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When Eleanor of Aquitaine married Henri Plantagenet, Duke of Normandy (and, later, King Henry II of England) in 1152, she brought as her dowry vast areas of western France. Combined with her husband's existing lands in the north, this meant that half of France was into English hands.
The pretty Vendée village of Nieul-sur-l'Autise is thought to be the birthplace of Eleanor of Aquitaine. Nieul's Romanesque abbey, was the burial place of Eleanor's mother.
Eleanor's son Richard the Lionheart - Richard I of England - liked the Bas-Poitou (as theVendée was then known) and often based himself in the region, notably at Talmont, either for fighting or hunting. A century later the English king Edward III, grandson of king Philippe IV of France, made a claim to the French crown. The resulting Hundred Years' War betwen the two countries - sustained by England's Richard II, Henry IV and Henry V - turned much of north and western France into a battleground until 1453 when the French succeeded in winning back everything but the town of Calais.
A stone Plantagenet-style figure, left, in the Romanesque church of Angles is thought to be of Richard Coeur-de-Lion, or of his father Henry II of England.
Since the Vendée held a considerable number of influential Protestants, the region was also greatly marked by the 36-year Wars of Religion which broke out in 1562. Eventually the French king Henri IV, who had been brought up a Protestant and converted to Catholicism on his accession, granted freedom of worship to the Protestants in 1598, through the Edict of Nantes, and the Wars of Religion came to an end. (The Edict of Nantes was revoked in 1685, causing many Protestants to flee from France.)
Cardinal Richelieu (1585-1642) - one-time bishop of Luçon - who was chief minister to Louis XIII between 1624 and 1642, saw the need to unite the whole of France under one crown. To reduce the power of the provincial dukes and princes, he ordered the destruction of their strongholds, reducing such Vendean castles as Talmont, La Garnache, Les Essarts and Apremont to ruins.
Copyright Angela Bird. (Angela is author of the guidebook "The Vendée")
Extracted, with permission, from her website www.the-vendee.co.uk "
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