Vendôme is a French commune, sub-prefecture of the department of
Loir-et-Cher in the Center-Val de Loire region. It is also the third
largest city in the department behind Blois and
Romorantin-Lanthenay.
It is located between the natural
regions of Perche in the north and Petite Beauce in the south, at
the foot of the Loir. At the entrance to the city, the river splits
and crosses it into several smaller streams. The Vendôme forest
happens to be one of the southern remains with the Fréteval forest
and a few woods dotted with the immense forest that made up the
original Perche, the Sylva Pertica.
The city has a rich
medieval history and many historical monuments.
Its
inhabitants are called the Vendômois.
Vendôme castle
Hôtel de Ville (Former high school Ronsard)
- Monument classified or listed as historical monuments in France
Former high school Ronsard, Honoré de Balzac was a student there for
seven years.
Abbey of the Trinity
The Abbey of the Trinity
of Vendôme was founded in 1033 by Geoffroy Ier Martel, count of
Vendôme1. Legend has it that the Count of Vendôme saw three stars
fall into a well, seeing there a divine sign, Geoffroy Martel
decided to erect an abbey on this site.
Very quickly
prosperous, the abbey is frequently in conflict with the Counts of
Vendôme about their respective rights, conflict where they often had
the upper hand.
It experienced a restoration campaign thanks
to Émile Boeswillwald.
This abbey is subject to protection as
historical monuments: a classification by the 1840 list concerning
the Church of the Trinity, an inscription in 1948 concerning the
remains of the Saint-Loup chapel and a classification in 1949
concerning the facades and the roofs of the buildings of the old
abbey, the chapter house and the courtyard of the cloister.
Saint-Georges gate
2 rue Poterie, 41100 Vendôme
The Porte
Saint-Georges is a Vendôme gate, built between the 14th and 16th
centuries to the south of the city. Along with three other gates and
a series of walls, it formed the fortified wall of the city, it is
the only one of the four gates of the time still in existence today.
In prehistoric times, the Loir, divided into several branches,
favors human settlement, soon followed by a troglodyte habitat dug
into the hillside on the left bank. Under the Roman Empire, the
region was evangelized by Martin de Tours in the fifth century.
Located in the hollow of the Loir valley, Vendôme was the
capital of the county of Vendôme, whose existence is attested from
the ninth century, and which will become a duchy in the sixteenth
century, then election in the eighteenth century. From the end of
the fourteenth century, the county of Vendôme, then the duchy until
the accession of Henri IV to the throne, belonged to a branch of the
royal family: the Bourbon-Vendôme. In 1790, the city became a simple
arrondissement and sub-prefecture of Loir-et-Cher, under the
supervision of Blois. From the nineteenth century, the district of
Vendôme will be regarded, under the influence of local scholarship
and soon the promotion of tourism in the Loir valley, as a
traditional country: the Vendômois, really valued by the river du
Loir which crosses it, gives it its charm and its region of Perche,
diverse and green.
Vendôme had four parishes: two intramural
parishes (Saint-Martin and La Madeleine) and two extra-muros
parishes (Saint-Bié or Bienheuré and Saint-Lubin). The Collegiate
Church of Saint-Georges was considered a parish for the inhabitants
of the castle where it was established. On March 5, 1791, the parish
of La Trinité was formed by the reunion of those of Saint-Bié and
Saint-Lubin, then the decree of May 19, 1791 removed the parishes
that had existed and made the parish of La Trinité the church parish
church.
From the founding of the Trinity to the
Franco-English struggles
On the southern rocky promontory is the
original keep of the Château de Vendôme. It probably succeeded in
the eleventh century to a Roman castrum, itself preceded by a Gallic
oppidum. The Abbey of the Trinity, founded in 1032, and the early
church of Saint-Martin have concentrated around them a first group
of dwellings.
In 1032, the accession of Geoffroy Martel, son
of Foulque Nerra, Count of Anjou, marked the beginning of Angevin
political influence on the county of Vendôme. During the second half
of the 12th century, the city passed in turn into the hands of Henri
II Plantagenêt and Philippe Auguste. In 1161, the city suffered a
siege.
In 1188, Bouchard IV of Vendôme delivered the city,
the castle and the English garrison to Philippe Auguste from the
first assault. In August of the same year, Richard Cœur de Lion took
over Vendôme. In 1194, the King of France returned to invade the
city again and besiege the castle, but he had to lift the siege
before Richard's arrival. The clash between the two armies took
place on July 5, 1194 in Fréteval and Philippe Auguste, defeated,
fled, abandoning his archives in the battle.
From the
fourteenth to the sixteenth century, the Bourbon-Vendôme family
In 1371, after the death of Count Bouchard VII and his daughter
Jeanne de Vendôme, Catherine de Vendôme, their sister and aunt,
inherited the county of Vendôme. His marriage to Jean VII Comte de
Vendôme gave birth to the House of Bourbon-Vendôme. In 1458, his
grandson John VIII, the king's support, welcomed Charles VII and had
a "bed of justice" drawn up. The Duke of Alençon Jean II de Valois
was condemned there for collusion with the English.
Vendôme
becomes a duchy in 1515 and the dukes and duchesses participate in
the transformation of the city. Countess Marie de Luxembourg
(1462-1546) oversaw the embellishment of the Saint-Jacques chapel,
the Saint-Georges gate, the castle collegiate church and the
reconstruction of the Saint-Martin church. In 1623, César de Bourbon
founded the college of the Oratorians which later became the Lycée
Ronsard, and part of whose buildings house the town hall and the
current tourist office.
Vendôme knows the tensions of the
wars of religion during the sixteenth century. On October 20, 1548,
Jeanne d'Albret (1528-1572), who became Protestant in 1560, married
Antoine de Bourbon (1518-1562), second duke of Vendôme. Together,
they have for son the future Henri IV. New communities are settling
in particular in the Chartres suburb. In 1562, the Huguenots
desecrated and looted the Saint-Georges collegiate church. Henri IV
must make the siege of the castle and the city then in the hands of
the Catholic leaguers in November 1589. He will try to take back the
city after a violent Catholic reaction. The city is sacked, the
tanneries destroyed. The counter-reform prevailed in 1593 with the
King's abjuration of his Protestant faith, in order to end the wars
of religion and reconcile the French.
Poorly maintained, battered by the floods of the Loir, the
fortifications lose their defensive interest and the city expands.
To the south, the castle opens with a new main entrance gate (Porte
de Beauce) and the construction of a ramp connecting it directly to
the city. Several religious congregations set up their enclosures in
the center (Oratorians) and along the northern suburb (Capuchins,
Ursulines, Calvairiennes).
During the Revolution and the 19th
century
Located more than 170 km from Paris, a distance deemed
necessary for the serenity of a court during the revolutionary
period, Vendôme received, from February to May 1797, the High Court
of Justice for the trial of Gracchus Babeuf, Augustin Darthé and
their supporters. . Finally, the heated debates which animated, for
more than seven months, the hearings lead to the execution of the
two main defendants and to the deportation of most of their
sympathizers.
In 1818, the sub-prefect Armand Bonnin of La
Bonninière de Beaumont acquired the old castle of Bourbon-Vendôme,
sacked during the Revolution, and offered it to the town in order to
develop the current park.
In 1873, the 20th regiment of
hunters on horseback was reborn in Rambouillet before being
transferred to Vendôme at the beginning of the 20th century where it
would hold a garrison in the Rochambeau district, occupying the
buildings of the former Benedictine abbey. He was not engaged in war
operations until 1914 and his participation in the First World War.
The regiment was dissolved in 1919.
Three new bridges and the
rue de l'Abbaye were thus established to link this new Rochambeau
district, which occupies nearly a quarter of the area of the
historic center. From 1858 to 1896, the streets were gradually
aligned. The decision to destroy the Saint-Martin church, which was
partly ruined in 1857, gave the heart of Vendôme a place, while the
suburbs still gave pride of place to small market gardens. The
railway line built from 1864 to 1867 marks, at the time, the
northern limit of the urbanization of Vendôme.
It was during
this period that the local press developed. A first weekly, the
Journal du Haut et Bas-Vendômois et pays de Mondoubleau, appeared on
Friday in 1790. It was then replaced by the Weekly Journal from
1830. In 1840, Le Loir was born, which was then replaced by Le
Carillon. Le Progrès established itself as a left-wing newspaper and
was directed from 1932 by Besnard-Ferron. The Carillon actively
supported the collaboration and was banned in 1944, La Nouvelle
République succeeded it.
The Second World War
On June 15,
1940, the Luftwaffe bombers dropped their bombs on Vendôme, a heavy
human toll with more than 89 dead and 200 wounded marks this violent
event which precedes the entry of the Wehrmacht into the city. The
physiognomy of the historic center is changed, around four hectares
in the city are destroyed by the bombardment and the two-day fire
that followed. The court, the governor's house and many
half-timbered houses were destroyed.
From 1941, resistance
was organized in Vendômois. The first known network is the “Vendôme
A” Group created by Alphonse Collin then mayor of the city, who
managed it until the end of 1943. He was close to Jean Emond who led
Liberation-Nord in the area until his arrest on the 28th. November
1943. The repression was as important as the commitment of the
Vendôme residents to the resistance, as evidenced by the roundup of
February 20, 1944 which followed the “affair of the American
aviators”. Many resistance fighters were deported to the
concentration camps and lost their lives, such as Jean Emond, Yvonne
Chollet, Marie-Louise Gaspard and Lucienne Proux. Other resistance
groups existed, such as the one led by Alfred Péricat, a communist
activist, who became a branch of the Vendôme FTP.
On August
11, 1944, the city was largely liberated by the Vendôme resistance
fighters led by Commander Verrier and Colonel Valin de La Vaissière.
The local FFI and FTP seized the sub-prefecture as well as the
Kommandantur, located in the Rochambeau district. The Americans
entered Vendôme on August 13, 1944 with the mission of neutralizing
the last Germans present in the city. The scenes of liesses were
numerous between Vendômois and American soldiers, in particular rue
du Mail Leclerc with the arrival of the first Jeeps, as well as
Place de la République where children got on an M8 armored vehicle
of the US army.
From the post-war period to today
Almost a quarter of the city center of Vendôme, destroyed by
German bombing, must be rebuilt after World War II. The strong
demand for housing which characterized post-war France was satisfied
in Vendôme by the development of housing on vast agricultural plains
to the north, between the railway line and the hillside. From 1959
to 1966, the Rottes will total 1,442 collective housing and 477
individual housing on 83 hectares. Large arteries were pierced to
manage traffic flows: Avenue Gérard Yvon in 1967, Boulevard Kennedy
from 1978 to 1980 and the deviation from Route Nationale 10 in 1976.
Since the years 1980-1990, the development of the city continues
by crossing the southern slope which was once a natural barrier.
Urbanization operations were then carried out in the south, in the
Aigremonts district. They balance the distribution of population and
activities in the town which has a total of 18,500 inhabitants, at
the heart of a living area of more than 30,000 inhabitants.
The development of a TGV station in 1990, at Place Vendôme, 42
minutes from Paris, was accompanied by a major change in the
economic fabric.