Saint-Maur-des-Fossés
Saint-Maur-des-Fossés is a commune in the southeastern suburbs of Paris, France. It is located 11.7 kilometres from the center of Paris. Saint-Maur-des-Fossés owes its name to an abbey founded in 638 by Queen Nanthild, regent for her son Clovis II, at a place called Fossati in Medieval Latin, Les Fossés in modern French, meaning "the moats"; this place, located at the narrow entrance of a loop where the Marne River made its way round a rocky outcrop, was named after the moats of an ancient Celtic oppidum and a Roman castrum. Massive foundations, sited so far from a Roman frontier, were attributed by C. Jullian to a temple or a villa instead. In Merovingian times, Gallo-Roman villas in the royal fisc were donated as sites for monasteries under royal patronage; the abbey, dedicated to Saint Peter, Saint Paul and the Virgin Mary, was called Sanctus Petrus Fossatensis in Medieval Latin, meaning "Saint Peter of the Moats". In 868, King Charles the Bald invited the monks of the Abbey of Saint-Maur de Glanfeuil, who had fled their abbey due to Viking invasion, to relocate to Saint Pierre des Fossés with their precious relics of Saint Maurus.
In the Middle Ages, the relics of Saint Maurus became famous as they were supposed to heal gout and epilepsy, Saint Pierre des Fossés became one of the most famous pilgrimage centers of medieval France. The rededication to Saint Maurus, in which abbey was renamed Saint-Maur-des-Fossés, was justified by the story that during a drought in 1137, prayers to the Virgin and Saints Peter and Paul having been ineffective, prayer to Saint Maur brought the needed rainfall; the abbey was secularised in 1535, in 1541, for Cardinal Jean du Bellay, bishop of Paris, the architect Philibert Delorme designed a château on the site, on four ranges of building around a square central court. Catherine de' Medici was a frequent visitor. On September 23, 1568, her teenage son, King Charles IX, issued the Edict of Saint-Maur, which prohibited all religions but Catholicism, it prompted fierce religious intolerance in Paris and led to the 1572, St. Bartholomew's Day massacre. Building projects at the site were only interrupted by Catherine's death.
The Château de Saint-Maur, still in the possession of the Condé family, was nationalised during the French Revolution, emptied of its contents, its terrains divided up among real-estate speculators. The structure was demolished for the value of its materials; the little settlement that grew around the abbey, known as Saint-Maur-des-Fossés, developed a market during the thirteenth century. The present territory includes a distinct village, La Varenne-Saint-Hilaire, against the perimeter of the nearby game preserve of Saint-Hilaire, part of the abbey's domaines. In 1791, part of the territory of Saint-Maur-des-Fossés was detached and became the commune of La Branche-du-Pont-de-Saint-Maur renamed Joinville-le-Pont. After the abbey itself was abandoned, its church providing building materials in the town. During the French Revolution, Saint-Maur-des-Fossés was temporarily renamed Vivant-sur-Marne in a gesture of rejection of religion. After the Revolution, the official name of the commune was Saint-Maur.
In 1924, a few vestiges of the abbey were collected in the newly established Musée du vieux Saint-Maur. Vincenzo Peruggia, an Italian thief who stole the Mona Lisa on 21 August 1911, died in Saint-Maur-des-Fossés. Philippe Diolé, diver and explorer, was born in Saint-Maur-des-Fossés. Manu Katché is songwriter. Saint-Maur-des-Fossés is entirely surrounded by a loop of the river Marne. Saint-Maur-des-Fossés is served by four stations on Paris RER line A: Saint-Maur – Créteil, Le Parc de Saint-Maur, La Varenne – Chennevières. Saint-Maur-des-Fossés is served by many buses, like the TVM, where Saint-Maur-Créteil is one of the bus terminal. There are primary schools in the commune. Public junior high schools: Collège Le Parc Collège RabelaisPublic senior high schools: Lycée Marcelin Berthelot Lycée d'Arsonval Lycée CondorcetPrivate schools: Ensemble scolaire Saint-André Ecole et collège Jeanne D'Arc Lycée Teilhard de Chardin Saint-Maur-des-Fossés organize a Short Subject Festival. Prizes: "The Note" by Jon Greenhalgh and Anne-Élisabeth Blateau as best actress.
Saint-Maur-des-Fossés is twinned with: Ramat HaSharon, Israel Bognor Regis, United Kingdom Rimini, Italy La Louvière, Belgium Ziguinchor, Senegal Hamelin, Germany Leiria, Portugal Pforzheim, Germany Communes of the Val-de-Marne department INSEE Mayors of Essonne Association City Website "St Maur-des-Fossés". Encyclopædia Britannica. 24. 1911. P. 31. Historical and Archaeological Association Site des conseillers municipaux de l'opposition
Merovingian dynasty
The Merovingians were a Salian Frankish dynasty that ruled the Franks for three centuries in a region known as Francia in Latin, beginning in the middle of the 5th century. Their territory corresponded to ancient Gaul and the Roman provinces of Raetia, Germania Superior and the southern part of Germania; the semi legendary Merovech was supposed to have founded the Merovingian dynasty, but it was his famous grandson Clovis I who united all of Gaul under Merovingian rule. After the death of Clovis, there were frequent clashes between different branches of the family, but when threatened by its neighbours the Merovingians presented a strong united front. During the final century of Merovingian rule, the kings were pushed into a ceremonial role; the Merovingian rule ended in March 752 when Pope Zachary formally deposed Childeric III. Zachary's successor, Pope Stephen II, confirmed and anointed Pepin the Short in 754, beginning the Carolingian monarchy; the Merovingian ruling family were sometimes referred to as the "long-haired kings" by contemporaries, as their long hair distinguished them among the Franks, who cut their hair short.
The term "Merovingian" comes from medieval Latin Merovingi or Merohingi, an alteration of an unattested Old Dutch form, akin to their dynasty's Old English name Merewīowing, with the final -ing being a typical patronymic suffix. The Merovingian dynasty owes its name to the semi-legendary Merovech, leader of the Salian Franks; the victories of his son Childeric I against the Visigoths and Alemanni established the basis of Merovingian land. Childeric's son Clovis I went on to unite most of Gaul north of the Loire under his control around 486, when he defeated Syagrius, the Roman ruler in those parts, he won the Battle of Tolbiac against the Alemanni in 496, at which time, according to Gregory of Tours, Clovis adopted his wife Clotilda's Orthodox Christian faith. He subsequently went on to decisively defeat the Visigothic kingdom of Toulouse in the Battle of Vouillé in 507. After Clovis's death, his kingdom was partitioned among his four sons; this tradition of partition continued over the next century.
When several Merovingian kings ruled their own realms, the kingdom—not unlike the late Roman Empire—was conceived of as a single entity ruled collectively by these several kings among whom a turn of events could result in the reunification of the whole kingdom under a single ruler. Leadership among the early Merovingians was based on mythical descent and alleged divine patronage, expressed in terms of continued military success. In 1906, the British Egyptologist Flinders Petrie suggested that the Marvingi recorded by Ptolemy as living near the Rhine were the ancestors of the Merovingian dynasty. Upon Clovis's death in 511, the Merovingian kingdom included all of Gaul except Burgundy and all of Germania magna except Saxony. To the outside, the kingdom when divided under different kings, maintained unity and conquered Burgundy in 534. After the fall of the Ostrogoths, the Franks conquered Provence. After this their borders with Italy and Visigothic Septimania remained stable. Internally, the kingdom was divided among Clovis's sons and among his grandsons and saw war between the different kings, who allied among themselves and against one another.
The death of one king created conflict between the surviving brothers and the deceased's sons, with differing outcomes. Conflicts were intensified by the personal feud around Brunhilda. However, yearly warfare did not constitute general devastation but took on an ritual character, with established'rules' and norms. Clotaire II in 613 reunited the entire Frankish realm under one ruler. Divisions produced the stable units of Austrasia, Neustria and Aquitania; the frequent wars had weakened royal power, while the aristocracy had made great gains and procured enormous concessions from the kings in return for their support. These concessions saw the considerable power of the king parcelled out and retained by leading comites and duces. Little is in fact known about the course of the 7th century due to a scarcity of sources, but Merovingians remained in power until the 8th century. Clotaire's son Dagobert I, who sent troops to Spain and pagan Slavic territories in the east, is seen as the last powerful Merovingian King.
Kings are known as rois fainéants, despite the fact that only the last two kings did nothing. The kings strong-willed men like Dagobert II and Chilperic II, were not the main agents of political conflicts, leaving this role to their mayors of the palace, who substituted their own interest for their king's. Many kings came to the throne at a young age and died in the prime of life, weakening royal power further; the conflict between mayors was ended when the Austrasians under Pepin the Middle triumphed in 687 in the Battle of Tertry. After this, though not a king, was the political ruler of the Frankish kingdom and left this position as a heritage to his sons, it was now the sons of the mayor that divided the realm among each other under the rule of a single king. After Pepin's long rule, his son Charles Martel assumed power, fighting against nobles and his own stepmother, his reputation for ruthlessness further undermined the king's position. Under Charles Martel's leadership, the Franks defeated the Moors at the Battle of Tours in 732.
After the victory of 718 of the Bulgarian Khan Ter
Paleolithic
The Paleolithic or Palaeolithic is a period in human prehistory distinguished by the original development of stone tools that covers c. 99% of human technological prehistory. It extends from the earliest known use of stone tools by hominins c. 3.3 million years ago, to the end of the Pleistocene c. 11,650 cal BP. The Paleolithic is followed in Europe by the Mesolithic, although the date of the transition varies geographically by several thousand years. During the Paleolithic, hominins grouped together in small societies such as bands, subsisted by gathering plants and fishing, hunting or scavenging wild animals; the Paleolithic is characterized by the use of knapped stone tools, although at the time humans used wood and bone tools. Other organic commodities were adapted for use including leather and vegetable fibers. About 50,000 years ago, there was a marked increase in the diversity of artifacts. In Africa, bone artifacts and the first art appear in the archaeological record; the first evidence of human fishing is noted, from artifacts in places such as Blombos cave in South Africa.
Archaeologists classify artifacts of the last 50,000 years into many different categories, such as projectile points, engraving tools, knife blades, drilling and piercing tools. Humankind evolved from early members of the genus Homo—such as Homo habilis, who used simple stone tools—into anatomically modern humans as well as behaviorally modern humans by the Upper Paleolithic. During the end of the Paleolithic the Middle or Upper Paleolithic, humans began to produce the earliest works of art and began to engage in religious and spiritual behavior such as burial and ritual; the climate during the Paleolithic consisted of a set of glacial and interglacial periods in which the climate periodically fluctuated between warm and cool temperatures. Archaeological and genetic data suggest that the source populations of Paleolithic humans survived in sparsely wooded areas and dispersed through areas of high primary productivity while avoiding dense forest cover. By c. 50,000 – c. 40,000 BP, the first humans set foot in Australia.
By c. 45,000 BP, humans lived at 61°N latitude in Europe. By c. 30,000 BP, Japan was reached, by c. 27,000 BP humans were present in Siberia, above the Arctic Circle. At the end of the Upper Paleolithic, a group of humans crossed Beringia and expanded throughout the Americas; the term "Palaeolithic" was coined by archaeologist John Lubbock in 1865. It derives from Greek: παλαιός, palaios, "old"; the Paleolithic coincides exactly with the Pleistocene epoch of geologic time, which lasted from 2.6 million years ago to about 12,000 years ago. This epoch experienced important climatic changes that affected human societies. During the preceding Pliocene, continents had continued to drift from as far as 250 km from their present locations to positions only 70 km from their current location. South America became linked to North America through the Isthmus of Panama, bringing a nearly complete end to South America's distinctive marsupial fauna; the formation of the isthmus had major consequences on global temperatures, because warm equatorial ocean currents were cut off, the cold Arctic and Antarctic waters lowered temperatures in the now-isolated Atlantic Ocean.
Most of Central America formed during the Pliocene to connect the continents of North and South America, allowing fauna from these continents to leave their native habitats and colonize new areas. Africa's collision with Asia created the Mediterranean, cutting off the remnants of the Tethys Ocean. During the Pleistocene, the modern continents were at their present positions. Climates during the Pliocene became cooler and drier, seasonal, similar to modern climates. Ice sheets grew on Antarctica; the formation of an Arctic ice cap around 3 million years ago is signaled by an abrupt shift in oxygen isotope ratios and ice-rafted cobbles in the North Atlantic and North Pacific Ocean beds. Mid-latitude glaciation began before the end of the epoch; the global cooling that occurred during the Pliocene may have spurred on the disappearance of forests and the spread of grasslands and savannas. The Pleistocene climate was characterized by repeated glacial cycles during which continental glaciers pushed to the 40th parallel in some places.
Four major glacial events have been identified, as well as many minor intervening events. A major event is a general glacial excursion, termed a "glacial". Glacials are separated by "interglacials". During a glacial, the glacier experiences minor retreats; the minor excursion is a "stadial". Each glacial advance tied up huge volumes of water in continental ice sheets 1,500–3,000 m deep, resulting in temporary sea level drops of 100 m or more over the entire surface of the Earth. During interglacial times, such as at present, drowned coastlines were common, mitigated by isostatic or other emergent motion of some regions; the effects of glaciation were global. Antarctica was ice-bound throughout the preceding Pliocene; the Andes were covered in the south by the Patagonian ice cap. There were glaciers in New Tasmania; the now decaying glaciers of Mount Kenya, Mount Kilimanjaro, the Ruwenzori Range in east and central Africa were larger. Glaciers existed to the west in the Atlas mountains. In the northern hemisphere, many glaciers fused into one.
T
Departments of France
In the administrative divisions of France, the department is one of the three levels of government below the national level, between the administrative regions and the commune. Ninety-six departments are in metropolitan France, five are overseas departments, which are classified as regions. Departments are further subdivided into 334 arrondissements, themselves divided into cantons; each department is administered by an elected body called a departmental council. From 1800 to April 2015, these were called general councils; each council has a president. Their main areas of responsibility include the management of a number of social and welfare allowances, of junior high school buildings and technical staff, local roads and school and rural buses, a contribution to municipal infrastructures. Local services of the state administration are traditionally organised at departmental level, where the prefect represents the government; the departments were created in 1790 as a rational replacement of Ancien Régime provinces with a view to strengthen national unity.
All of them were named after physical geographical features, rather than after historical or cultural territories which could have their own loyalties. The division of France into departments was a project identified with the French revolutionary leader the Abbé Sieyès, although it had been discussed and written about by many politicians and thinkers; the earliest known suggestion of it is from 1764 in the writings of d'Argenson. They have inspired similar divisions in some of them former French colonies. Most French departments are assigned a two-digit number, the "Official Geographical Code", allocated by the Institut national de la statistique et des études économiques. Overseas departments have a three-digit number; the number is used, for example, in the postal code, was until used for all vehicle registration plates. While residents use the numbers to refer to their own department or a neighbouring one, more distant departments are referred to by their names, as few people know the numbers of all the departments.
For example, inhabitants of Loiret might refer to their department as "the 45". In 2014, President François Hollande proposed to abolish departmental councils by 2020, which would have maintained the departments as administrative divisions, to transfer their powers to other levels of governance; this reform project has since been abandoned. The first French territorial departments were proposed in 1665 by Marc-René d'Argenson to serve as administrative areas purely for the Ponts et Chaussées infrastructure administration. Before the French Revolution, France gained territory through the annexation of a mosaic of independent entities. By the close of the Ancien Régime, it was organised into provinces. During the period of the Revolution, these were dissolved in order to weaken old loyalties; the modern departments, as all-purpose units of the government, were created on 4 March 1790 by the National Constituent Assembly to replace the provinces with what the Assembly deemed a more rational structure.
Their boundaries served two purposes: Boundaries were chosen to break up France's historical regions in an attempt to erase cultural differences and build a more homogeneous nation. Boundaries were set so that every settlement in the country was within a day's ride of the capital of a department; this was a security measure, intended to keep the entire national territory under close control. This measure was directly inspired by the Great Terror, during which the government had lost control of many rural areas far from any centre of government; the old nomenclature was avoided in naming the new departments. Most were named after other physical features. Paris was in the department of Seine. Savoy became the department of Mont-Blanc; the number of departments 83, had been increased to 130 by 1809 with the territorial gains of the Republic and of the First French Empire. Following Napoleon's defeats in 1814–1815, the Congress of Vienna returned France to its pre-war size and the number of departments was reduced to 86.
In 1860, France acquired the County of Nice and Savoy, which led to the creation of three new departments. Two were added from the new Savoyard territory, while the department of Alpes-Maritimes was created from Nice and a portion of the Var department; the 89 departments were given numbers based on the alphabetical order of their names. The department of Bas-Rhin and parts of Meurthe, Moselle and Haut-Rhin were ceded to the German Empire in 1871, following France's defeat in the Franco-Prussian War. A small part of Haut-Rhin became known as the Territoire de Belfort; when France regained the ceded departments after World War I, the Territoire de Belfort was not re-integrated into Haut-Rhin. In 1922, it became France's 90th department; the Lorraine departments were not changed back to their original boundaries, a new Moselle department was created in the regaine
Marne (river)
The Marne is a river in France, an eastern tributary of the Seine in the area east and southeast of Paris. It is 514 kilometres long; the river gave its name to the departments of Haute-Marne, Seine-et-Marne, Val-de-Marne. The Marne starts in the Langres plateau, runs north bends west between Saint-Dizier and Châlons-en-Champagne, joining the Seine at Charenton just upstream from Paris, its main tributaries are the Rognon, the Blaise, the Saulx, the Ourcq, the Petit Morin and the Grand Morin. Near the town of Saint-Dizier, part of the flow is diverted through the artificial Lake Der-Chantecoq; this ensures the maintenance of minimum river flows in periods of drought. The Celts of Gaul worshipped a goddess known as Dea Matrona, associated with the Marne; the Marne is famous as the site of two eponymous battles during World War I. The first battle was a turning point of the war, fought in 1914; the second battle was fought four years in 1918. The Marne was navigable as a free-flowing river until the 19th century.
It had one gated 500 m shortcut, the Canal de Cornillon in Meaux, built in 1235, the oldest canal in France. Canalisation was started in 1837 and completed to Épernay in 1867, it included a number of canals to bypass the most extravagant meanders. In World War I, the Marne was the scene of two notable battles. In the First Battle of the Marne, the military governor of Paris, General Joseph Gallieni, took the initiative in driving the Germans back from the capital, rendering their war-plan inoperative. In the Second Battle of the Marne, the last major German offensive on the Western Front was defeated by an Allied counter-attack, leading to the Armistice. During the heyday of canal transportation, the Marne was a major artery connecting Paris and the Seine with major rivers to the east: the Meuse, the Moselle and the Rhine, the Saône and Rhône. To facilitate transportation along the Marne itself, a number of lateral canals were constructed alongside; the most extensive was the Canal latéral à la Marne, which runs 67 km between Vitry-le-François and Dizy.
Downstream of this were several more, including the Canal de Meaux à Chalifert, the Canal de Chelles, the Canal de Saint-Maurice which ended at Charenton-le-Pont near the Marne's confluence with the Seine. Furthermore, a portion of the Canal de l'Ourcq runs parallel and quite close to the Marne before swinging away to enter Paris from the north. Haute-Marne: Langres, Saint-Dizier. During the 19th and 20th centuries the Marne inspired many painters, among whom were: River Marne navigation guide with maps and details of places and moorings on the river, by the author of Inland Waterways of France, 8th ed. 2010, publ. Imray Navigation details for 80 French rivers and canals
Île-de-France
Île-de-France called the région parisienne, contains the city of Paris, is the most populous of the 18 regions of France. It covers 12,012 square kilometres, or two percent of the national territory, has official estimated population of 12,213,364 as of January 1, 2019, or 18.2% of the population of France. The region accounts for nearly 30 percent of the French Gross Domestic Product; the region is made up of eight administrative departments: Paris, Hauts-de-Seine, Seine-Saint-Denis, Seine-et-Marne, Val-de-Marne, Val-d'Oise and Yvelines. It was created as the "District of the Paris Region" in 1961 renamed in 1976 after the historic province of Île-de-France, when its status was aligned with the other French administrative regions created in 1972. Residents are sometimes referred to an administrative word created in the 1980s; the GDP of the region in 2016 was €681 billion. It has the highest per-capita GDP among regions in France and the third-highest of regions in the European Union. In 2018 all of the twenty-eight French companies listed in the Fortune Global 500 had their headquarters in the Paris region.
Besides the landmarks of Paris, the region has many important historic sites, including the Palace of Versailles and the Palace of Fontainebleau, as well as the most-visited tourist attraction in France, Disneyland Paris. Although the modern name Île-de-France means "Island of France", the etymology is in fact unclear; the "island" may refer to the land between the rivers Oise and Seine, or it may have been a reference to the Île de la Cité, where the French royal palace and cathedral were located. The Île-de-France was inhabited by the Parisii, a sub-tribe of the Celtic Senones, from around the middle of the 3rd century BC. One of the area's major north–south trade routes crossed the Seine on the île de la Cité; the Parisii minted their own coins for that purpose. The Romans began their settlement on Paris's Left Bank, it became a prosperous city with a forum, temples, an amphitheatre. Christianity was introduced in the middle of the 3rd century AD by Saint Denis, the first Bishop of Paris: according to legend, when he refused to renounce his faith before the Roman occupiers, he was beheaded on the hill which became known as Mons Martyrum "Montmartre", from where he walked headless to the north of the city.
As the Frankish domination of Gaul began, there was a gradual immigration by the Franks to Paris and the Parisian Francien dialects were born. Fortification of the Île-de-la-Citie failed to avert sacking by Vikings in 845, but Paris's strategic importance—with its bridges preventing ships from passing—was established by successful defence in the Siege of Paris. In 987, Hugh Capet, Count of Paris and Duke of the Franks, was elected King of the Franks. Under the rule of the Capetian kings, Paris became the largest and most prosperous city in France; the Kings of France enjoyed getting away from Paris and hunting in the game-filled forests of the region. They built palatial hunting lodges, most notably Palace of Fontainebleau and the Palace of Versailles. From the time of Louis XIV until the French Revolution, Versailles was the official residence of the Kings and the seat of the French government; the Ile-de-France became the term used for the territory of Paris and the surrounding province, administered directly by the King.
During the French Revolution, the royal provinces were abolished and divided into departments, the city and region were governed directly by the national government. In the period after World War II, as Paris faced a major housing shortage, hundreds of massive apartment blocks for low-income residents were built around the edges of Paris. In the 1950s and the 1960s, Many thousands of immigrants settled in the communes bordering the city. In 1959, under President Charles De Gaulle, a new region was created out of six departments, which corresponded with the historic region, with the name District de la région de Paris. On 6 May 1976, as part of the process of regionalisation, the district was reconstituted and increased administrative and political powers and renamed the Île-de-France region. Île-de-France has a land area of 12,011 km2. It is composed of eight départements centered on Paris. Around the département of Paris, urbanization fills a first concentric ring of three departments known as the petite couronne, extends into a second outer ring of four départements known as the grande couronne.
The former département of Seine, abolished in 1968, included the city proper and parts of the petite couronne. The petite couronne consists of the départements of Hauts-de-Seine, Seine-Saint-Denis, Val-de-Marne, the grande couronne of those of Seine-et-Marne, Yvelines and Val-d'Oise. Politically, the region is divided into 8 départements, 25 arrondissements, 155 cantons and 1 276 communes, out of the total of 35 416 in metropolitan France, The outer parts of the Ile-de-France remain rural. Agriculture land and natu
Val-de-Marne
Val-de-Marne is a French department, named after the Marne River, located in the Île-de-France region. The department is situated to the southeast of the city of Paris. Val-de-Marne is, together with Seine-Saint-Denis and Hauts-de-Seine, one of three small departments in Île-de-France that form a ring around Paris, known as the Petite Couronne. Since January 1, 2016 Val de Marne is included in Métropole du Grand Paris Val-de-Marne is made up of 3 departmental arrondissements and 47 communes: Val-de-Marne was created in January 1968, through the implementation of a law passed in July 1964. Positioned to the south-east of the Paris ring road, it was formed from the southern-eastern part of the Seine department, together with a small portion taken from the broken-up department of Seine-et-Oise. Communes of the Val-de-Marne department Prefecture General Council Citizen Blog
.svg)
