History History

In Gironde, the Pair-Non-Pair cave, located in the commune of Prignac-et-Marcamps, is one of the most remarkable traces of the Upper Paleolithic. Discovered in 1881 by archaeologist François Daleau, this ornate cave is the only prehistoric site in the department that can be visited. The discovery of over 15,000 tools and animal bone remains has shown that the site was occupied between 80,000 and 18,000 years ago.

Traces of the Upper Palaeolithic can also be seen in the Landes region, more specifically in the small village of Brassempouy. A fragment of an ivory statuette depicting a human face was discovered in the Grotte du Pape.

This period marks the appearance of agriculture in Aquitaine. The development of pottery (for food) and animal husbandry are two other considerable advances.

Trade, agriculture, iron and bronze craftsmanship and pottery were part of the daily life of the people of the time. Numerous remains have been found which bear witness to daily life and in particular funeral rites. In 1973, a mysterious wooden post was found in Soulac-sur-Mer. The object turned out to be an anthropomorphic funerary pole dated 450 BC.

For seven years Julius Caesar led a series of military campaigns against several Gallic tribes. In 56 B.C., Lieutenant Crassus entered Gaul with 6,000 men and seized the territory within a few weeks. Burdigala (Bordeaux) gradually became the capital of the province of Aquitaine. The region acquired roads and various structures that still partially benefited the Aquitans. Until the barbarian invasions at the beginning of the^5th century, the region experienced a period of peace, linked in particular to the wine trade.

Created by Emperor Augustus, Aquitaine Gaul was one of the three Roman provinces, along with Belgium and Lyonnais.

Numerous Gallo-Roman remains can be seen today on the Aquitaine coast. In Gironde, ancient ruins can be seen in Bourg and even Bordeaux. In the Landes region, Dax also bears the marks of history, with the remains of a Gallo-Roman enclosure. At Sordes-l'Abbaye, the remains of a Gallo-Roman villa have been preserved. Dating from the ^4th century, it includes thermal baths and mosaics.

Gallic tribes settled in the Gironde region. The Bituriges Vivisques settled in Bordeaux, the Vasates in the Bazadais and the Boïates in the Buch region. All profited from the tin trade between the Mediterranean and the Atlantic.

With the reform of the Roman Emperor Diocletian, Aquitaine Gaul is composed of three parts: Aquitaine first at the level of the Massif Central and Berry, Aquitaine second on the coast (Bordeaux, Charentes and Poitou) and the Novempopulanie between the Garonne and the Pyrenees.

Gaul is ravaged by barbarian invasions. Aquitaine seconde and Novempopulanie are invaded by the Visigoths in 406. By seizing Rome, the king of the Visigoths^, Alaric I, brought down the Western Roman Empire.

It was at the Battle of Vouillé, near Poitiers, that the Visigoth and Frankish armies clashed. They were led by King Clovis, who had already been leading military expeditions to the south for several years. The Visigoths lost part of their territory, stretching from the Loire to the Pyrenees.

Charlemagne made Aquitaine a kingdom for his son Louis the Debonair. The territory then extended from the Rhône to the Atlantic.

Aquitaine was divided into two territories: the Duchy of Aquitaine (later renamed Guyenne) and the Duchy of Gascony. The Duchy of Aquitaine was the object of all manner of covetousness, and was at the center of confrontations during the Hundred Years' War.

This period, the turn of a new millennium, was relatively peaceful. Cultivation intensified, and monks built churches, abbeys and reception facilities, notably on the route to Santiago de Compostela, to welcome pilgrims.

Eleanor of Aquitaine was one of the most influential figures in the Western world at the time. She was the daughter of Duke William X, who died making her his sole heir. Left under the protection of King Louis VI of France, she was married off to his son Louis VII in order to regain the dukedom. Louis VI died shortly after the wedding, and Eleanor became Queen of France. Unfortunately, misunderstanding reigned between the spouses and no male heir was born. The queen was repudiated in 1152.

Repudiated by the King of France, Eleanor immediately married Henry II Plantagenet, Count of Anjou and heir to the King of England. She gave him the vast province of Aquitaine as a dowry. A landmark event in the history of Aquitaine, Eleanor's divorce and remarriage in 1152 made the South-West a province attached to the Crown of England for three centuries, until 1453, at the end of the Hundred Years' War.

It was during the English period that the region's bastides were built. They were created in many towns on the Aquitaine coast and elsewhere. In the ^13th century, their military function gradually gave way to a commercial one. This change was intended to encourage exchanges between populations. In the early Middle Ages, towns had no specific organization. The bastide, on the other hand, was a space built around a central square used for trade. It was here that fairs and markets were held. The bastide forms a sort of checkerboard with straight streets. There are more than 300 bastide towns in France, many of them in the Landes (Geaune, Grenade-sur-l'Adour, Saint-Justin), Gironde (Blasimon, Cadillac-sur-Garonne, Créon, Libourne, Monségur, Pellegrue, Sainte-Foy-la-Grande) and Pyrénées-Atlantiques (Sauveterre-de-Guyenne, Labastide-Clairence, Aïnhoa)

The rivalry between the crowns of France and England led to the Hundred Years' War. It was in the Gironde at Castillon-la-Bataille that the kingdom of France recovered Aquitaine. The victory of Charles VII allowed the duchy to be reintegrated into the crown of France.

The Hundred Years' War was barely over, trade barely restored, when the Wars of Religion arrived, pitting Catholics against Protestants. After 25 years of Catholic domination, Henri of Navarre won his first victory at Coutras in 1587. The Catholic army of King Henri III of France was defeated flatly. To seal the peace, Henri of Navarre, the future Henri IV, organised a grandiose funeral the next day in Libourne.

In parallel to these conflicts, Michel de Montaigne became mayor of Bordeaux and tried to maintain his city's neutrality. A politician and man of letters, Montaigne remains one of the strongest symbols of the ^16th-century Bordeaux hotbed of learning and culture. Montaigne was accompanied by such luminaries as Etienne de La Boétie.

In November 1615, King Louis XIII married Anne of Austria, infanta of Spain, in the Cathedral of Saint-André in Bordeaux, on the decision of her mother Marie de Medici. The couple had to leave under escort to warn the Huguenots (the Protestants of the Kingdom of France), who criticized the king's policies. Later, Louis XIII returned to the region and took cities such as Nérac, Coutras, Bergerac and Bordeaux.

Mazarin, who has a war against the Austrians in mind, proclaims a new tax levy. This time, the parliament of Bordeaux is against it. He leads the Fronde. This is a testimony to the fight against royal absolutism. Bordeaux saw the birth of a revolutionary government, the Army, led by the Prince de Condé. The city proclaimed itself an autonomous republic. Finally, the Viscount of Turenne restored the king's authority in Paris and caused Bordeaux to capitulate in 1653. The submission of the city is considered to be the event that ended the troubles.

The Treaty of the Pyrenees puts an end to the Franco-Spanish war after 24 years of conflict. Signed in the Basque Country, on the Pheasant Island on the Bidasoa River, on the Spanish border, it links Roussillon to France.

To seal the conflict, the Treaty of the Pyrenees stipulated the union of the two crowns. Louis XIV married the Spanish infanta Maria Theresa. The royal wedding took place in Saint-Jean-de-Luz.

The citadel of Blaye is built. At the instigation of Vauban, architect and marshal of Louis XIV, military fortresses were built. Fort Paté and Fort Médoc were designed by Vauban to guard the estuary. A little earlier, in 1680, he had built the fortification of Bayonne.

Bordeaux was at its peak. The great fortunes gathered in Parliament embarked on the manufacture and marketing of grands crus, over 50% of which were exported to England. Trade with the West Indies, via the African coast where slave traders bought their supplies, also enriched the region. The Grand-Théâtre, the mansions of the Triangle d'Or and Chartrons districts, the first wine châteaux and Bordeaux's Place Royale (today's Place de la Bourse) were all built during this prosperous period.

The fixing of the dunes by the implantation of pine trees in the Landes is done under the impulse of Brémontier.

The effects of the Paris revolution were soon felt on the Aquitaine coast. Peasants revolted against the lords, burning their castles. During the Revolution, the Gironde paid a heavy price for republican ideas and many Gironde deputies perished on the scaffold.

Ten years after the French Revolution, Napoleon Bonaparte seized power in a coup d'état, then crowned himself emperor in 1804. Napoleon's troops passed through Bayonne in 1808. The emperor set out to impose his brother on the Spanish throne. Between 1812 and 1814, the Sixth Coalition War was fought between the United Kingdom, the Russian Empire, Sweden and the Austrian Empire against Napoleon's France. In 1814, the English army crossed the Pyrenees and took Bordeaux. They were the first to proclaim Napoleon's deposition. This war was also marked by the siege of Bayonne, invaded by the Marquis of Wellington at the head of the British army. The siege was lifted when Napoleon ^I abdicated. As with everything to do with a historical figure as important as the Emperor Napoleon ^I (reigning from 1804 to 1814, and for a few months in 1815), local memory preserves and distorts small, anecdotal traces of the great story. Here Napoleon may have passed, here he (almost) ate, here again he (almost) slept. Not easy to find your way around! Napoleon passed through Gironde at least three times in 1808, always in connection with the terrible Spanish War, one of the main causes of his final downfall. On April 4, 1808, he took up residence at the Palais Rohan, then the residence of the archbishops, in Bordeaux. The second leg of the journey took place four months later from Bordeaux La Bastide to Saint-André-de-Cubzac, stopping for a short night in Etauliers after a brief stopover in Saint-Vivien-de-Blaye. Third time's a charm, and the emperor made his final stop on October 31, 1808, on his way from Rambouillet to join his armies in Spain.

The Second Empire was a prosperous period for the seaside resorts. As early as 1852, Empress Eugénie made Biarritz a holiday resort. The wife of Napoleon III thus transformed the town into an important Second Empire resort. In 1857, it was the turn of Arcachon, which was detached from La Teste to become a seaside resort by imperial decree.

The Paris Exposition Universelle brought international recognition to Bordeaux wines. Napoleon III had asked each wine-producing region to establish a classification. In the end, only the regional classification was adopted. Bordeaux's grands crus are now known the world over.

Then Minister of the Interior, Léon Gambetta installed a temporary government in Tours, then in Bordeaux, which temporarily became the capital of France. The National Assembly met at the Grand Théâtre in Bordeaux.

To avoid being affected by the devastating effects of the war, the chemical, aeronautical, arms and textile industries were transferred to the Southwest.

At the beginning of the war, the government withdrew to Bordeaux. The city becomes, for a time, the new capital of France. During the war, the region was shared by the demarcation line. It was finally occupied by enemy troops from 1942 onwards. There were two internment camps on the Aquitaine coast: one in Mérignac and the second in Gurs in the Basque Country.

The end of the 1960s was marked by a major transformation of the city of Bordeaux with the construction of the Saint-Jean Bridge (1965) and the Aquitaine Bridge (1967). Jacques Chaban-Delmas, nicknamed "Chaban", was Mayor of Bordeaux from 1947 to 1995 and^Prime Minister from 1969 to 1972.

The Pilgrim's Way to Santiago de Compostela becomes a UNESCO World Heritage Site, as does the medieval town of Saint-Emilion (1999). The region develops its tourist appeal and its image of good food and good living.

In July and August 2022, the Gironde region experienced historic fires known as the "fires of the century", with the giant Landiras and La Teste-de-Buch fires. In all, more than 32,000 hectares of the Landes de Gascogne massif went up in smoke. Landiras is the^2nd largest fire in recent French history, behind the Landes forest fire of 1949.

From the 2000s onwards, the region developed considerably, particularly in terms of tourism. In this respect, the construction of the High Speed Line between Paris and Bordeaux in 2017 has greatly changed the region. The two cities are now just two hours apart. A new stage will be reached with the extension, in the coming years, of the LGV line to Toulouse (1h05 from Bordeaux and 3h10 from Paris), then to Mont-de-Marsan, Dax, Bayonne and finally to the Spanish border.