The Duchy of Berry (French pronunciation:[beʁi]ⓘ; Occitan: Barric; Latin: Bituria) was a former province located in central France. It was a province of France until departments replaced the provinces on 4 March 1790, when Berry became divided between the départements of Cher (Upper Berry) and Indre (Lower Berry).
In later times, the writer George Sand spent much of her life at her Berry estate in Nohant, and Berry's landscape and specific culture figure in much of Sand's writings.
The Duchy was governed by the Duke/Duchess of Berry, who after 1601 was a senior member of the French royal family. The title of 'Duke of Berry' was by this period divested of territorial significance, and instead held by princes of the royal house, the last of which was Charles Ferdinand d'Artois.[1]
In c.750, the Counties of Berry and Bourges were created by the King of the Franks. In 843, the County of Berry became part of the Royal domain or crown lands controlled by the king. From 878 to 892, the county was part of the County of Auvergne, but became independent once more in 893. In 972, the County of Bourges was reduced to a Viscounty as the Viscomte de Bourges, and in 1101 was annexed by France. In 1360, the county was raised to a duchy as the Duchy of Berry. In 1221, the Seigneuries of Châteauroux and Issoudun were annexed into the duchy.[1][2]
The first governor of the province appears to have been appointed on 14 March 1698, when Adrien Maurice de Noailles, Duke of Noailles became military governor when he was only 19 years old.[2]
In 1778, Louis XVI convened the provincial assemblies of Berry, and considered expanding the assembly to other provinces, but abandoned this idea after experiencing the opposition of the privileged classes in Berry.[3]
In 1790, when the former provinces were dissolved, the Duchy of Berry was split between two departments: Cher in Upper (eastern) Berry and Indre in Lower (western) Berry. Some communes also became part of the Allier, Creuse, Loiret, and Loir-et-Cher departments as well.[1]
Governors
The governors of French provinces during the Ancien Régime were typically military commanders and provided military oversight in the region. This included recruitment, movement of troops, and – if needed – dealing with civil disobedience. Below is a list of the governors of Berry during its time as a province.[2]
In October 1360, the title 'Duke of Berry' was created by King John II of France for his third-born son, John of Poitiers. The duke was followed by several members of the senior royal family, establishing a tradition of the duke being a member of the House of Valois. In 1505 however, the last Duchess of Berry Joan of France died of natural causes and the title was merged into the royal domain. In 1527, the title was re-created for Marguerite de Navarre until the title was once again dissolved in 1601 following the death of Duchess Louise of Lorraine.
In 1686, King Louis XIV re-created the title for his third grandson Charles de Bourbon, however the title was dissolved following the death of the Duke in 1714. In 1754, Louis XV re-created the title for his grandson Louis-Auguste de Bourbon (later King Louis XVI), who dropped the title in 1765 when he became Dauphin. In 1778, Louis XVI once again re-created the title for his nephew Charles Ferdinand, Duke of Berry. In 1820, the title was finally dissolved once more when the last duke was assassinated.
While Berry was a province, the Duke of Berry was de jure leader of the area. The dukes included:
The name of Berry, like that of its capital, Bourges, originated with the Gaulish tribe of the Bituriges,[4] who settled in the area before the Roman armies of Julius Caesar conquered Gaul. The name of the tribe gave name to the region, often mentioned in Medieval Latin sources as: Bituria.
Brenne
La Brenne, located west of Châteauroux and east of Tournon-Saint-Martin in the Indre department, is a region which of old straddled on the former provinces of Berry and Touraine, and is now a protected natural area (Parc naturel régional de la Brenne) as well called Pays des mille étangs, because of its many ponds created since the 8th c. by the monks of the local abbeys for pisciculture.
↑ Peter Kropotkin (1909). "Chapter 5". The Great French Revolution, 1789-1793. Translated by N. F. Dryhurst. New York: Vanguard Printings. The weapon used by Louis XVI, in preference to all others was deceit. Only fear made him yield, and, using always the same weapons, deceit and hypocrisy, he resisted not only up to 1789, but even up to the last moment, to the very foot of tile scaffold. At any rate, in 1778, at a time when it was already evident to all minds of more or less perspicacity, as it was to Turgot and Necker, that the absolute power of the King had had its day, and that the hour had come for replacing it by some kind of national representation, Louis XVI could never be brought to make any but the feeblest concessions. He convened the provincial assemblies of the provinces of Berri and Haute-Guienne (1778 and 1779). But in face of the opposition shown by the privileged classes, the plan of extending these assemblies to the other provinces was abandoned, and Necker was dismissed in 1781.
↑ Compare: Miroglio, Abel; Miroglio, Yvonne-Delphée, eds. (1978). "Berrichons". L'Europe et ses Populations[Europe and its peoples] (in French). The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff (published 2012). p.157. ISBN9789400997318. Retrieved 31 December 2017. [...] en fait, Berry vient de Bituriges; ainsi se nommaient les ancêtres gaulois des Berrichons. Le premier nom de Bourges fut Bituricum.
Louis XVIII, known as the Desired, was King of France from 1814 to 1824, except for a brief interruption during the Hundred Days in 1815. Before his reign, he spent 23 years in exile from France beginning in 1791, during the French Revolution and the First French Empire.
Charles X was King of France from 16 September 1824 until 2 August 1830. An uncle of the uncrowned Louis XVII and younger brother of reigning kings Louis XVI and Louis XVIII, he supported the latter in exile. After the Bourbon Restoration in 1814, Charles became the leader of the ultra-royalists, a radical monarchist faction within the French court that affirmed absolute monarchy by divine right and opposed the constitutional monarchy concessions towards liberals and the guarantees of civil liberties granted by the Charter of 1814. Charles gained influence within the French court after the assassination of his son Charles Ferdinand, Duke of Berry, in 1820 and succeeded his brother Louis XVIII in 1824.
Cher is a department in central France, part of the Centre-Val de Loire region. Named after the river Cher, its prefecture is Bourges. In 2019, it had a population of 302,306.
Bourges is a commune in central France on the river Yèvre. It is the capital of the department of Cher, and also was the capital city of the former province of Berry.
Guyenne or Guienne was an old French province which corresponded roughly to the Roman province of Aquitania Secunda and the Catholic archdiocese of Bordeaux.
Loir-et-Cher is a department in the Centre-Val de Loire region of France. Its name is originated from two rivers which cross it, the Loir in its northern part and the Cher in its southern part. Its prefecture is Blois. The INSEE and La Poste gave it the number 41. It had a population of 329,470 in 2019.
Indre ; is a department in central France named after the river Indre. The inhabitants of the department are known as the Indriens and Indriennes. Indre is part of the current administrative region of Centre-Val de Loire. The region is bordered by the departments of Indre-et-Loire to the west, Loir-et-Cher to the north, Cher to the east, Creuse and Haute-Vienne to the south, and Vienne to the southwest. The préfecture (capital) is Châteauroux and there are three subpréfectures at Le Blanc, La Châtre and Issoudun. It had a population of 219,316 in 2019. It also contains the geographic centre of Metropolitan France.
The following is a list of the 241 communes of the Indre department of France.
An appanage, or apanage, is the grant of an estate, title, office or other thing of value to a younger child of a monarch, who would otherwise have no inheritance under the system of primogeniture. It was common in much of Europe.
Duke of Berry or Duchess of Berry was a title in the Peerage of France. The Duchy of Berry, centred on Bourges, was originally created as an appanage for junior members of the French royal family and was frequently granted to female royals. The style "Duke of Berry" was later granted by several Bourbon monarchs to their grandsons. The last official Duke of Berry was Charles Ferdinand of Artois, son of Charles X. The title Duke of Berry is currently being claimed through its usage as a courtesy title by Prince Alphonse de Bourbon, son of Prince Louis, Duke of Anjou, the Legitimist claimant to the French Throne.
Fils de France was the style and rank held by the sons of the kings and dauphins of France. A daughter was known as a fille de France.
The Duchy of Orléanais is a former province of France, which was created during the Renaissance by merging four former counties and towns. However after the French Revolution, the province was dissolved in 1791 and succeeded by five départments.
Louis Jean Marie de Bourbon was the son of Louis Alexandre de Bourbon and his wife Marie Victoire de Noailles. He was therefore a grandson of Louis XIV of France and his mistress, Madame de Montespan. From birth he was known as the Duke of Penthièvre. He also possessed the following titles: Prince of Lamballe ; Prince of Carignano; Duke of Rambouillet; Duke of Aumale (1775); Duke of Gisors; Duke of Châteauvillain; Duke of Arc-en-Barrois; Duke of Amboise; Count of Eu; Count of Guingamp. He was the father in law of Philippe Égalité.
Charles of France, Duke of Berry, was a grandson of Louis XIV of France. Although he was only a grandson of Louis XIV, Berry held the rank of fils de France, rather than petit-fils de France, as the son of the Dauphin, heir apparent to the throne. The Duke of Berry was for seven years (1700–1707) heir presumptive to the throne of Spain, until his elder brother Philip V of Spain fathered a son in 1707.
Pierre-Louis Jean Casimir, Count of Blacas d'Aulps, later created 1st Duke of Blacas (1821), was a French antiquarian, nobleman and diplomat during the Bourbon Restoration.
The Canal de Berry is a disused canal in France which links the Canal latéral à la Loire at Marseilles-lès-Aubigny with the Cher at Noyers rejoining the Loire near Tours. With a branch from Montluçon it provided 261 kilometres (162 mi) of canal with locks 2.7 metres (8.9 ft) wide from 1840 until its closure in 1955. There is now a 15 kilometres (9.3 mi) long operational segment with five locks between Selles-sur-Cher and Noyers-sur-Cher.
The crown lands, crown estate, royal domain or domaine royal of France were the lands, fiefs and rights directly possessed by the kings of France. While the term eventually came to refer to a territorial unit, the royal domain originally referred to the network of "castles, villages and estates, forests, towns, religious houses and bishoprics, and the rights of justice, tolls and taxes" effectively held by the king or under his domination. In terms of territory, before the reign of Henry IV, the domaine royal did not encompass the entirety of the territory of the kingdom of France and for much of the Middle Ages significant portions of the kingdom were the direct possessions of other feudal lords.
The Berrichon du Cher is a French breed of domestic sheep. It is one of two breeds derived from the old Berrichon of the Berry region of central France, the other being the Berrichon de l'Indre. The Berrichon derived from the Boischaut, Brenne, Champagne and Crevat breeds, all of which are now considered to be extinct. Images of the Berrichon from the sixteenth century show a horned long-woolled sheep; by the eighteenth century the Berrichon was polled and had wool of Merino type. In the nineteenth century some breeders crossbred the Berrichon with British breeds such as the Cotswold, Dishley Leicester, Romney and Southdown with the aim of improving its meat qualities; there was also some intromission from the Charmoise. The Berrichon du Cher derives from these crosses.
The Duchy of Orléanais is a former royal duchy, which was created during reign of Hugh Capet by elevating the former County of Orléans. In 1498, as part of a centralisation of France under Louis XII, the duchy was dissolved and replaced by the Province of Orléanais which was informally still known as the 'Duchy of Orléanais'.
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