Surgères

Surgères () is a commune in the Charente-Maritime department, southwestern France. It is the home of the Surgères 48 Hour Race.

History

Middle ages

The site of Surgères was occupied in Neolithic times, but the earliest recorded history comes from the Middle Ages. The Duke of Aquitaine wanted to guard his lands in Aunis against Norman invasion, so he built a stone and wood defence on the marshes, a bridgehead against the invaders which was known as la, Castrum Surgeriacum, links=no. At the end of the 10th century, the Counts of Poitiers started to acquire power in Aunis and appointed Guillaume Maingot to take charge of the fortress and part of the lands around it.

In the 12th century this defence had become a small city, whose lords entertained the grandees of the parliament of Saintonge. During this time a large castle was built on the ramparts, as was the Romanesque church of Notre-Dame. In 1152 Eleanor of Aquitaine married Henry II of England, thus putting her lands including Surgères into English hands.

Coming back under French rule with Saint Louis IX of France, the English took the town in a surprise raid in 1332 during the Hundred Years' War.

Renaissance and modern times (up to the French Revolution)

The history of Surgères is equally marked by Hélène de Fonsèque (1546 – 1618), Pierre de Ronsard's muse, whose beauty he celebrated in his Sonnets pour Hélène. Queen Catherine de' Medici encouraged the affair between the fifty-year-old Ronsard and the beautiful Hélène, so that she could be part of the royal court as one of the ladies-in-waiting.

Hélène was the daughter of Louis de Clermont and Roderic de Fonsèque, a Spanish family from Monterey. She married Philippe de Barbezières.

Surgères regained some prosperity during the 16th century before the French Wars of Religion. A coveted stronghold, it was occupied by Calvinists and then by Catholic troops after the fall of La Rochelle in 1628, when Cardinal Richelieu knocked down its ramparts.

19th and 20th centuries

After the French Revolution of 1789, life in this little village became feudal with the domination of a rural bourgeoisie who took, as in all of France, a good deal of the lands of the Dukes of Rochefoucauld-Doudeauville, later Lords of Surgères.

Winemaking and the distillery contributed to a "Golden Age" for the town, but phylloxera brought it to an end in 1878. Afterwards, the dairy college (, "National College of Dairy and Agricultural Food Industries") contributed to the revival of Surgères.

In 1850 Surgères absorbed part of the old commune of Saint-Pierre-de-Surgères, the other part being reattached to the neighbouring commune of Saint-Germain-de-Marencennes