1.
Departments of France
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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. There are 96 departments in metropolitan France and 5 overseas departments, each department is administered by an elected body called a departmental council. From 1800 to April 2015, they were called general councils, the departments were created in 1791 as a rational replacement of Ancien Régime provinces with a view to strengthen national unity, the title department is used to mean a part of a larger whole. Almost all of them were named after geographical features rather than after historical or cultural territories which could have their own loyalties. The earliest known suggestion of it is from 1764 in the writings of dArgenson and they have inspired similar divisions in many countries, some of them former French colonies. Most French departments are assigned a number, the Official Geographical Code. Some overseas departments have a three-digit number, the number is used, for example, in the postal code, and was until recently used for all vehicle registration plates. For example, inhabitants of Loiret might refer to their department as the 45 and this reform project has since been abandoned. The first French territorial departments were proposed in 1665 by Marc-René dArgenson to serve as administrative areas purely for the Ponts et Chaussées infrastructure administration, before the French Revolution, France gained territory gradually 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, partly in order to weaken old loyalties. Their boundaries served two purposes, Boundaries were chosen to break up Frances historical regions in an attempt to erase cultural differences, Boundaries were set so that every settlement in the country was within a days ride of the capital of the department. This was a security measure, intended to keep the national territory under close control. This measure was directly inspired by the Great Terror, during which the government had lost control of rural areas far from any centre of government. The old nomenclature was carefully avoided in naming the new departments, most were named after an areas principal river or other physical features. Even Paris was in the department of Seine, the number of departments, initially 83, was increased to 130 by 1809 with the territorial gains of the Republic and of the First French Empire. Following Napoleons defeats in 1814-1815, the Congress of Vienna returned France to its pre-war size, 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, the 89 departments were given numbers based on their alphabetical order. The department of Bas-Rhin and parts of Meurthe, Moselle, Vosges and Haut-Rhin were ceded to the German Empire in 1871, following Frances defeat in the Franco-Prussian War
2.
Prefectures in France
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There are 101 prefectures in France, one for each department. The official in charge is the prefect, the prefect represents the national government at the local level and as such exercises the powers that are constitutionally attributed to the national government. The prefect issues ordinances written for the application of law, to close a building that does not conform to safety codes. In the past, the prefect was head of the department, but since 1982, there is an exception in Paris and its three surrounding departments. These departments are administered by a prefecture for law enforcement and security purposes, called the Prefecture of Police. The power of law enforcement is usually invested in the mayor in other French communes, the departments are divided into arrondissements, themselves divided into cantons. The chef-lieu darrondissement is the subprefecture, the official in charge is the subprefect (French, sous-préfet. Cantons have relatively few competences, the most important one being the local organisation of elections, administrative divisions of France French National Police
3.
Geographic coordinate system
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A geographic coordinate system is a coordinate system used in geography that enables every location on Earth to be specified by a set of numbers, letters or symbols. The coordinates are chosen such that one of the numbers represents a vertical position. A common choice of coordinates is latitude, longitude and elevation, to specify a location on a two-dimensional map requires a map projection. The invention of a coordinate system is generally credited to Eratosthenes of Cyrene. Ptolemy credited him with the adoption of longitude and latitude. Ptolemys 2nd-century Geography used the prime meridian but measured latitude from the equator instead. Mathematical cartography resumed in Europe following Maximus Planudes recovery of Ptolemys text a little before 1300, in 1884, the United States hosted the International Meridian Conference, attended by representatives from twenty-five nations. Twenty-two of them agreed to adopt the longitude of the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, the Dominican Republic voted against the motion, while France and Brazil abstained. France adopted Greenwich Mean Time in place of local determinations by the Paris Observatory in 1911, the latitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle between the equatorial plane and the straight line that passes through that point and through the center of the Earth. Lines joining points of the same latitude trace circles on the surface of Earth called parallels, as they are parallel to the equator, the north pole is 90° N, the south pole is 90° S. The 0° parallel of latitude is designated the equator, the plane of all geographic coordinate systems. The equator divides the globe into Northern and Southern Hemispheres, the longitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle east or west of a reference meridian to another meridian that passes through that point. All meridians are halves of great ellipses, which converge at the north and south poles, the prime meridian determines the proper Eastern and Western Hemispheres, although maps often divide these hemispheres further west in order to keep the Old World on a single side. The antipodal meridian of Greenwich is both 180°W and 180°E, the combination of these two components specifies the position of any location on the surface of Earth, without consideration of altitude or depth. The grid formed by lines of latitude and longitude is known as a graticule, the origin/zero point of this system is located in the Gulf of Guinea about 625 km south of Tema, Ghana. To completely specify a location of a feature on, in, or above Earth. Earth is not a sphere, but a shape approximating a biaxial ellipsoid. It is nearly spherical, but has an equatorial bulge making the radius at the equator about 0. 3% larger than the radius measured through the poles, the shorter axis approximately coincides with the axis of rotation
4.
France
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France, officially the French Republic, is a country with territory in western Europe and several overseas regions and territories. The European, or metropolitan, area of France extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea, Overseas France include French Guiana on the South American continent and several island territories in the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans. France spans 643,801 square kilometres and had a population of almost 67 million people as of January 2017. It is a unitary republic with the capital in Paris. Other major urban centres include Marseille, Lyon, Lille, Nice, Toulouse, during the Iron Age, what is now metropolitan France was inhabited by the Gauls, a Celtic people. The area was annexed in 51 BC by Rome, which held Gaul until 486, France emerged as a major European power in the Late Middle Ages, with its victory in the Hundred Years War strengthening state-building and political centralisation. During the Renaissance, French culture flourished and a colonial empire was established. The 16th century was dominated by civil wars between Catholics and Protestants. France became Europes dominant cultural, political, and military power under Louis XIV, in the 19th century Napoleon took power and established the First French Empire, whose subsequent Napoleonic Wars shaped the course of continental Europe. Following the collapse of the Empire, France endured a succession of governments culminating with the establishment of the French Third Republic in 1870. Following liberation in 1944, a Fourth Republic was established and later dissolved in the course of the Algerian War, the Fifth Republic, led by Charles de Gaulle, was formed in 1958 and remains to this day. Algeria and nearly all the colonies became independent in the 1960s with minimal controversy and typically retained close economic. France has long been a centre of art, science. It hosts Europes fourth-largest number of cultural UNESCO World Heritage Sites and receives around 83 million foreign tourists annually, France is a developed country with the worlds sixth-largest economy by nominal GDP and ninth-largest by purchasing power parity. In terms of household wealth, it ranks fourth in the world. France performs well in international rankings of education, health care, life expectancy, France remains a great power in the world, being one of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council with the power to veto and an official nuclear-weapon state. It is a member state of the European Union and the Eurozone. It is also a member of the Group of 7, North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the World Trade Organization, originally applied to the whole Frankish Empire, the name France comes from the Latin Francia, or country of the Franks
5.
Regions of France
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France is divided into 18 administrative regions, including 13 metropolitan regions and 5 overseas regions. The current legal concept of region was adopted in 1982, the term région was officially created by the Law of Decentralisation, which also gave regions their legal status. The first direct elections for representatives took place on 16 March 1986. In 2016, the number of regions was reduced from 27 to 18 through amalgamation, in 2014, the French parliament passed a law reducing the number of metropolitan regions from 22 to 13 with effect from 1 January 2016. However, the region of Upper and Lower Normandy is simply called Normandy. Permanent names were to be proposed by the new regional councils by 1 July 2016, the legislation defining the new regions also allowed the Centre region to officially change its name to Centre-Val de Loire with effect from January 2015. Two regions, Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes and Bourgogne-Franche-Comté, opted to retain their interim names, between 1982 and 2015, there were 22 regions in Metropolitan France. Before 2011, there were four regions, in 2011 Mayotte became the fifth. Regions lack separate legislative authority and therefore cannot write their own statutory law and they levy their own taxes and, in return, receive a decreasing part of their budget from the central government, which gives them a portion of the taxes it levies. They also have considerable budgets managed by a council made up of representatives voted into office in regional elections. A regions primary responsibility is to build and furnish high schools, in March 2004, the French central government unveiled a controversial plan to transfer regulation of certain categories of non-teaching school staff to the regional authorities. Critics of this plan contended that tax revenue was insufficient to pay for the costs. In addition, regions have considerable power over infrastructural spending, e. g. education, public transit, universities and research. This has meant that the heads of regions such as Île-de-France or Rhône-Alpes can be high-profile positions. Number of regions controlled by each coalition since 1986, Overseas region is a recent designation, given to the overseas departments that have similar powers to those of the regions of metropolitan France. Radio France Internationale in English Overseas regions Ministère de lOutre-Mer some explanations about the past and current developments of DOMs and TOMs
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Occitanie
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Occitanie is an administrative region of France that was created on 1 January 2016 from former French regions Languedoc-Roussillon and Midi-Pyrénées. Frances Conseil dÉtat approved Occitanie as the new name of the region on 28 September 2016, the new Région Occitanie should not be confused with the wider cultural entity of Occitania, of which the new administrative region is part. The new region covers an area of more than 72,724 km2 with a population of 5,626,858. As the provisional name of the new region, the text of the law specified the hyphenated names of the predecessors, Languedoc-Roussillon and Midi-Pyrénées. As for most of the regions, a permanent name was proposed by the new regional council. Enacted in 2014, the reform of the regions has been subject to debate for many years. The provisional name of the region was withdrawn on 30 September 2016, toulouse Montpellier Nîmes Perpignan Béziers Montauban Languedoc-Roussillon Midi-Pyrénées Regions of France Occitania Merger of the regions - France 3
7.
Tarbes
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Tarbes is a commune in the Hautes-Pyrénées department in the Occitanie region of southwestern France. It is the capital of Bigorre and it has been a commune since 1790. It was known as Turba or Tarba in Roman times, Tarbes is part of the historical region of Gascony. Formerly of strong industrial tradition, Tarbes today tries to diversify its activities, particularly in aeronautics, the recent development of Tarbais beans and other regional specialties also shows a willingness to develop the agri-food industry thus justifying its nickname of market town. With 116,056 inhabitants in 2011, it is the second largest metropolitan area in the Occitanie region and its 42,888 inhabitants are called Tarbaises and the Tarbais. It is the seat of the diocese of Tarbes-et-Lourdes, the 1st Parachute Hussar Regiment and 35th Parachute Artillery Regiment are stationed in Tarbes. Tarbes is 1 hr 30 mins from the Atlantic Ocean,2 hrs 50 mins from the Languedoc coast and 35 minutes from the nearest ski resorts and it is located at an average elevation of 304 metres. To the south of Tarbes, along with the town of Lourdes, is the border with Spain. The Pyrenees mountains, lying along the border between France and Spain, can be seen from the town. Tarbes is crossed to the east by the Adour river and to the west by the Échez and by the Gespe, Tarbes features an oceanic climate, with relatively hot summers, mild winters and abundant rainfall. Tarbes benefits from its location in the area of the Adour, a milder microclimate than at Lourdes, from a higher altitude, and somewhat less rainy than in Pau. Summers are warm and often stormy, while spring is rainy and cool and autumn is mild, winter, meanwhile, is less rigorous but can still hold some surprises. The lowest temperature was recorded in January 1985 with a temperature under shelter of −17.9 °C, conversely, there was a maximum temperature of 39 °C in August 2003. The town was named for the first time in the 5th century as Civitas Turba ubi castrum Bigòrra and it was an important city of the Novempopulania. Gregory of Tours in the 6th century named Talvam vicum, in the Middle Ages it was called Tarbé, Tursa, Tarvia and also Tarbia. Not to be confused with the Tarbelles, whose capital was Dax, legend holds that the Queen of Ethiopia, Tarbis, proposed her love to Moses and that he refused. Inconsolable, she decided to leave her throne and hide her disappointment, after many wanderings, she arrived in Bigorre and built her home on the Adour to found the town of Tarbes, and its sister, on the banks of the Gave de Pau, arose as Lourdes. In the 3rd century BC, the foundations of Tarbes began to emerge, by need for salt trade, merchants who were likely Aquitanians travelled across the Pyrenean foothills
8.
Subprefectures in France
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In France, a subprefecture is the administrative center of a departmental arrondissement that does not contain the prefecture for its department. The term also applies to the building houses the administrative headquarters for an arrondissement. The civil servant in charge of a subprefecture is the subprefect, between May 1982 and February 1988, subprefects were known instead by the title commissaire adjoint de la République. Where the administration of an arrondissement is carried out from a prefecture, the municipal arrondissements of Paris, Lyon, and Marseille) are divisions of the city rather than the prefecture, and so are not arrondissements in the same sense
9.
Daylight saving time
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Daylight saving time is the practice of advancing clocks during summer months by one hour so that evening daylight lasts an hour longer, while sacrificing normal sunrise times. Typically, regions that use Daylight Savings Time adjust clocks forward one hour close to the start of spring, American inventor and politician Benjamin Franklin proposed a form of daylight time in 1784. New Zealander George Hudson proposed the idea of saving in 1895. The German Empire and Austria-Hungary organized the first nationwide implementation, starting on April 30,1916, many countries have used it at various times since then, particularly since the energy crisis of the 1970s. The practice has both advocates and critics, DST clock shifts sometimes complicate timekeeping and can disrupt travel, billing, record keeping, medical devices, heavy equipment, and sleep patterns. Computer software often adjusts clocks automatically, but policy changes by various jurisdictions of DST dates, industrialized societies generally follow a clock-based schedule for daily activities that do not change throughout the course of the year. The time of day that individuals begin and end work or school, North and south of the tropics daylight lasts longer in summer and shorter in winter, with the effect becoming greater as one moves away from the tropics. However, they will have one hour of daylight at the start of each day. Supporters have also argued that DST decreases energy consumption by reducing the need for lighting and heating, DST is also of little use for locations near the equator, because these regions see only a small variation in daylight in the course of the year. After ancient times, equal-length civil hours eventually supplanted unequal, so civil time no longer varies by season, unequal hours are still used in a few traditional settings, such as some monasteries of Mount Athos and all Jewish ceremonies. This 1784 satire proposed taxing window shutters, rationing candles, and waking the public by ringing church bells, despite common misconception, Franklin did not actually propose DST, 18th-century Europe did not even keep precise schedules. However, this changed as rail transport and communication networks came to require a standardization of time unknown in Franklins day. Modern DST was first proposed by the New Zealand entomologist George Hudson, whose shift work job gave him time to collect insects. An avid golfer, he also disliked cutting short his round at dusk and his solution was to advance the clock during the summer months, a proposal he published two years later. The proposal was taken up by the Liberal Member of Parliament Robert Pearce, a select committee was set up to examine the issue, but Pearces bill did not become law, and several other bills failed in the following years. Willett lobbied for the proposal in the UK until his death in 1915, william Sword Frost, mayor of Orillia, Ontario, introduced daylight saving time in the municipality during his tenure from 1911 to 1912. Starting on April 30,1916, the German Empire and its World War I ally Austria-Hungary were the first to use DST as a way to conserve coal during wartime, Britain, most of its allies, and many European neutrals soon followed suit. Russia and a few other countries waited until the year
10.
Central European Summer Time
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It corresponds to UTC + two hours. Other names which have been applied to Central European Summer Time are Middle European Summer Time, Central European Daylight Saving Time, and Bravo Time. Since 1996 European Summer Time has been observed between 1,00 UTC on the last Sunday of March and 1,00 on the last Sunday of October, the following countries and territories use Central European Summer Time. In addition, Libya used CEST during the years 1951–1959, 1982–1989, 1996–1997, European Summer Time Other countries and territories in UTC+2 time zone Other names of UTC+2 time zone
11.
Communes in France
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The commune is a level of administrative division in the French Republic. French communes are roughly equivalent to civil townships incorporated municipalities in the United States or Gemeinden in Germany, the United Kingdom has no exact equivalent, as communes resemble districts in urban areas, but are closer to parishes in rural areas where districts are much larger. Communes are based on historical geographic communities or villages and have received significant powers of governance to manage the populations, the communes are the fourth-level administrative divisions of France. A French commune may be a city of 2.2 million inhabitants like Paris, communes typically are based on pre-existing villages and facilitate local governance. All communes have names, but not all named geographic areas or groups of people residing together are communes, a commune is a town, city, or municipality. Use of commune in English is a habit, and one that might be corrected. There is nothing in commune in French that is different from town in English. The French word commune appeared in the 12th century, from Medieval Latin communia, as of January 2015, there were 36,681 communes in France,36,552 of them in metropolitan France and 129 of them overseas. This is a higher total than that of any other European country. The whole territory of the French Republic is divided into communes and this is unlike some other countries, such as the United States, where unincorporated areas directly governed by a county or a higher authority can be found. There are only a few exceptions, COM of Saint-Martin and it was previously a commune inside the Guadeloupe région. The commune structure was abolished when Saint-Martin became an overseas collectivity on 22 February 2007, COM of Wallis and Futuna, which still is divided according to the three traditional chiefdoms. It was previously a commune inside the Guadeloupe region, the commune structure was abolished when Saint-Barthélemy became an overseas collectivity on 22 February 2007.88 square kilometres. The median area of metropolitan Frances communes at the 1999 census was even smaller, the median area is a better measure of the area of a typical French commune. This median area is smaller than that of most European countries. In Italy, the area of communes is 22 km2, in Belgium it is 40 km2, in Spain it is 35 km2, and in Germany. Switzerland and the Länder of Rhineland-Palatinate, Schleswig-Holstein, and Thuringia in Germany were the places in Europe where the communes had a smaller median area than in France. The communes of Frances overseas départements such as Réunion and French Guiana are large by French standards and they usually group into the same commune several villages or towns, often with sizeable distances among them
12.
Estuary
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An estuary is a partially enclosed coastal body of brackish water with one or more rivers or streams flowing into it, and with a free connection to the open sea. Estuaries form a zone between river environments and maritime environments. They are subject both to marine influences—such as tides, waves, and the influx of saline water—and to riverine influences—such as flows of fresh water and sediment. The inflows of sea water and fresh water provide high levels of nutrients both in the water column and in sediment, making estuaries among the most productive natural habitats in the world. Most existing estuaries formed during the Holocene epoch with the flooding of river-eroded or glacially scoured valleys when the sea began to rise about 10. Estuaries are typically classified according to their geomorphological features or to water-circulation patterns, the banks of many estuaries are amongst the most heavily populated areas of the world, with about 60% of the worlds population living along estuaries and the coast. The word estuary is derived from the Latin word aestuarium meaning tidal inlet of the sea, there have been many definitions proposed to describe an estuary. However, this definition excludes a number of water bodies such as coastal lagoons. This broad definition also includes fjords, lagoons, river mouths, an estuary is a dynamic ecosystem having a connection to the open sea through which the sea water enters with the rhythm of the tides. The sea water entering the estuary is diluted by the water flowing from rivers. The pattern of dilution varies between different estuaries and depends on the volume of water, the tidal range. Drowned river valleys are known as coastal plain estuaries. In places where the sea level is rising relative to the land, sea water progressively penetrates into river valleys and this is the most common type of estuary in temperate climates. Well-studied estuaries include the Severn Estuary in the United Kingdom and the Ems Dollard along the Dutch-German border, the width-to-depth ratio of these estuaries is typically large, appearing wedge-shaped in the inner part and broadening and deepening seaward. Water depths rarely exceed 30 m, examples of this type of estuary in the U. S. are the Hudson River, Chesapeake Bay, and Delaware Bay along the Mid-Atlantic coast, and Galveston Bay and Tampa Bay along the Gulf Coast. They are relatively common in tropical and subtropical locations and these estuaries are semi-isolated from ocean waters by barrier beaches. Formation of barrier beaches partially encloses the estuary, with only narrow inlets allowing contact with the ocean waters, bar-built estuaries typically develop on gently sloping plains located along tectonically stable edges of continents and marginal sea coasts. They are extensive along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts of the U. S. in areas with active coastal deposition of sediments, barrier beaches form in shallow water and are generally parallel to the shoreline, resulting in long, narrow estuaries
13.
Gascon language
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Gascon is a dialect of Occitan. It is mostly spoken in Gascony and Béarn in southwestern France and it has about 250,000 speakers worldwide. Aranese, a southern Gascon variety, is spoken in Catalonia and has greatly influenced recently by Catalan. Both these influences tend to differentiate it more and more from the dialects of Gascon spoken in France, since the 2006 adoption of the new statute of Catalonia, Aranese is co-official with Catalan and Spanish in Catalonia. See Occitan, Debates concerning linguistic classification, there is a proven Basque substrate in the development of Gascon. This explains some of the differences that exist between Gascon and other Occitan dialects. A typically Gascon feature that may arise from this substrate is the change from f to h, thus we have Gascon hèsta or. A similar change took place in continental Spanish, thus Latin facere gives Spanish hacer. Note that modern Basque has had influence from Gascon in words like beira, polit to mention. One way for the introduction of Gascon influence into Basque came about through language contact in bordering areas of the Northern Basque Country, acting as adstrate. A poll conducted in Béarn in 1982 indicated that 51% of the population could speak Gascon, 70% understood it, the usual term for Gascon is patois, a word designating in France a non-official and usually devaluated dialect or language, regardless of the concerned region. It is mainly in Béarn that the population uses concurrently the term Béarnais to designate its Gascon forms and this is because of the political past of Béarn, which was independent and then part of a sovereign state from 1347 to 1620. In fact, there is no unified Béarnais dialect, as the language differs considerably throughout the province, many of the differences in pronunciation can be divided into east, west, and south. For example, an a at the end of words is pronounced ah in the west, o in the east, because of Béarns specific political past, Béarnais has been distinguished from Gascon since the 16th century, not for linguistic reasons. Gascon comprises three main areas, The Garonnais Gascon used on and next to the river Garonne valley. These regions know the least specific Gascon forms, the Southern Gascon used in the south and in the south-west of the linguistic Gascon zone. The Gascon of these regions is the one with the most distinctive characteristics of Gascon, the Intermediary Gascon in an intermediary zone between the two just mentioned. Occitan conjugation Languages of France Vergonha Darrigrand, Robert
14.
Occitan language
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Occitan, also known as lenga dòc by its native speakers, is a Romance language. It is spoken in southern France, Italys Occitan Valleys, Monaco, and Spains Val dAran, collectively, Occitan is also spoken in the linguistic enclave of Guardia Piemontese. However, there is controversy about the unity of the language, others include Catalan in this family, as the distance between this language and some Occitan dialects is similar to the distance among different Occitan dialects. In fact, Catalan was considered an Occitan dialect until the end of the 19th century, today, Occitan is an official language in Catalonia, where a subdialect of Gascon known as Aranese is spoken in the Val dAran. Since September 2010, the Parliament of Catalonia has considered Aranese Occitan to be the preferred language for use in the Val dAran. Unlike other Romance languages such as French or Spanish, there is no written standard language called Occitan. Instead, there are competing norms for writing Occitan, some of which attempt to be pan-dialectal, There are also significant lexical differences, where some dialects have words cognate with French, and others have Catalan and Spanish cognates. Nonetheless, there is a significant amount of mutual intelligibility, the long-term survival of Occitan is in grave doubt. According to the UNESCO Red Book of Endangered Languages, four of the six dialects of Occitan are considered severely endangered. The name Occitan comes from lenga dòc, òc being the Occitan word for yes and this was not, of course, the only defining characteristic of each group. The word òc came from Vulgar Latin hoc, while oïl originated from Latin hoc illud, Old Catalan, and now the Catalan of Northern Catalonia also have hoc. Other Romance languages derive their word for yes from the Latin sic, thus, etc. such as Spanish sí, Eastern Lombard sé, Sicilian and Italian sì, or Portuguese sim. French uses si to answer yes in response to questions that are asked in the negative sense, the name Occitan is sometimes considered a neologism, however, it was attested around 1300 as occitanus, a crossing of oc and aquitanus. For many centuries, the Occitan dialects were referred to as Limousin or Provençal, after Frédéric Mistrals Félibrige movement in the 19th century, Provençal achieved the greatest literary recognition and so became the most popular term for Occitan. The term first came into fashion in Italy, currently, linguists use the terms Provençal and Limousin strictly to refer to specific varieties within Occitania, keeping the name Occitan for the language as a whole. Many non-specialists, however, continue to refer to the language as Provençal, NO·L LI TOLRÀ NO·L LI DEVEDARÀ NI NO LEN DECEBRÀ. Nec societatem non AURÀ, si per castellum recuperare NON O FA, et si recuperare potuerit in potestate Froterio et Raimundo LO TORNARÀ, carolingian litanies, both written and sung in Latin, were answered to in Old Occitan by the audience. Occitan was the vehicle for the poetry of the medieval troubadours and trobairises, At that time
15.
Spanish language
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Spanish —also called Castilian —is a Romance language that originated in the Castile region of Spain, with hundreds of millions of native speakers around the world. It is usually considered the worlds second-most spoken native language after Mandarin Chinese and it is one of the few languages to use inverted question and exclamation marks. Spanish is a part of the Ibero-Romance group of languages, which evolved from several dialects of Vulgar Latin in Iberia after the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century. Beginning in the early 16th century, Spanish was taken to the colonies of the Spanish Empire, most notably to the Americas, as well as territories in Africa, Oceania, around 75% of modern Spanish is derived from Latin. Greek has also contributed substantially to Spanish vocabulary, especially through Latin, Spanish vocabulary has been in contact from an early date with Arabic, having developed during the Al-Andalus era in the Iberian Peninsula. With around 8% of its vocabulary being Arabic in origin, this language is the second most important influence after Latin and it has also been influenced by Basque as well as by neighboring Ibero-Romance languages. It also adopted words from languages such as Gothic language from the Visigoths in which many Spanish names and surnames have a Visigothic origin. Spanish is one of the six languages of the United Nations. It is the language in the world by the number of people who speak it as a mother tongue, after Mandarin Chinese. It is estimated more than 437 million people speak Spanish as a native language. Spanish is the official or national language in Spain, Equatorial Guinea, speakers in the Americas total some 418 million. In the European Union, Spanish is the tongue of 8% of the population. Spanish is the most popular second language learned in the United States, in 2011 it was estimated by the American Community Survey that of the 55 million Hispanic United States residents who are five years of age and over,38 million speak Spanish at home. The Spanish Constitution of 1978 uses the term castellano to define the language of the whole Spanish State in contrast to las demás lenguas españolas. Article III reads as follows, El castellano es la lengua española oficial del Estado, las demás lenguas españolas serán también oficiales en las respectivas Comunidades Autónomas. Castilian is the official Spanish language of the State, the other Spanish languages as well shall be official in their respective Autonomous Communities. The Spanish Royal Academy, on the hand, currently uses the term español in its publications. Two etymologies for español have been suggested, the Spanish Royal Academy Dictionary derives the term from the Provençal word espaignol, and that in turn from the Medieval Latin word Hispaniolus, from—or pertaining to—Hispania
16.
Catalan language
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Catalan is a Romance language derived from Vulgar Latin and named after the medieval Principality of Catalonia, in northeastern modern Spain and adjoining parts of France. It is the national and only language of Andorra, and a co-official language of the Spanish autonomous communities of Catalonia, the Balearic Islands. It also has status in the commune of Alghero, situated on the northwestern coast of the island of Sardinia. All these territories are often called Catalan Countries. 4% with Catalan and 47. 5% only Spanish, in order to integrate newcomers, the Generalitat de Catalunya spends part of its annual budget on the promotion of the use of Catalan in Catalonia and in other territories. Catalan evolved from Vulgar Latin in the Middle Ages around the eastern Pyrenees, during the Low Middle Ages it saw a golden age as the literary and dominant language of the Crown of Aragon, and was widely used all over the Mediterranean. The union of Aragon with the territories of Spain in 1479 marked the start of the decline of the language. In 1659 Spain ceded Northern Catalonia to France, and Catalan was banned in both states in the early 18th century, 19th-century Spain saw a Catalan literary revival, which culminated in the 1913 orthographic standardization, and the official status of the language during the Second Spanish Republic. However, the Francoist dictatorship banned the use of Catalan in schools and in the public administration, there is no parallel in Europe for such a large, bilingual, non-state speech community. Catalan dialects are relatively uniform, and are mutually intelligible and they are divided into two blocks, Eastern and Western, differing mostly in pronunciation. The terms Catalan and Valencian are two varieties of the same language, there are two institutions regulating the two standard varieties, the Institute of Catalan Studies in Catalonia and the Valencian Academy of the Language in the Valencian Community. Catalan shares many traits with its neighboring Romance languages, thus, the similarities are naturally most notable with eastern Occitan. Nouns have two genders, and two numbers, pronouns additionally can have a neuter gender, and some are also inflected for case and politeness, and can be combined in very complex ways. Verbs are split in several paradigms and are inflected for person, number, tense, aspect, mood, in terms of pronunciation, Catalan has many words ending in a wide variety of consonants and some consonant clusters, in contrast with many other Romance languages. The word Catalan derives from the territory of Catalonia, itself of disputed etymology, in English, the term referring to a person first appears in the mid 14th century as Catelaner, followed in the 15th century as Catellain. It is attested a language name since at least 1652, Catalan can be pronounced as /ˈkætəlæn/, /kætəˈlæn/ or /ˈkætələn/. The endonym is pronounced /kə. təˈɫa/ in the Eastern Catalan dialects, in the Valencian Community, the term valencià is frequently used instead. The names Catalan and Valencian are two names for the same language, see also status of Valencian below. By the 9th century, Catalan had evolved from Vulgar Latin on both sides of the end of the Pyrenees, as well as the territories of the Roman province of Hispania Tarraconensis to the south
17.
Bigorre
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Today Bigorre comprises the centre and west of the département of Hautes-Pyrénées, with two small exclaves in the neighbouring Pyrénées Atlantiques. Before the French Revolution, the province of Bigorre had an area of 2,574 km². At the 1999 French census, there lived 177,575 inhabitants on the territory of the province of Bigorre. The largest urban areas in Bigorre are Tarbes, with 77,414 inhabitants in 1999, Lourdes, with 15,554 inhabitants in 1999, and Bagnères-de-Bigorre, with 11,396 inhabitants in 1999. At the time of the Roman conquest, the area of Bigorre was inhabited by the Bigorri or Bigerri, the Bigorri were probably speakers of Aquitanian, a language possibly related to Basque. Bigorre was conquered by the Roman general Julius Caesar in 56 BC, in the fourth century, Aquitania was divided in three, for administration, the region that became Bigorre was part of the southernmost section, Aquitania tertia or Novempopulana. Like the rest of Aquitaine, Bigorre was subsumed within the Visigothic kingdom during the fifth century, under the Merovingian kings, Bigorre was a civitas, the chief settlement of which was Cieutat. It was part of the morganegyba of Galsuintha from her husband, on Galsuinthas murder it passed to her sister Brunhilda as part of the arbitration imposed by Guntram of Burgundy. By the Treaty of Andelot Guntram acquired possession of it and it remained with Burgundy until the reunion of various Frankish kingdoms in 613, the history of Bigorre in the seventh and eighth centuries is obscure. It was apparently part of the Basque Duchy of Gascony which was often at odds with the Frankish Duchy of Aquitaine, the County of Bigorre was formed by the Dukes of Gascony in the ninth century and inherited by scions of the ducal house in the tenth. It remained semi-independent of ducal authority throughout the two centuries, and was briefly attached to the Viscounty of Béarn. Recaptured by the French and their allies the counts of Foix between 1370 and 1406, Bigorre was granted by King Charles VII of France to Count Jean I of Foix in 1426. Thus, Bigorre was incorporated into the estates of the House of Foix-Grailly, which included the county of Foix, Béarn, Henry III of Navarre became King Henry IV of France in 1589. In 1607, he united to the French crown those of his personal fiefs that were under French sovereignty, before the French Revolution, Bigorre was made part of the gouvernement of Guienne-Gascony, whereas for general matters it depended from the généralité of Auch like the rest of Gascony. For judicial matters, Bigorre depended from the Parlement of Toulouse, unlike so many other French provinces, Bigorre kept its provincial parliament, its estates, until the Revolution. The provincial estates of Bigorre decided the level of taxation in Bigorre, in 1789 Bigorre sent four representatives to the Estates-General in Versailles. The representatives of Bigorre lobbied quite successfully because in 1790 it was decided that Bigorre would become a French département, Tarbes, the capital of Bigorre, was made the capital of the new département
18.
Gascony
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Gascony is an area of southwest France that was part of the Province of Guyenne and Gascony prior to the French Revolution. The region is defined, and the distinction between Guyenne and Gascony is unclear, by some they are seen to overlap, while others consider Gascony a part of Guyenne. Most definitions put Gascony east and south of Bordeaux and it is currently divided between the region of Aquitaine and the region of Midi-Pyrénées. Gascony was historically inhabited by Basque-related people who appear to have spoken a language similar to Basque, the name Gascony comes from the same root as the word Basque. From medieval times until today, the Gascon language has been spoken, Gascony is the land of dArtagnan, who inspired Alexandre Dumass character dArtagnan in The Three Musketeers. It is also home to Henry III of Navarre, who became king of France as Henry IV. In pre-Roman times, the inhabitants of Gascony were the Aquitanians, the Aquitanians inhabited a territory limited to the north and east by the Garonne River, to the south by the Pyrenees mountain range, and to the west by the Atlantic Ocean. In the 50s BC, Aquitania was conquered by lieutenants of Julius Caesar, later, in 27 BC, during the reign of Emperor Augustus, the province of Gallia Aquitania was created. In 297, as Emperor Diocletian reformed the administrative structures of the Roman Empire, the territory of Novempopulania corresponded quite well to what we call now Gascony. The Aquitania Novempopulana or Novempopulania suffered like the rest of the Western Roman Empire from the invasions of Germanic tribes, the Visigoths were defeated by the Franks in 507, and fled into Spain and Septimania, as well as Albania. Novempopulania then became part of the Frankish Kingdom like the rest of southern France, however, Novempopulania was far away from the home base of the Franks in northern France, and was only very loosely controlled by the Franks. Modern historians reject this hypothesis, which is sustained by no archeological evidence, for Juan José Larrea, and Pierre Bonnassie, a Vascon expansionism in Aquitany is not proved and is not necessary to understand the historical evolution of this region. This Basque-related culture and race is, whatever the origin, attested in Medieval documents, the word Vasconia evolved into Wasconia, and then into Gasconia. The gradual abandonment of the Basque-related Aquitanian language in favor of a local vulgar Latin, was not reversed, the replacing local vulgar Latin evolved into Gascon. It was heavily influenced by the original Aquitanian language, quite paradoxically the Basques from the French side of the Basque Country traditionally call anyone who does not speak Basque a Gascon. Meanwhile, Viking raiders conquered several Gascon towns, among them Bayonne in 842–844 and their attacks in Gascony may have helped the political disintegration of the Duchy until their defeat against William II Sánchez of Gascony in 982. In turn, the weakened ethnic polity known as Duchy of Wasconia/Wascones, unable to get round the general spread of feudalization and his 1152 marriage to Eleanor of Aquitaine allowed the future Henry II to gain control of his new wifes possessions of Aquitaine and Gascony. This addition to his already plentiful holdings made Henry the most powerful vassal in France, in 1248, Simon de Montfort was appointed Governor in the unsettled Duchy of Gascony
19.
Provinces of France
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The Kingdom of France was organized into provinces until March 4,1790, when the establishment of the department system superseded provinces. The provinces of France were roughly equivalent to the counties of England. In some cases, several regions or departments share names with the historic provinces. The list below shows the provinces of France at the time of their dissolution during the French Revolution. Capital cities are shown in parentheses, bold indicates a city that was also the seat of a judicial and quasi-legislative body called either a parlement or a conseil souverain. In some cases, this body met in a different city than the capital, comtat Venaissin, a Papal fief 36. Imperial Free City of Mulhouse 37, montbéliard, a fief of Württemberg Partial display of historical provincial arms, Ancien Régime in France Gallery of French coats of arms Coat of arms Heraldry
20.
Huguenots
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Huguenots are the ethnoreligious group of French Protestants who follow the Reformed tradition. It was used frequently to members of the French Reformed Church until the beginning of the 19th century. The term has its origin in 16th-century France, Huguenot numbers peaked near an estimated two million by 1562, concentrated mainly in the southern and western parts of France. As Huguenots gained influence and more openly displayed their faith, Catholic hostility grew, in spite of political concessions, a series of religious conflicts followed, known as the French Wars of Religion, fought intermittently from 1562 to 1598. The Huguenots were led by Jeanne dAlbret, her son, the future Henry IV, the wars ended with the Edict of Nantes, which granted the Huguenots substantial religious, political, and military autonomy. Huguenot rebellions in the 1620s prompted the abolishment of their political and they retained religious provisions of the Edict of Nantes until the rule of Louis XIV. Nevertheless, a minority of Huguenots remained and faced continued persecution under Louis XV. By the death of Louis XV in 1774, French Calvinism was almost completely wiped out, persecution of Protestants officially ended with the Edict of Versailles, signed by Louis XVI in 1787. Two years later, with the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen of 1789 and they also spread to the Dutch Cape Colony in South Africa, the Dutch East Indies, the Caribbean, New Netherland, and several of the English colonies in North America. Small contingents of families went to Orthodox Russia and Catholic Quebec, a term used originally in derision, Huguenot has unclear origins. Geneva was John Calvins adopted home and the centre of the Calvinist movement, the label Huguenot was purportedly first applied in France to those conspirators involved in the Amboise plot of 1560, a foiled attempt to wrest power in France from the influential House of Guise. The move would have had the effect of fostering relations with the Swiss. Thus, Hugues plus Eidgenosse by way of Huisgenoten supposedly became Huguenot, a version of this complex hypothesis is promoted by O. I. A. Roche, who writes in his book, The Days of the Upright, A History of the Huguenots, that Huguenot is, a combination of a Dutch and a German word. Gallicised into Huguenot, often used deprecatingly, the word became, Some disagree with such double or triple non-French linguistic origins, arguing that for the word to have spread into common use in France, it must have originated in the French language. The Hugues hypothesis argues that the name was derived by association with Hugues Capet, king of France and he was regarded by the Gallicans and Protestants as a noble man who respected peoples dignity and lives. Janet Gray and other supporters of the hypothesis suggest that the name huguenote would be equivalent to little Hugos. It was in place in Tours that the prétendus réformés habitually gathered at night
21.
Navarre
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The first documented use of a name resembling Navarra, Nafarroa, or Naparroa is a reference to navarros, in Eginhards early 9th Century chronicle of the feats of the Holy Roman Emperor Charlemagne. Other Royal Frankish Annals feature nabarros, there are two proposed etymologies for the name. Basque nabar, brownish, multicolor (i. e. in contrast to the mountainous lands north of the original County of Navarre. Basque naba, valley, plain + Basque herri, the linguist Joan Coromines considers naba to be linguistically part of a wider Vasconic or Aquitanian language substrate, rather than Basque per se. During the Roman Empire, the Vascones, a tribe who populated the southern slopes of the Pyrenees. In the mountainous north, the Vascones escaped large-scale Roman settlement, not so the flatter areas to the south, which were amenable to large-scale Roman farming—vineyards, olives, and wheat crops. Neither the Visigoths nor the Franks ever completely subjugated the area, the Vascones included neighbouring tribes as of the 7th century. In AD778, the Basques defeated a Frankish army at the Battle of Roncevaux Pass and that kingdom reached its zenith during the reign of King Sancho III, comprising most of the Christian realms to the south of the Pyrenees, and even a short overlordship of Gascony. When Sancho III died in 1035, the Kingdom of Navarre was divided between his sons and it never fully recovered its political power, while its commercial importance increased as traders and pilgrims poured into the kingdom throughout the Way of Saint James. In 1200, Navarre lost the key western Basque districts to Alphonse VIII of Castile, Navarre then contributed with a small but symbolic force of 200 knights to the decisive Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa in 1212 against the Almohads. The native line of kings came to an end in 1234, however, the Navarrese kept most of their strong laws and institutions. To the south of the Pyrenees, Navarre was annexed to the Crown of Castile, but keeping a separate status. A Chartered Government was established, and the managed to keep home rule. After the 1839 Convention of Bergara, a version of home rule was passed in 1839. The relocation of customs from the Ebro river to the Pyrenees in 1841 prompted the collapse of Navarre’s customary cross-Pyrenean trade, amid instability in Spain, Carlists took over in Navarre and the rest of the Basque provinces. The end of the Third Carlist War saw a wave of Spanish centralization directly affecting Navarre. In 1893-1894 the Gamazada popular uprising took place centred in Pamplona against Madrids governmental decisions breaching the 1841 chartered provisions. Except for a faction, all parties in Navarre agreed on the need for a new political framework based on home rule within the Laurak Bat
22.
Henry IV of France
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Henry IV, also known by the epithet Good King Henry, was King of Navarre from 1572 to 1610 and King of France from 1589 to 1610. He was the first French monarch of the House of Bourbon, baptised as a Catholic but raised in the Protestant faith by his mother Jeanne dAlbret, Queen of Navarre, he inherited the throne of Navarre in 1572 on the death of his mother. As a Huguenot, Henry was involved in the French Wars of Religion, barely escaping assassination in the St. Bartholomews Day massacre, and later led Protestant forces against the royal army. Henry, as Head of the House of Bourbon, was a direct descendant of Louis IX of France. Upon the death of his brother-in-law and distant cousin Henry III of France in 1589 and he initially kept the Protestant faith and had to fight against the Catholic League, which denied that he could wear Frances crown as a Protestant. To obtain mastery over his kingdom, after four years of stalemate, as a pragmatic politician, he displayed an unusual religious tolerance for the era. Notably, he promulgated the Edict of Nantes, which guaranteed religious liberties to Protestants and he was assassinated in 1610 by François Ravaillac, a fanatical Catholic, and was succeeded by his son Louis XIII. Considered a usurper by some Catholics and a traitor by some Protestants, an unpopular king immediately after his accession, Henrys popularity greatly improved after his death, in light of repeated victories over his enemies and his conversion to Catholicism. The Good King Henry was remembered for his geniality and his concern about the welfare of his subjects. He was celebrated in the popular song Vive le roi Henri, Henry was born in Pau, the capital of the joint Kingdom of Navarre with the sovereign principality of Béarn. His parents were Queen Joan III of Navarre and her consort, Antoine de Bourbon, Duke of Vendôme, although baptised as a Roman Catholic, Henry was raised as a Protestant by his mother, who had declared Calvinism the religion of Navarre. As a teenager, Henry joined the Huguenot forces in the French Wars of Religion, on 9 June 1572, upon his mothers death, he became King of Navarre. At Queen Joans death, it was arranged for Henry to marry Margaret of Valois, daughter of Henry II, the wedding took place in Paris on 18 August 1572 on the parvis of Notre Dame Cathedral. On 24 August, the Saint Bartholomews Day Massacre began in Paris, several thousand Protestants who had come to Paris for Henrys wedding were killed, as well as thousands more throughout the country in the days that followed. Henry narrowly escaped death thanks to the help of his wife and he was made to live at the court of France, but he escaped in early 1576. On 5 February of that year, he formally abjured Catholicism at Tours and he named his 16-year-old sister, Catherine de Bourbon, regent of Béarn. Catherine held the regency for nearly thirty years, Henry became heir presumptive to the French throne in 1584 upon the death of Francis, Duke of Anjou, brother and heir to the Catholic Henry III, who had succeeded Charles IX in 1574. Because Henry of Navarre was the senior agnatic descendant of King Louis IX, King Henry III had no choice
23.
French Revolution
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Through the Revolutionary Wars, it unleashed a wave of global conflicts that extended from the Caribbean to the Middle East. Historians widely regard the Revolution as one of the most important events in human history, the causes of the French Revolution are complex and are still debated among historians. Following the Seven Years War and the American Revolutionary War, the French government was deeply in debt, Years of bad harvests leading up to the Revolution also inflamed popular resentment of the privileges enjoyed by the clergy and the aristocracy. Demands for change were formulated in terms of Enlightenment ideals and contributed to the convocation of the Estates-General in May 1789, a central event of the first stage, in August 1789, was the abolition of feudalism and the old rules and privileges left over from the Ancien Régime. The next few years featured political struggles between various liberal assemblies and right-wing supporters of the intent on thwarting major reforms. The Republic was proclaimed in September 1792 after the French victory at Valmy, in a momentous event that led to international condemnation, Louis XVI was executed in January 1793. External threats closely shaped the course of the Revolution, internally, popular agitation radicalised the Revolution significantly, culminating in the rise of Maximilien Robespierre and the Jacobins. Large numbers of civilians were executed by revolutionary tribunals during the Terror, after the Thermidorian Reaction, an executive council known as the Directory assumed control of the French state in 1795. The rule of the Directory was characterised by suspended elections, debt repudiations, financial instability, persecutions against the Catholic clergy, dogged by charges of corruption, the Directory collapsed in a coup led by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1799. The modern era has unfolded in the shadow of the French Revolution, almost all future revolutionary movements looked back to the Revolution as their predecessor. The values and institutions of the Revolution dominate French politics to this day, the French Revolution differed from other revolutions in being not merely national, for it aimed at benefiting all humanity. Globally, the Revolution accelerated the rise of republics and democracies and it became the focal point for the development of all modern political ideologies, leading to the spread of liberalism, radicalism, nationalism, socialism, feminism, and secularism, among many others. The Revolution also witnessed the birth of total war by organising the resources of France, historians have pointed to many events and factors within the Ancien Régime that led to the Revolution. Over the course of the 18th century, there emerged what the philosopher Jürgen Habermas called the idea of the sphere in France. A perfect example would be the Palace of Versailles which was meant to overwhelm the senses of the visitor and convince one of the greatness of the French state and Louis XIV. Starting in the early 18th century saw the appearance of the sphere which was critical in that both sides were active. In France, the emergence of the public sphere outside of the control of the saw the shift from Versailles to Paris as the cultural capital of France. In the 1750s, during the querelle des bouffons over the question of the quality of Italian vs, in 1782, Louis-Sébastien Mercier wrote, The word court no longer inspires awe amongst us as in the time of Louis XIV
24.
National Convention
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The National Convention was the third government of the French Revolution, following the two-year National Constituent Assembly and the one-year Legislative Assembly. Created after the insurrection of 10 August 1792, it was the first French government organized as a republic. The Convention sat as an assembly from 20 September 1792 to 26 October 1795. The National Convention was therefore the first French assembly elected by a suffrage without distinctions of class, although the Convention lasted until 1795, power was effectively stripped from the elected deputies and concentrated in the small Committee of Public Safety from April 1793. After the fall of Robespierre, the Convention lasted for year until a new constitution was written. The election took place from 2 to 6 September 1792 after the election of the colleges by primary assemblies on 26 August. Therefore, the increased suffrage had very little impact, the electorate returned the same sort of men that the active citizens had chosen in 1791. In the whole of France, only eleven primary assemblies wanted to retain the monarchy, of the electoral assemblies, all tacitly voted for a republic – though only Paris used the word. None of the deputies stood as a royalist for elections, out of the five million Frenchmen able to vote, only a million showed up at the polls. The Salle des Machines had galleries for the public who often influenced the debates with interruptions or applause, the members of the Convention came from all classes of society, but the most numerous were lawyers. 75 members had sat in the National Constituent Assembly,183 in the Legislative Assembly, the full number of deputies was 749, not counting 33 from the French colonies, of whom only some arrived in Paris in time. Besides these, however, the newly formed départements annexed to France from 1792 to 1795 were allowed to send deputations, according to its own ruling, the Convention elected its President every fortnight, and the outgoing President was eligible for re-election after the lapse of a fortnight. Ordinarily the sessions were held in the morning, but evening sessions also occurred frequently, sometimes in exceptional circumstances the Convention declared itself in permanent session and sat for several days without interruption. For both legislative and administrative the Convention used committees, with more or less widely extended and regulated by successive laws. The most famous of these included the Committee of Public Safety. The Convention held legislative and executive powers during the first years of the French First Republic and had three periods, Girondin, Montagnard or Jacobin, and Thermidorian. The abolition of the royalty is a matter you cannot put off till tomorrow, the first session was held on 20 September 1792. The following day, amidst profound silence, the proposition was put to the assembly, on the 22nd came the news of the Battle of Valmy
25.
Vignemale
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The Vignemale, at 3,298 metres, is the highest of the French Pyrenean summits, on the border with Spain. The Vignemale is the given to the mountain massif, which also straddles into Spain. It consists of several summits, the predominant ones being Grand Vignemale or Pique-Longue, Pointe Chausenque. The Vignemale is also the site of the second largest of the Pyrenean glaciers, one of its most dramatic aspects is the North Face upon which lie a number of serious ascent routes requiring skill and commitment. Below the North Face is the impressively situated mountain refuge - the Refuge des Oulettes de Gaube, the approach from the north entails a delightful walk up to and around the picturesque Lac de Gaube giving increasingly dramatic views of the mountain. Almost synonymous with the Vignemale is the name of Count Henry Russell, List of Pyrenean three-thousanders List of mountains in Aragon Count Henry Russells caves on the Vignemale
26.
Pic du Midi de Bigorre
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The Pic du Midi de Bigorre or simply the Pic du Midi is a mountain in the French Pyrenees famous for its Pic du Midi Observatory. The Pic du Midi Observatory is an observatory located at 2877 meters on top of the Pic du Midi de Bigorre mountain in the French Pyrenees. The 8 metre dome was completed in 1908, under the direction of Benjamin Baillaud. It housed a powerful mechanical equatorial reflector which was used in 1909 to formally discredit the Martian canal theory, in 1946 Mr. Gentilli funded a dome and a 0. 60-meter telescope, and in 1958, a spectrograph was installed. A1. 06-meter telescope was installed in 1963, funded by NASA and was used to take detailed photographs of the surface of the Moon in preparation for the Apollo missions, the results showed atmospheres in chemical equilibrium. It is the largest telescope in France, the observatory also has a coronagraph, which is used to study the solar corona. A0. 60-meter telescope is located at the top of Pic du Midi. Since 1982 this T60 is dedicated to astronomy and managed by a group of amateurs. There are currently at the top, The 0. 55-meter telescope, The 0. 60-meter telescope, the observatory is located at 42°56′N 0°8′E, placing it very close to the Greenwich meridian. The observatory was featured in the video game Rainbow Six, Vegas 2 under a different name, the observatory in-game is said to be located on the fictional Pic des Pyrenees. Saturns moon Helene, was discovered by French astronomers Pierre Laques and Jean Lecacheux in 1980 from ground-based observations at this observatory and it is also a trojan moon of Dione
27.
Enclave and exclave
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An enclave is a territory, or a part of a territory, that is entirely surrounded by the territory of one other state. Territorial waters have the same attributes as land, and enclaves may therefore exist within territorial waters. An exclave is a portion of a state or territory geographically separated from the part by surrounding alien territory. Enclave is sometimes used improperly to denote a territory that is partly surrounded by another state. Vatican City and San Marino, enclaved by Italy, and Lesotho, unlike an enclave, an exclave can be surrounded by several states. The Azeri exclave of Naxçıvan is an example of an exclave. Semi-enclaves and semi-exclaves are areas that, except for possessing an unsurrounded sea border, Enclaves and semi-enclaves can exist as independent states, while exclaves always constitute just a part of a sovereign state. A pene-enclave is a part of the territory of one country that can be approached conveniently — in particular by wheeled traffic — only through the territory of another country, pene-enclaves are also called functional enclaves or practical enclaves. Many pene-exclaves partially border their own territorial waters, a pene-enclave can also exist entirely on land, such as when intervening mountains render a territory inaccessible from other parts of a country except through alien territory. A commonly cited example is the Kleinwalsertal, a part of Vorarlberg, Austria. The word enclave is French and first appeared in the century as a derivative of the verb enclaver. In law, this created a servitude of passage for the benefit of the owner of the surrounded land, the first diplomatic document to contain the word enclave was the Treaty of Madrid, signed in 1526. Later, the term began to be used also to refer to parcels of countries, counties, fiefs, communes, towns, parishes. This French word eventually entered the English and other languages to denote the same concept although local terms have continued to be used, in India, the word pocket is often used as a synonym for enclave. In British administrative history, subnational enclaves were usually called detachments or detached parts, in English ecclesiastic history, subnational enclaves were known as peculiars. The word exclave, modeled on enclave, is a extension of the concept of enclave. Enclaves exist for a variety of historical, political and geographical reasons, in particular, this state of affairs persisted into the 19th century in the Holy Roman Empire, and these domains exhibited many of the characteristics of sovereign states. Prior to 1866 Prussia alone consisted of more than 270 discontiguous pieces of territory, thus, over time enclaves have tended to be eliminated. This exchange thus effectively de-enclaved another two dozen second-order enclaves and one third-order enclave, eliminating 197 of the Indo-Bangladesh enclaves in all, the residents in these enclaves had complained of being effectively stateless
28.
Middle Ages
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In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or Medieval Period lasted from the 5th to the 15th century. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire and merged into the Renaissance, the Middle Ages is the middle period of the three traditional divisions of Western history, classical antiquity, the medieval period, and the modern period. The medieval period is subdivided into the Early, High. Population decline, counterurbanisation, invasion, and movement of peoples, the large-scale movements of the Migration Period, including various Germanic peoples, formed new kingdoms in what remained of the Western Roman Empire. In the seventh century, North Africa and the Middle East—once part of the Byzantine Empire—came under the rule of the Umayyad Caliphate, although there were substantial changes in society and political structures, the break with classical antiquity was not complete. The still-sizeable Byzantine Empire survived in the east and remained a major power, the empires law code, the Corpus Juris Civilis or Code of Justinian, was rediscovered in Northern Italy in 1070 and became widely admired later in the Middle Ages. In the West, most kingdoms incorporated the few extant Roman institutions, monasteries were founded as campaigns to Christianise pagan Europe continued. The Franks, under the Carolingian dynasty, briefly established the Carolingian Empire during the later 8th, the Crusades, first preached in 1095, were military attempts by Western European Christians to regain control of the Holy Land from Muslims. Kings became the heads of centralised nation states, reducing crime and violence, intellectual life was marked by scholasticism, a philosophy that emphasised joining faith to reason, and by the founding of universities. Controversy, heresy, and the Western Schism within the Catholic Church paralleled the conflict, civil strife. Cultural and technological developments transformed European society, concluding the Late Middle Ages, the Middle Ages is one of the three major periods in the most enduring scheme for analysing European history, classical civilisation, or Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the Modern Period. Medieval writers divided history into periods such as the Six Ages or the Four Empires, when referring to their own times, they spoke of them as being modern. In the 1330s, the humanist and poet Petrarch referred to pre-Christian times as antiqua, leonardo Bruni was the first historian to use tripartite periodisation in his History of the Florentine People. Bruni and later argued that Italy had recovered since Petrarchs time. The Middle Ages first appears in Latin in 1469 as media tempestas or middle season, in early usage, there were many variants, including medium aevum, or middle age, first recorded in 1604, and media saecula, or middle ages, first recorded in 1625. The alternative term medieval derives from medium aevum, tripartite periodisation became standard after the German 17th-century historian Christoph Cellarius divided history into three periods, Ancient, Medieval, and Modern. The most commonly given starting point for the Middle Ages is 476, for Europe as a whole,1500 is often considered to be the end of the Middle Ages, but there is no universally agreed upon end date. English historians often use the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485 to mark the end of the period
29.
Lourdes
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Lourdes is a small market town lying in the foothills of the Pyrenees. It is part of the Hautes-Pyrénées department in the Occitanie region in south-western France, prior to the mid-19th century, the town was best known for the Château fort de Lourdes, a fortified castle that rises up from a rocky escarpment at its centre. In 1858 Lourdes rose to prominence in France and abroad due to the Marian apparitions seen by the peasant girl Bernadette Soubirous, shortly thereafter the city with the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes became one of the worlds most important sites of pilgrimage and religious tourism. Today Lourdes hosts around six million visitors every year from all corners of the world, as of 2011, of French cities only Paris had more hotel capacity. According to believers, the Virgin Mary appeared to Marie-Bernadette Soubirous on a total of eighteen occasions at Lourdes, Lourdes has become a major place of Roman Catholic pilgrimage and of miraculous healings. The 150th Jubilee of the first apparition took place on 11 February 2008 with an outdoor Mass attended by approximately 45,000 pilgrims. Today Lourdes has a population of around 15,000, but it is able to take in some 5,000,000 pilgrims, with about 270 hotels, Lourdes has the second greatest number of hotels per square kilometre in France after Paris. Some of the deluxe hotels like Grand Hotel Moderne, Hotel Grand de la Grotte, Hotel St. Etienne, Hotel Majestic, although the Lady did not tell Bernadette her name when asked at first, she told her to return to the grotto. On subsequent visits, the Lady revealed herself to be the Immaculate Conception, Bernadette, having only a rudimentary knowledge of the Catholic faith, did not understand what this meant but she reported it to her parish priest, Father Peyremale. He, though initially very skeptical of Bernadettes claims, became convinced when he heard this because he knew the girl had no knowledge of the doctrine. The Lady also told Bernadette to dig in the ground at a certain spot, almost immediately cures were reported from drinking the water. And yet the water has shown through repeated testing to not have any special curative properties. Today thousand of gallons of water gush from the source of the spring, countless miracle cures have been documented there, from the healing of nervous disorders and cancers to cases of paralysis and even of blindness. The estimate that about 4000 cures have been obtained at Lourdes within the first fifty years of the pilgrimage is undoubtedly considerably less than the actual number, during the Apparitions, Bernadette Soubirous prayed the Rosary. Pope John Paul II wrote, The Rosary of the Virgin Mary is a prayer with great significance, Lourdes is located in southern France in the foothills of the Pyrenees mountains near the prime meridian. The Grand Jer is accessible via the railway of the Pic du Jer. The Béout was once accessible by car, although this has fallen into disrepair. A pavilion is still visible on the summit, the Gave then branches off to the west towards the Béarn, running past the banks of the Grotto and on downstream to Pau and then Biarritz
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Pilgrimage
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A pilgrimage is a journey or search of moral or spiritual significance. Typically, it is a journey to a shrine or other location of importance to a persons beliefs and faith, a person who makes such a journey is called a pilgrim. As a common experience, pilgrimage has been proposed as a Jungian archetype by Wallace Clift. The Holy Land acts as a point for the pilgrimages of the Abrahamic religions of Judaism, Christianity. Baháulláh decreed pilgrimage to two places in the Kitáb-i-Aqdas, the House of Baháulláh in Baghdad, Iraq, and the House of the Báb in Shiraz, later, Abdul-Bahá designated the Shrine of Baháulláh at Bahji, Israel as a site of pilgrimage. Other pilgrimage places in India and Nepal connected to the life of Gautama Buddha are, Savatthi, Pataliputta, Nalanda, Gaya, Vesali, Sankasia, Kapilavastu, Kosambi, Rajagaha, Varanasi, other famous places for Buddhist pilgrimage include, India, Sanchi, Ellora, Ajanta. Thailand, Sukhothai, Ayutthaya, Wat Phra Kaew, Wat Doi Suthep, tibet, Lhasa, Mount Kailash, Lake Nam-tso. Sri Lanka, Polonnaruwa, Temple of the Tooth, Anuradhapura, malaysia, Kek Lok Si, Cheng Hoon Teng, Maha Vihara Myanmar, Bagan, Sagaing Hill. The Four Sacred Mountains Japan, Shikoku Pilgrimage,88 Temple pilgrimage in the Shikoku island, Japan 100 Kannon, pilgrimage composed of the Saigoku, Bandō and Chichibu pilgrimages. Saigoku 33 Kannon, pilgrimage in the Kansai region, Bandō33 Kannon, pilgrimage in the Kantō region. Chichibu 34 Kannon, pilgrimage in Saitama Prefecture, Chūgoku 33 Kannon, pilgrimage in the Chūgoku region. Christian pilgrimage was first made to sites connected with the birth, life, pilgrimages were, and are, also made to Rome and other sites associated with the apostles, saints and Christian martyrs, as well as to places where there have been apparitions of the Virgin Mary. A popular pilgrimage journey is along the Way of St. James to the Santiago de Compostela Cathedral, in Galicia, Spain, chaucers The Canterbury Tales recounts tales told by Christian pilgrims on their way to Canterbury Cathedral and the shrine of Thomas Becket. According to Karel Werners Popular Dictionary of Hinduism, most Hindu places of pilgrimage are associated with events from the lives of various gods. Almost any place can become a focus for pilgrimage, but in most cases they are sacred cities, rivers, lakes, Hindus are encouraged to undertake pilgrimages during their lifetime, though this practice is not considered absolutely mandatory. Most Hindus visit sites within their region or locale, Kumbh Mela, Kumbh Mela is one of the largest gatherings of humans in the world. The location is rotated among Allahabad, Haridwar, Nashik, Char Dham, The four holy sites Puri, Rameswaram, Dwarka, and Badrinath compose the Char Dham pilgrimage circuit. Kanwar Pilgrimage, The Kanwar is Indias largest annual religious pilgrimage, as part of this phenomenon, millions of participants gather sacred water from the Ganga and carry it across hundreds of miles to dispense as offerings in Śiva shrines
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Lannemezan
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Lannemezan is a commune in the Hautes-Pyrénées department and the Occitanie region in south-western France. Since 24 December 2003, Lannemezan has belonged to the Communauté de communes du Plateau de Lannemezan, since 1 January 2014, it belongs to the Communauté de communes du Plateau de Lannemezan et des Baïses, of which it is still the largest city. The Petite Baïse has its source in the commune, Lannemezan is around 30 kilometres east of Tarbes, and around 100 km south-west of Toulouse. Over 50 million years, driven by movements of compression, low relief which constitutes the Pre-Pyrenees has risen, glaciers and streams that cascade down its slopes subject to mountain erosion which flows off from the foot of it. High up and submitted to the four winds, the site already assigns itself an identity that would assist in its history, the soil is composed of uncultivated and barren land, dotted with woodlands, taillis, cut of marshes and heath. The terrain is of limestone origin with a topsoil up to 20 centimetres deep, peat moor is exploited near La Barthe-de-Neste. Analysis of the soil in the commune of Lannemezan shows the results presented in the following table, the plateau rises to over 600 metres above sea level in the vicinity of Lannemezan. The top of the face the Pyrenean part of the Neste Valley. Other rivers, flow radially from this point to the northwest, north and northeast, on the south side, this plateau is still connected to the Pyrenean massif by a narrow tongue of land between Izaux and Avezac. Otherwise, it ends to the southwest and the southeast by a steep overhang, the natural vegetation of Lannemezan and its small region is characterised by a heathland landscape, although moisture of soils is highly variable depending on their location. Thus, in wet areas near the rivers extend many bogs characterised by dwarf gorse, St. Johns wort marshes or wet meadows which extend Medusas trumpets, of oatgrass or alder. In drier areas grow more woody species such as Pyreneean oak, also known under the name of tauzin oak, in all cases, the soils are rather acidic type with adjustable humidity, which imposes certain constraints for the development of plant species. These development constraints are represented on the adjoining humidity/acidity chart, eighteen rivers have their sources on the Plateau de Lannemezan or pass through the territory of the commune. The main are listed in the following table, between the Atlantic and Mediterranean, at the outlet of the valleys of the Pyrenees, Lannemezan imposes itself as a privileged strategic its geographical position city. The minimum altitude is 442 metres, the altitude is 647 metres. The average elevation is 545 metres, and the Town Hall lies Meanwhile,580 metres, tarbes-Ossun weather station normals reveal a rather cool climate, rainy in winter and hot and stormy in summer. The average annual temperature is low for such latitude, with a fairly low seasonal amplitude,6 °C on average during the winter and 19 °C during the summer. However, the temperature has reached a record low of −21 °C in January 1985 and has also exceeded 39 °C in midsummer
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Cirque de Gavarnie
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The Cirque de Gavarnie is a cirque in the central Pyrenees, in south-western France, close to the border of Spain. It was described by Victor Hugo as the Colosseum of nature due to its enormous size and it is located within the commune of Gavarnie, the department of Hautes-Pyrénées, and the Pyrenees National Park. Major features of the cirque are La Brèche de Roland and the Gavarnie Falls, the cirque is 800 m wide and about 3,000 m wide at the top. The rock walls that surround it can be as high as 1,500 metres above the floor of the Cirque, during the warmer seasons of spring and fall, there are a number of large meltwater falls that spill into the cirque. The largest of these is Gavarnie Falls, the second highest waterfall in Europe and it descends some 422 metres over a series of steps before reaching the floor of the cirque. There are also several passes and clefts between the peaks form the rim of the Cirque. The largest is La Brèche de Roland, at 2,800 metres above sea level, legend says that its sheer walls were cut into the mountain by the sword of the hero Roland, nephew to Charlemagne. The cirque, and many others like it in the Pyrenees, was formed by the process of glacial erosion, the Cirque de Gavarnies uniquely immense size was likely caused by repeated cycles of glacial scraping over millions of years. A number of plants and animals live on the peaks at the upper rim of the Cirque de Gavarnie. Martagon lillies grow in the pine forests, saxifraga and other tiny alpine flowers cling to the rock faces. Chamois, a type of similar to goats or antelope. Cirque dEstaubé Pic de Marboré Natura 2000 map Gavarnie panoramas
