History

Once upon a time, there were four men who left an indelible trace in Franche-Comté

Toussaint LOUVETURE (more info)

On 12 June 1802, the negro Toussaint Louverture, who had been born an illiterate slave on a plantation on Santo Domingo, and who went on to lead the insurrection of the Blacks, the father of the first black republic in the history of humanity (Haiti).

The man who has gone down in History as the precursor to the movement of emancipation of the black colonies, the man who triggered the process leading to the abolitions of slavery and the first black figure to wield power, died on 7 April 1803 at the Fort de Joux.

VAUBAN

He was born in Saint-Léger-de-Fourcheret (now Saint-Léger-Vauban), near Avallon, in the Morvan, and was baptised on 15 May 1633. In 1653, the young Vauban (who was 20 at the time) was noticed by Cardinal Mazarin, who convinced him to leave the Fronde and serve the King instead.

At the age of just 22, he became "military engineer responsible for fortifications". In total, Vauban created or enlarged over 160 fortresses and gave his name to a form of military architecture: the Vauban system which has inspired many engineers over the years, even outside France.

Claude Nicolas LEDOUX
He was one of the most active architects at the end of the Ancien Régime, but a great many of the buildings he put up were destroyed in the 19^th century. He was one of the main creators of the Neoclassical style. Ledoux's masterpiece, the Royal Salt works of Arc-et-Senans, whose plans were approved directly by Louis XV and by Trudaine, was built between 1774 and 1779.

A straight road running through the Forest of Chaux takes visitors to the site. The entrance, preceded by a Doric peristyle

Frédéric Auguste BARTHOLDI
Sometimes known as Amilcar Hasenfratz, BARTHOLDI is a famous sculptor originally from Alsace, the creator in particular of the Statue of Liberty Enlightening the World, a gift from France to the United States of America, and located at the entrance to New York Harbour, as well as the Lion of Belfort, built to celebrate the heroic resistance of the city in the siege of 1870-71.

The riches of prehistory

Among the last regions to join France, was Franche-Comté the home of the first men to tread on French soil? It is in one of the many caves in karst landscape of the area around Vergranne, upstream from Besançon, that the most ancient human remains have been discovered (- 400,000 years).

It is also in the Jura, on the banks of Lakes Clairvaux and Chalain, that the first lakeside Neolithic sites in France have been found. And on top of that, it is a village in the Jura, La Tène, which has given its name to the second Iron Age.

Of course, the village is now on the Swiss side of the mountain range, but frontiers, of course, were unknown at the time!

Monks and Barbarians

The region underwent a dual invasion from the 2^nd to the 5^th century. First, the barbarians: this led to the establishment of the Burgundians, called to defend the country, before the arrival of the Franks. The same period saw an influx of monks. The mountains of Jura became a centre point of monasticism: St Romain and St Lupicin, two hermits whose examples led to the foundation of the Saint-Claude Monastery, a site of pilgrimage from across all of France or St Colomban who, after arriving from Ireland to convert Gaul, created the monastery at Luxeuil.

In terms of religion, the region is at the forefront: the founder of the Abbey of Gigny (9^th century) in the Jura applied the precepts which he went on to develop at Cluny and which became something of a norm across the whole of Christendom.

Germanic, Spanish and autonomous

"Besançon, old Spanish city". There is more than a zest of history in this quotation from Victor Hugo about the city in which he was born.

After the kingdom of Charlemagne had been divided up, the Count of Burgundy belonged, as alliances shifted and conquests came and went, successively to the German Empire, the Kingdom of Spain and the Kingdom of the Netherlands, with a few French episodes interspersed here and there. From Frederick I Barbarossa to Charles V, via Charles the Bold, a complex and tortured history which saw the Comté army capture François I at the battle of Pavia...

Released from the shackles of its masters, Comté develops the habit of autonomy. And becomes free ('Franche'). Besides, the region was alone in resisting the French wars of conquest in the 17^th century...