French Revolution
The French Revolution was a period of far-reaching social and political upheaval in France and its colonies beginning in 1789. The Revolution overthrew the monarchy, established a republic, catalyzed violent periods of political turmoil, culminated in a dictatorship under Napoleon who brought many of its principles to areas he conquered in Western Europe and beyond. Inspired by liberal and radical ideas, the Revolution profoundly altered the course of modern history, triggering the global decline of absolute monarchies while replacing them with republics and liberal democracies. Through the Revolutionary Wars, it unleashed a wave of global conflicts that extended from the Caribbean to the Middle East. Historians regard the Revolution as one of the most important events in human history; the causes of the French Revolution are still debated among historians. Following the Seven Years' War and the American Revolution, the French government was in debt, it attempted to restore its financial status through unpopular taxation schemes, which were regressive.
Leading up to the Revolution, years of bad harvests worsened by deregulation of the grain industry and environmental problems inflamed popular resentment of the privileges enjoyed by the aristocracy and the Catholic clergy of the established church. Some historians hold something similar to what Thomas Jefferson proclaimed: that France had "been awakened by our Revolution." Demands for change were formulated in terms of Enlightenment ideals and contributed to the convocation of the Estates General in May 1789. During the first year of the Revolution, members of the Third Estate took control, the Bastille was attacked in July, the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen was passed in August, the Women's March on Versailles forced the royal court back to Paris in October. 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 monarchy 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 shaped the course of the Revolution; the Revolutionary Wars beginning in 1792 featured French victories that facilitated the conquest of the Italian Peninsula, the Low Countries and most territories west of the Rhine – achievements that had eluded previous French governments for centuries. Internally, popular agitation radicalised the Revolution culminating in the rise of Maximilien Robespierre and the Jacobins; the dictatorship imposed by the Committee of Public Safety during the Reign of Terror, from 1793 until 1794, established price controls on food and other items, abolished slavery in French colonies abroad, de-established the Catholic church and created a secular Republican calendar, religious leaders were expelled, the borders of the new republic were secured from its enemies. After the Thermidorian Reaction, an executive council known as the Directory assumed control of the French state in 1795.
They suspended elections, repudiated debts, persecuted the Catholic clergy, made significant military conquests abroad. Dogged by charges of corruption, the Directory collapsed in a coup led by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1799. Napoleon, who became the hero of the Revolution through his popular military campaigns, established the Consulate and the First Empire, setting the stage for a wider array of global conflicts in the Napoleonic Wars; the modern era has unfolded in the shadow of the French Revolution. All future revolutionary movements looked back to the Revolution as their predecessor, its central phrases and cultural symbols, such as La Marseillaise and Liberté, fraternité, égalité, ou la mort, became the clarion call for other major upheavals in modern history, including the Russian Revolution over a century later. The values and institutions of the Revolution dominate French politics to this day; the Revolution resulted in the suppression of the feudal system, emancipation of the individual, a greater division of landed property, abolition of the privileges of noble birth, nominal establishment of equality among men.
The French Revolution differed from other revolutions in being not only national, for it intended to benefit all humanity. Globally, the Revolution accelerated the rise of democracies, it became the focal point for the development of most modern political ideologies, leading to the spread of liberalism, radicalism and secularism, among many others. The Revolution witnessed the birth of total war by organising the resources of France and the lives of its citizens towards the objective of military conquest; some of its central documents, such as the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, continued to inspire movements for abolitionism and universal suffrage in the next century. Historians have pointed to many events and factors within the Ancien Régime that led to the Revolution. Rising social and economic inequality, new political ideas emerging from the Enlightenment, economic mismanagement, environmental factors leading to agricultural failure, unmanageable national debt, political mismanagement on the part of King Louis XVI have all been cited as laying the groundwork for the Revolution.
Over the course of the 18th century, there emerged what the philosopher Jürgen Habermas called the idea of the "public sphere" in France and elsewhere
French Republican calendar
The French Republican calendar commonly called the French Revolutionary calendar, was a calendar created and implemented during the French Revolution, used by the French government for about 12 years from late 1793 to 1805, for 18 days by the Paris Commune in 1871. The revolutionary system was designed in part to remove all religious and royalist influences from the calendar, was part of a larger attempt at decimalisation in France, it was used in government records in France and other areas under French rule, including Belgium and parts of the Netherlands, Switzerland and Italy. Sylvain Maréchal, prominent anticlerical atheist, published the first edition of his Almanach des Honnêtes-gens in 1788. On pages 14–15 appears a calendar, consisting of twelve months; the first month is "Mars, ou Princeps", the last month is "Février, ou Duodécembre". The lengths of the months are the same as the lengths given them by Julius Caesar. Individual days were assigned, instead of to the traditional saints, to people noteworthy for secular achievements.
Editions of the almanac would switch to the Republican Calendar. The days of the French Revolution and Republic saw many efforts to sweep away various trappings of the ancien régime; the new Republican government sought to institute, among other reforms, a new social and legal system, a new system of weights and measures, a new calendar. Amid nostalgia for the ancient Roman Republic, the theories of the Enlightenment were at their peak, the devisers of the new systems looked to nature for their inspiration. Natural constants, multiples of ten, Latin as well as Ancient Greek derivations formed the fundamental blocks from which the new systems were built; the new calendar was created by a commission under the direction of the politician Charles-Gilbert Romme seconded by Claude Joseph Ferry and Charles-François Dupuis. They associated with their work the chemist Louis-Bernard Guyton de Morveau, the mathematician and astronomer Joseph-Louis Lagrange, the astronomer Joseph Jérôme Lefrançois de Lalande, the mathematician Gaspard Monge, the astronomer and naval geographer Alexandre Guy Pingré, the poet and playwright Fabre d'Églantine, who invented the names of the months, with the help of André Thouin, gardener at the Jardin des Plantes of the Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle in Paris.
As the rapporteur of the commission, Charles-Gilbert Romme presented the new calendar to the Jacobin-controlled National Convention on 23 September 1793, which adopted it on 24 October 1793 and extended it proleptically to its epoch of 22 September 1792. It is because of his position as rapporteur of the commission that the creation of the republican calendar is attributed to Romme; the calendar is named the "French Revolutionary Calendar" because it was created during the Revolution, but this is a slight misnomer. Indeed, there was a debate as to whether the calendar should celebrate the Great Revolution, which began in July 1789, or the Republic, established in 1792. Following 14 July 1789, papers and pamphlets started calling 1789 year I of Liberty and the following years II and III, it was in 1792, with the practical problem of dating financial transactions, that the legislative assembly was confronted with the problem of the calendar. The choice of epoch was either 1 January 1789 or 14 July 1789.
After some hesitation the assembly decided on 2 January 1792 that all official documents would use the "era of Liberty" and that the year IV of Liberty started on 1 January 1792. This usage was modified on 22 September 1792 when the Republic was proclaimed and the Convention decided that all public documents would be dated Year I of the French Republic; the decree of 2 January 1793 stipulated that the year II of the Republic began on 1 January 1793. The establishment of the Republic was used as the epochal date for the calendar. In France, it is known as the calendrier républicain as well as the calendrier révolutionnaire. French coins of the period used this calendar. Many show the year in Arabic numbers. Year 11 coins have a "XI" date to avoid confusion with the Roman "II"; the French Revolution is considered to have ended with the coup of 18 Brumaire, Year VIII, the coup d'état of Napoleon Bonaparte against the established constitutional regime of the Directoire. The Concordat of 1801 re-established the Roman Catholic Church as an official institution in France, although not as the state religion of France.
The concordat took effect from Easter Sunday, 28 Germinal, Year XI.
Subprefectures in France
In France, a subprefecture is the administrative center of a departmental arrondissement that does not contain the prefecture for its department. The term applies to the building that houses the administrative headquarters for an arrondissement; the civil servant in charge of a subprefecture is the subprefect, assisted by a general secretary. 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 general secretary to the prefect carries out duties equivalent to those of the subprefect; the municipal arrondissements of Paris and Marseille are divisions of the city rather than the prefecture, so are not arrondissements in the same sense. List of subprefectures of France List of arrondissements of France
Anglès, Tarn
Anglès is a commune in the Tarn department in southern France. The Thoré forms part of the commune's southern border. Communes of the Tarn department INSEE
Tarn (river)
The Tarn is a 381-kilometre long river in southern France, right tributary of the Garonne. The Tarn runs in a westerly direction, from its source at an elevation of 1,550 m on Mont Lozère in the Cévennes mountains, through the deep gorges and canyons of the Gorges du Tarn, to Moissac in Tarn-et-Garonne, where it joins the Garonne 4 km downstream from the centre of town, its basin covers 12,000 square kilometres, it has a mean flow of 140 cubic metres per second. The Millau Viaduct spans the valley of the Tarn near Millau, is now one of the area's most popular attractions; the tributaries of the Tarn include: Agout Alrance Aveyron Cernon Dourbie Dourdou de Camarès Jonte Lemboulas Lumensonesque Muze Rance Tarnon TescouThe Tarn separates the Narbonne and Aquitaine basins. The Tarn passes through the following departments and towns: Lozère: Le Pont-de-Montvert, Sainte-Enimie Aveyron: Millau Tarn: Albi, Lisle-sur-Tarn, Rabastens Haute-Garonne: Villemur-sur-Tarn Tarn-et-Garonne: Montauban, Moissac.
The Millau Viaduct, the tallest bridge in the world, carrying the A75 autoroute across the Tarn Gorge near Millau, opened in December 2004. The Tarn is famous for its brutal floodings, which are the most dangerous in Europe along with the Danube; the flooding of March 1930 saw the Tarn rise more than 17 metres above its normal level in Montauban in just 24 hours, with a discharge of 7,000 m³/s. One third of the Tarn-et-Garonne département was flooded, about 300 people died, thousands of houses were destroyed, the low districts of Montauban were destroyed, the town of Moissac was entirely destroyed; the Tarn was once navigable from its junction with the Garonne near Montauban. This stretch of river included seven river locks over a distance of 38 kilometres; the canal was linked to the Canal de Garonne in Moissac by a branch lock upstream of the first river lock, again, via the Canal de Montech, at Montauban. The two access points from the Canal de Garonne have both been restored, boats can again access the immediate reaches of the river at these points.
Additionally the first river lock, between Moissac and the Garonne itself, has been flooded by the barrage for the Golfech power station on the Garonne, is permanently open to boats which can thus reach the Garonne and navigate a short distance of that river. The remaining six river locks are unnavigable. A proposal exists to restore the five river locks between Moissac and Montauban, thus creating a waterway ring consisting of the Tarn from Moissac to Montauban, the Canal de Montech to Montech and the Canal de Garonne back to Moissac. Gorges du Tarn Tourism in Tarn http://www.geoportail.fr The Tarn at the Sandre database French Waterways - River Tarn Navigation guide to the lower 40 km. http://www.gorgesdutarn.net/?lang=en
Albi
Albi is a commune in southern France. It is the prefecture of the Tarn department, on the river Tarn, 85 km northeast of Toulouse, its inhabitants are called Albigensians. It is the seat of the Archbishop of Albi; the episcopal city, around the Cathedral Sainte-Cécile, was added to the UNESCO list of World Heritage Sites in 2010. Albi is the seat of four cantons, covering 16 communes, with a total population of 71,281; the first human settlement in Albi was in the Bronze Age. After the Roman conquest of Gaul in 51 BC, the town became Civitas Albigensium, the territory of the Albigeois, Albiga. Archaeological digs have not revealed any traces of Roman buildings, which seems to indicate that Albi was a modest Roman settlement. In 1040, Albi constructed the Pont Vieux. New quarters indicative of considerable urban growth; the city grew rich at this time, thanks to trade and commercial exchanges, to the tolls charged to travelers for using the Pont Vieux. In 1208, the Pope and the French king joined forces to combat the Cathars, who had developed their own version of ascetic Christian dualism, so a heresy considered dangerous by the dominant Catholic Church.
Repression was severe, many Cathars were burnt at the stake throughout the region. The area, until virtually independent, was reduced to such a condition that it was subsequently annexed by the French Crown. After the upheaval of the Albigensian Crusade against the Cathars, the bishop Bernard de Castanet, in the late 13th century, completed work on the Palais de la Berbie, a Bishops' Palace with the look of a fortress, he ordered the building of the cathedral of Sainte-Cécile starting in 1282. The town enjoyed a period of commercial prosperity due to the cultivation of Isatis Tinctoria known as woad; the fine houses built during the Renaissance bear witness to the vast fortunes amassed by the pastel merchants. Albi had a small Jewish community during medieval times, until it was annihilated in the 1320s Shepherds' Crusade. Since, Jews were only allowed to transit the town by payment, without living in it. In 1967 70 Jews lived in Albi, most of them of North-African origin. Albi has conserved its rich architectural heritage which encapsulates the various brilliant periods of its history.
Considerable improvement and restoration work has been done, to embellish the old quarters and to give them a new look, in which brick reigns supreme. Albi was built around the original episcopal group of buildings; this historic area covers 63 hectares. Red brick and tiles are the main feature of most of the edifices. Along with Toulouse and Montauban, Albi is one of the main cities built in Languedoc-style red brick. Among the buildings of the town is the Sainte Cécile cathedral, a masterpiece of the Southern Gothic style, built between the 13th and 15th centuries, it is characterised by a strong contrast between its austere, defensive exterior and its sumptuous interior decoration. Built as a statement of the Christian faith after the upheavals of the Cathar heresy, this gigantic brick structure was embellished over the centuries: the Dominique de Florence Doorway, the 78 m high bell tower, the Baldaquin over the entrance; the rood screen is a filigree work in stone in the Flamboyant Gothic style.
It is decorated with a magnificent group of polychrome statuary carved by artists from the Burgundian workshops of Cluny and comprising over 200 statues, which have retained their original colours. Older than the Palais des Papes in Avignon, the Palais de la Berbie the Bishops' Palace of Albi, now the Toulouse-Lautrec Museum, is one of the oldest and best-preserved castles in France; this imposing fortress was completed at the end of the 13th century. Its name comes from the Occitan word Bisbia; the Old Bridge is still in use after a millennium. Built in stone clad with brick, it rests on eight arches and is 151 m long. In the 14th century, it was fortified and reinforced with a drawbridge, houses were built on the piers. Albi is a city known for its elite Lycée Lapérouse, a high school with 500 students situated inside an old monastery, it has several advanced literature classes. Furthermore, it is one of the few holding a full-scale music section with special high-tech rooms for this section.
The Pacific explorer Jean-François de Galaup, comte de Lapérouse is commemorated in the museum. Located in an ancient mill, the Le LAIT Art Centre is a research laboratory dedicated to contemporary art; the Toulouse-Lautrec Museum houses more than 1000 works, including the 31 famous posters. This body of work forms the largest public collection in the world devoted to Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, born in Albi in 1864. UNESCO's World Heritage Centre notes the Old Bridge, the Saint-Salvi quarter, the quarter's church, the fortified cathedral in unique southern French Gothic style from local brick, the bishop's Palais de la Berbie, residential quarters, which help the Episcopal City of Albi form a "coherent and homogeneous ensemble of monuments and quarters that has remained unchanged over the centuries... a complete built ensemble representative of a type of urban development in Europe from the Middle Ages to the present day." Albi is served by two railway stations on the line from Toulouse to Rodez: Gare d'Albi-Ville Gare d'Albi-MadeleineThe A68 motorway connects Albi with Toulouse.
SC Albi – The city's rugby union team competing in the second-level Rugby Pro D2. RC Albi – A rugby league team that compete in the Elite One Championship. Albi
Roman Catholic Diocese of Saint-Pons-de-Thomières
The former French Catholic diocese of Saint-Pons-de-Thomières existed from 1317 until the French Revolution. Its see at Saint-Pons-de-Thomières. There was the Abbey of St-Pons, founded in 936 by Raymond, Count of Toulouse, who brought there the monks of St-Géraud d'Aurillac. By the Concordat of 1801, the territory of the diocese was added to that of the archdiocese of Montpellier. In the summer of 1317 Pope John XXII began a major reform of the diocesan structure of the Church in the Midi of France, with a view to combatting the Albigensian heresy; the extensive diocese of Toulouse was separated out into five additional dioceses, with Toulouse as the Metropolitan. Clermont had the diocese of Saint-Flour carved out of its territory. Albi had Castres separated out. Périgueux was divided for the new diocese of Sarlat. Poitiers lost Maillezais. Rodez was divided and Vabres created. Limoges had the diocese of Tulle carved out. Agen was split to created Condom. Narbonne was divided up to create Alet and Saint-Pons-de-Thomières, with Narbonne as the Metropolitan.
The diocese was small, containing around fifty parishes, scattered around a territory, completely rural. There were only two monasteries in the diocese, the Benedictine abbey of Saint-Chignan, the Premonstratensian abbey of Fontcaude. There was a convent of Récollets. In 1713 the episcopal seat of Saint-Pons contained some 2000 inhabitants, a number which had not increased by 1770; as at Maillezais and Alet Saint-Pons was founded where there was a monastery with a large church available to be used as a cathedral. The abbot of the monastery was named the first Bishop, the monks of the monastery were named the Canons of the Cathedral Chapter. At Saint-Pons, the last Abbot of Saint-Pons-de-Thomières, Pierre Roger, became the first bishop of the diocese of Saint-Pons-de-Thomières. In the new Chapter, there was an Aumonier, a Precentor and eleven other Canons. There was a Theologus, however, did not enjoy the status of a Canon; the Archdeacon was installed by the Bishop. The Canons were appointed by the Bishop.
In 1567 Saint-Pons-de-Thomières was attacked by the Huguenots under the leadership of the Vicomte de Saint-Amans, the cathedral was profaned. The attached monastery was reduced to rubble; the convent of women in the suburb of Saint-Magdelaine was attacked, though they managed to escape, the buildings were destroyed by the Huguenots. In 1790 the diocese was suppressed by the National Constituent Assembly of the French government in the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, it was one of more than fifty dioceses in France. The Constituent Assembly intended that the Church should be brought under control of the State, therefore it proclaimed that ecclesiastical dioceses should have the same territorial boundaries as the new eighty-three civil'départements' which had just been created. Priests and bishops were to be salaried officials of the State, elected by the'electors' of their parish or diocese; the territory of Saint-Pons was subsumed into the new'departement' and the new diocese of Hérault, with its headquarters at Montpellier, in the'Metropole des Côtes de la Méditerranée'.
The Bishop of Saint-Pons was redundant, rather than continue as a priest by taking the oath to the Civil Constitution, Bishop Louis-Henri de Bruyére de Chalabre fled the country. On 27 February 1791 the electors of the diocese of Hérault met and elected as their bishop Father Dominique Pouderous, curé of the church of Saint-Pons-de-Thomières, consecrated a'Constitutional Bishop' in Paris on 3 April 1791. Bishop Pouderous was unwelcome in Montpellier and had to take up residence in Béziers. During the Terror, Pouderous took refuge in Saint-Pons-de-Thomières, while most of his clergy resigned their functions. Back in Béziers, he died on 10 April 1799. A new bishop, Alexandre-Victor Rouanet, was elected in April and consecrated in November 1799, he too had been a priest of Saint-Pons-de-Thomières, after the Concordat of 1801, when his services were no longer wanted, he retired to Saint-Pons-de-Thomières, where he died unrepentant in 1821. After the signing of the Concordat of 1801 with First Consul Napoleon Bonaparte, the diocese of Saint-Pons de Thomières was not revived, but abolished by Pope Pius VII in his bull Qui Christi Domini of 29 November 1801.
Catholic Church in France List of Catholic dioceses in Pius Bonifatius. Series episcoporum Ecclesiae catholicae: quotquot innotuerunt a beato Petro apostolo. Ratisbon: Typis et Sumptibus Georgii Josephi Manz. pp. 622-623. Eubel, Conradus. Hierarchia catholica, Tomus 1. Münster: Libreria Regensbergiana. CS1 maint: Extra text: authors list p. 301. Eubel, Conradus. Hierarchia catholica, Tomus 2. Münster: Libreria Regensbergiana. CS1 maint: Extra text: authors list p. 175. Eubel, Conradus. Hierarchia catholica, Tomus 3. Münster: Libreria Regensbergiana. CS1 maint: Extra text: authors list Gauchat, Patritius. Hierarchia catholica IV. Münster: Libraria Regensbergiana. Retrieved 2016-07-06. P. 219. Ritzler, Remigius. Hierarchia catholica medii et recentis aevi V. Patavii: Messagero di S. Antonio. Retrieved 2016-07-06. Ritzler, Remigius. Hierarchia catholica medii et recentis aevi V
