Tourriers.—A small village with ruined château, and a church of the twelfth and fifteenth centuries.
Poitiers is the historic capital of Poitou, a province of France, which, together with all the country between the Loire and the Pyrenees, was declared in the Treaty of Bretigny to belong to England as late as the year 1360, when Normandy had been an integral part of France for more than 150 years. The sovereignty of Edward III. being maintained by force of arms only, it was inevitable that his advancing age and the illness of the Black Prince should foreshadow the early loss of such unwieldy possessions. By 1372, when Bertrand du Guesclin, the Breton hero, had been made Constable of France, the English were rapidly losing their hold. In 1377 both Edward III. and his son were dead, and the whole of the country south of the Loire had returned to its natural rulers.
The situation of Poitiers on an extensive tabular area of rock occupying a bend of the Clain, and defended on the open side by the little River Boivre, is one that made it of immense importance in early times; and yet, unlike Périgueux, the town does not group itself into any romantic outlines from a distance. It is the individual buildings which make the charm of the town, and of these the chief are ecclesiastic. The Romanesque churches of Poitiers are, indeed, a magnet, which makes it difficult to drag oneself away. A few of the main events in the early history of the place may be mentioned before dealing with the architectural relics individually.
History.—Christianity was brought to Poitiers in the third century, and thoroughly established by St. Hilaire, a champion for Catholicism against Arianism.
732. Abderahman, leader of the Saracens, took the suburbs of Poitiers, burnt St. Hilaire, but was repulsed by the city. The Battle of Tours (or Poitiers, as it is called in France) was followed by the retreat of the Saracens, as described in the previous chapter. Poitou (with its capital, Poitiers) was joined to Aquitaine under the Carolingians, and came under the dominion of England by the marriage of Eleanor of Aquitaine with Henry II. Eleanor often resided at Poitiers, and died, at an advanced age, at the Abbey of Beaulieu, near Loches.
1206. John of England ceded Poitiers to Philippe Auguste at the end of the three years’ war, in which he lost nearly the whole of the English possessions in France.
1356. The famous Battle of Poitiers, in which King Jean le Bon was captured by the Black Prince and sent to London in captivity.
1369-77. Poitou regained by Bertrand du Guesclin, Constable of France.
1429. Jeanne d’Arc sent there by Charles VII. to undergo a solemn examination, from which she came out victorious.
