the city was stopped in the
second half of the sixteenth century because of the wars of
religion. For thirty years, the city is torn: the bishop and the
lieutenant general are faithful to the king while the presidial is
considered as a league as a whole. The hotel du petit Louvre, refuge
of Jean de Vignolles is a recognized Protestant stronghold. The
Bois-Dauphin ligueur seized the castle of Le Mans by force in
February 1589, but Henri IV went to Le Mans in December 1589. He led
a rapid fight at the present Place de l'Éperon, before the Manceaux
leaguers do not capitulate. The damage was thus limited but the
suburbs of the right bank, as well as the Saint-Nicolas suburb,
suffered greatly.
The 17th and 18th centuries
From the end
of the sixteenth century and until the Revolution, we find an
important know-how for polychromic terracotta sculptures, today
visible in the museums of Le Mans or in the religious buildings of
the city. Such works of art find their roots in the works of Germain
Pilon. On the other hand, the 17th and 18th centuries were marked by
the development of wax and textile production. The quality of the
wax from the Pré district is recognized and sought after even in the
major European courts. Two churches continue to impose themselves on
a city which remains rather tight on itself: the Saint-Julien
cathedral and the Saint-Pierre-la-Cour collegiate church. The
populations hesitate to settle in the suburbs. For centuries, they
were the first to be affected by incessant wars. Yet, the mark of a
new expansion (and the offensive of the Tridentine
Counter-Reformation), in forty years (1602-1642), no less than five
new religious orders settled in the suburbs, creating five new
monasteries. The weavers and workers of flax, copper or hemp, were
pushed back to the edges of the left bank of the Sarthe. The new
“low quarters” are emerging. Dirty and gloomy, it was not until the
second half of the 19th century to see them disappear, like the
districts of Gourdaine or the faubourg des Tanneries.
In the
eighteenth century, the agglomeration included sixteen parishes,
eleven of which were on the right bank. To the east and south of the
city, the population is expanding and economic life is taking place
at Place des Halles. The urban extension is limited by the
cultivated lands which belong to the monasteries. The royal
administration sees the evolution of the city and installs new
magistrates and royal officers there. The elites become bourgeois.
The wealthy merchants left the original hill to settle in the new
southern and eastern suburbs: these are the future districts of
République and Bollée. Rich and spacious hotels were built outside
the walls, like the Desportes de Linières hotel, built in 1760.
From the French Revolution to the 21st century
During the
revolutionary period, priests of the diocese as well as the bishop
of Mans, Mgr Jouffroy-Gonsans, found asylum in Paderborn.
The battle of Le Mans, on December 12 and 13, 1793, was the
deadliest confrontation in the Vendée war during the Virée de
Galerne. The Vendée army reached Le Mans on December 10, 1793, after
a short fight in Pontlieue. This success was short-lived and, soon,
the Vendéens, disorganized, were forced to fall back on Laval. The
bloody confrontation in the city will also see the massacre of
thousands of stragglers between Le Mans and Laval. 10,000 to 15,000
Vendéens are killed, sometimes during atrocities which will be
matched only by the infernal columns that will follow, and which
contrast with the relative calm with which the Cenomanian city will
cross the Revolution of 1789, the ephemeral reconquest of the city
by the Chouans in 1799, then the Empire.
The political and
economic revolutions of the nineteenth century
Very quickly, Les
Manceaux understood the importance of the railroad. Le Mans station
was opened to train traffic on May 28, 1854, which resulted in three
days of celebrations.
In 1842, Ernest Sylvain Bollée set up
his bell foundry and subsequently created several large companies.
His son, Amédée Bollée father created several steam cars from 1873.
In 1896, Amédée Bollée fils made his first gasoline car.
On
January 11 and 12, 1871, the Battle of Le Mans took place. 3492
French soldiers and 362 German soldiers who died in this fight were
gathered in an ossuary located in town, in the "great cemetery of
the West".
With the growth of the automobile, Georges Durand
founded the Automobile Club de la Sarthe, which later became the
Automobile Club de l'Ouest (ACO). He organized a first grand prix in
1906, ancestor of the famous 24 Hours of Le Mans race.
It was
in Le Mans, by Ariste Jacques Found-Chauvel, another automobile
enthusiast, that the creation of the first decentralized banks and
Mutual Insurance Company passed in 1841, inertia later giving birth
to insurance groups, banks and mutualities.
At the same time,
aviation is in its infancy, initiated by the brothers Orville and
Wilbur Wright. Wilbur was invited by the Bollée brothers, and it was
at Les Hunaudières on August 8, 1908 that the first public flight of
the Flyer III took place.
At Les Jacobins, is the largest
market in the West region. Before the war, it absorbed most of the
local markets in the department. The traded materials are barley,
wheat, oats, hemp, potatoes. The fodder and grain trade is even
practiced. Many freight forwarders buy Manceau and Breton products
there to distribute them throughout the Paris basin and more widely,
throughout France. The onion fair which took place every last Friday
in August remained as a symbolic date because even today the 4-day
fair takes place at this time of the year, one of the largest in
France by its reception capacity and its success.
Twentieth century
First World War
The Sarthe and Le Mans
are, through the organization of the transport network, a transit
zone for American soldiers (2nd Depot Division), where more than
195,000 soldiers will be trained in modern warfare.
Seven
hundred and seven children of the municipality fell to
Champs-d'Honneurs during this conflict.
Second World War
On June 19, 1940, during the Battle of France, the Germans of the
38th Army Corps (XXXVIII.Armee-Korps), commanded by General Erich
von Manstein, seized the city. The latter reports in his memoirs: “I
crossed Le Mans where my grandfather had entered victorious seventy
years before and visited the magical cathedral. "
Le Mans was
liberated from the Germans88 on August 8, 1944 by General George
Patton's Third Army (General Haislip's XVth Army Corps), during the
Battle of Normandy, despite the actual blasting of almost all the Le
Mans bridges by the Germans on the run during the night of August
7-8. Almost all the bridges, because the Gambetta bridge was saved
in extremis from destruction by local resistance fighters after the
placement of German dynamite (a commemorative plaque and tribute in
particular to the resistance fighters who prevented the blasting was
installed on the parapet near 'one end of the bridge), and again
preserved on August 8, again thanks to locals, from a scheduled
American airstrike that was to hit it.
A bunker used by the
staff (ArmeeOberKommando, AOK) of the 7th Wehrmacht Army (rue
Chanzy, college Berthelot) has since been preserved in almost
identical condition to its state in mid-1944. Its rehabilitation
took place in 2014, before the festivities of the seventieth
anniversary of the Normandy Landings and the Liberation.
21st
century
By the decree of February 19, 2019, part of the territory
of the municipality of Le Mans is attached to the municipality of
Allonnes.