Last modified: 2006-12-23 by ivan sache
Keywords: yvelines | rambouillet | fleurs-de-lis: 3 (yellow) | deer (red) | sheep (white) | tree (green) | crown: mural (white) |
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![[Flag of Rambouillet]](../images/f/fr-78-rb.gif)
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![[Flag of Rambouillet]](../images/f/fr-78-r1.gif)
Flag of Rambouillet, two reported designs - Images by Arnaud Leroy, 10 April 2004, and Ivan Sache, 13 March 2006, respectively
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The town of Rambouillet (25,000 inhabitants - Rambolitains) is a sous-préfecture of the department of Yvelines. Rambouillet developed around a castle located on the limit between the forest of Rambouillet and the grain-producing plain of Beauce. The castle of Rambouillet is an official residence of the President of the Republic since the end of the XIXth century and has welcomed several international celebrities invited to private or official meetings.
A chart dated 768 mentions a place named Rumbelitum. Another act, dated 1153, describes the village of Ranbolitum built near a castle. A church is known there since 1052-1053. In June 1230, clearings were organized in the old forest of Yveline, which extended all over the south of Paris. Most of the inhabitants of the early parish of Rambouillet lived from the forest: they were woodcutters, firewood gatherers or clog-makers. The name of Rambouillet might come from a brook named Rambe, located in the neighbouring village of Groussay. The Rambe was fed by the Rambeuil fountain, and Rambouillet might have meant "the place located near the brook Rambe".
In 1368, Jehan Bernier bought a small manor from Girard Tournebou, Prevost of Paris. Bernier was appointed souverain informateur des forêts et eaux du royaume by King Charles V. Bernier built the first modern castle of Rambouillet in 1375. In 1384, Regnault d'Angennes exchanged his domain for Rambouillet with Bernier. The Angennes family included regular members of the Royal court, whose celebrities often stayed in the castle of Rambouillet. On 31 March 1547, King François I passed away in the big tower of the castle, nicknamed since then François I's tower. Aged 52, the king felt death coming and moved from castle to castle near Paris. On his way back to Saint-Germain, he decided to stay in the castle owned by the Captain of his guard, Jacques d'Angennes. The d'Angennes revamped the castle in Renaissance style. Among the famous members of the family was Nicolas d'Angennes, appointed Vice-Roy of Poland and responsible of Henri III's crowning in Cracovia.
In the XVIIth century, the parish of Rambouillet had 800-900
inhabitants. In 1612, the domain became a Marquisate, granted to Julie
d'Angennes, daughter of Charles d'Angennes and Catherine de Vivonne
(1588-1665). Julie was the main attraction of her mother's salon, held
in the Hôtel de Rambouillet in Paris. The Rambouillet salon exerted a
great influence on the French language and literature. Most important
writers of the time, for instance Malherbe, Racan, Scudéry,
Bussy-Rabutin, madame de Lafayette, madame de Sévigné, Vaugelas and Tallemant des Réaux, were regular members of the salon. Corneille read
there his play Polyeucte for the first time. The born organizer of
the salon was the poet Voiture, who, aged 50, fought a duel because of
Julie's eyes. Moliere mocked at the précieuses and their weird way of speaking and
behaving in his play Les précieuses ridicules. For instance,
Catherine's "salon name" was Arthenice, an anagram of her first name.
However, the Rambouillet salon was the only one where women had such an
important role. After Voiture's death and Julie's marriage,
the Rambouillet salon extincted and was replaced by salons ruled by
madame de Sablé and mademoiselle de Scudéry, where the précieuses were really ridicules.
On 13 July 1645, Julie d'Angennes married Charles de Sainte-Maure, Duke de
Montausier. Between 1650 and 1660, the castle of Rambouillet was
completely revamped by architect François Le Vau. At the same time, the
city wall, which had been probably built during the Religion Wars, was
suppressed. Montausier also asked the river clearers Jean Roger and
Jacques Chavanne to build a canal and to transform the marshes into
ornemental ponds, following the principles of Jacques Boyceau de la
Barauderie. Jean-Baptiste de la Quintinie, Louis XIV's gardener,
worked also for Montausier.
Montausier died in 1690 and his succession was difficult. The owners of
the castle ran out of money and had to sell the domain to Jean-Baptiste
Fleuriau, appointed directeur des Finances by the king in 1701.
Fleuriau refurnished the castle and restructured the park.
In 1705, Fleuriau sold - or was forced to do so - his domain to Louis
XIV, who reallocated it to the Count de Toulouse, the legitimized sun
he had had with madame de Montespan. The Marquisate was transformed
into a Duchy-Pairy in 1711. The castle was once again refurbished by
the architects Lassurance in 1706-1709 and Legoux in 1730-1736. Wood
trim marked with the monogram of Marie-Victoire-Sophie de Noailles,
Countess de Toulouse, have remained famous. On 14 March 1731, the
Countess founded in Rambouillet a poor's hospital, ruled by the
brotherhood of the Daughters of Charity, set up by St. Vincent de Paul
in 1634.
In 1737, Duke de Penthièvre inherited the castle from his mother. The new chapel of the castle was consecrated on 6 September 1770. In 1779-1780, the English park was decorated with fabriques such as the Hermitage and the Shells' Pavilion, for the pleasure of Penthièvre's daughter-in-law, the Princess de Lamballe. The Princess was a close friend of Queen Marie-Antoinette. In 1790, she was slaughtered in Paris by the mob and her head was placed upon a peak and shown to the poor queen. King Louis XVI bought the castle on 29 December 1783, in spite of Penthièvre's oppposition. In 1785, he asked the painter and architect Hubert Robert to increase the picturesque character of the park, and a dairy was built for Marie-Antoinette. The village of Rambouillet was restructured, with the building of a new church, a government hotel and a new bailiwick, also used to keep grain, placed in the middle of the village by the architect Jacques-Jean Thévenin. The work ordered by Louis XVI required 900 men; some of them settled definitively in Rambouillet.
After the Revolution, the castle was property of the Bonaparte family and became one of Napoléon's personal residences. Architect Trepsat revamped the castle, which had been used as a grain warehouse during the Revolution. Trepsat suppressed the eastern wing of the castle. A project of increase by Auguste Famin, requiring the suppression of François I's tower, was fortunately never completed. Famin rebuilt the government hotel in Florentine style. At birth of Napoléon's son (L'Aiglon) in 1809, the new hotel was renamed pavillon du roi de Rome. In 1814, Empress Marie-Louise met in Rambouillet his father François II of Austria and accepted to follow him in Vienna with the roi de Rome. On 29 June 1815, Napolé, overthrown, spent the night in Rambouillet before leaving for St. Helena.
As related by Châteaubriand in his Mémoires d'Outre-Tombe, King
Charles X arrived in Rambouillet 1830 after having fled Saint-Cloud in insurrection. The king abdicated in the castle on 2 August 1830 and
fled to England. In 1832, the castle was removed from the civil list
and successively rented to Baron Schikler, Count Duchâtel, and
eventually to Dufour, which transformed it into a restaurant.
The railway linking Rambouillet to Paris was inaugurated by President
Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte in 1849. The castle was reincorporated to the
state domains by an Imperial Decree in 1870.
The early presidents of the Third Republic Mac Mahon, Grévy,
Casimir-Périer and Sadi-Carnot enjoyed hunting in the forest of Rambouillet but did not stay in the castle. In 1896, President Félix Faure decided that the castle of Rammbouillet would be the President's summer residence. A presidential lounge was set up in the railway station and the Ministers often came to Rambouillet by train for the Council of Ministers. Among his successors, presidents Loubet, Fallières, Poincaré, Doumergue, Lebrun and Coty stayed in the castle. On 12 November 1955, the popular Madame Coty passed away in the castle.
On 23 August 1944, General de Gaulle met Leclerc in the castle of Rambouillet and ordered him to march against Paris. The castle was
later used as a place for international meetings. De Gaulle welcomed
there Krushtshev in 1960, Pompidou received Brezhnev in 1973. In 1975, Giscard d'Estaing invited Gerald Ford, Harold Wilson, Aldo Moro, Takeo Miki, Pierre Elliot Trudeau and Helmut Schmidt for the
Rambouillet first G7 summit. On 29 October 1990, Mitterrand and Gorbatschow signed a treaty of alliance and cooperation. In February 1999, the
Rambouillet meeting attempted to find a negociated solution to the Kosovo conflict, to no avail.
The forest of Rambouillet, one of the remains of the old forest of Yveline, stretches over 20,000 hectares, 14,000 hectares of them being state-owned (forêt domaniale). The elevation of the forest is 110-180 m and its soil is mostly clayey, with some sandy parts. The most common trees in the forest are oaks (60%) and pines (30%). Beeches and birches are also present. The forest is very wet and rich in rivers and ponds, and therefore very rich in big game (deers, roe deers and wild boars). The forest of Rambouillet is a very popular place for hearing the deer's troat. It is also a popular place for hiking, biking, horse riding, mushroom picking and hunting (especially with hounds). The forest is famous for its star-shaped crossroads and long, rectilinear paths, as well as its old-fashioned "forestry houses" built during the Second Empire.
Louis XVI was mostly interested in hunting but he was also an
"agromaniac", and set up an experimental farm (grande ferme) in 1785
in Rambouillet. In 1786, upon request by the naturalist Daubenton,
Louis XVI purchased a herd of Spanish merinos sheep (318 ewes and 41
rams) from his cousin Charles III. Louis XVI also imported Swiss cows,
African sheep, angora goats and mouflons. Bonaparte imported Italian
buffalos and Belgian, Normand and Arab horses. The first Imperial
sheepfarm (Bergerie impériale) was built in 1804. The farm became
Royal (1815-1848) and again Imperial (1853-1870), and a second Imperial
sheepfarm was built under the Second Empire. In 1840, the Ile-de-France
sheep breed was created by breeding the races Merinos and Dishley. A
school for shepherds, open in 1794, was transformed into the National
College for Sheep Breeding in 1939. Another three colleges founded
after the Second World War were merged into the Centre d'Enseignement
Zootechnique in 1955.
Rambouillet was the main center of improvement of the merinos sheep.
From 1850 to 1930, the Rambouillet Merinos was used as stock for sheep
breeding in Australia, Latin America and Eastern Europe. The last
pure-bred merinos herd in the world (120 ewes and 25 rams, about the
70th generation) is kept in Rambouillet.
The Bergerie Nationale is open to public visits.
Sources:
Ivan Sache, 12 September 2004
The flag of Rambouillet, as communicated by the local Office
du Tourisme, is white with the municipal greater coat of arms in the middle.
The municipal coat of arms of Rambouillet is (GASO):
Parti : au premier de sable au demi-sautoir d'argent mouvant de la
partition, au second tiercé en fasce ; au I d'or au cerf contourné au
naturel, au II de gueules à l'agneau d'argent, au III d'argent à
l'arbre arraché de sinople ; sur le tout d'azur aux trois fleurs de lys
d'or et au bâton péri en barre de gueules.
Brian Timms gives a slightly different blazon:
Parti : au premier de sable au sautoir d'argent, au second tiercé en
fasce ; d'or au cerf contourné au naturel, de gueules au mouton au
naturel, et d'argent â l'arbre de sinople ; sur le tout d'azur à trois
fleurs de lys d'or brisé en coeur d'un bâton péri en barre de gueules (Per pale sable a saltire issuant from the sinister flank argent and
tierced per fess or a stag contourned proper gules a sheep proper and
argent a tree vert overall an inescutcheon azure a bendlet sinister
couped gules between three fleurs de lis or).
The first field of the shield recalls the arms of d'Angennes, the lords of
Rambouillet from 1384 to 1690, which were sable au sautoir d'argent
(sable a saltire argent). The escutcheon is the coat of arms of the
Count de Toulouse, the legitimized son of King Louis XIV, who was
granted the castle of Rambouillet in 1705. The lamb recalls the
Bergerie Nationale and its famous Merinos herd. The tree and the deer
recall the forest of Rambouillet, a former royal hunting domain.
On the greater arms, the shield is surrounded by two branches and
surmonted by a mural crown and a scroll bearing the Latin motto of the
city Semper erecta (Always high).
The 20th Rambouillet semi-marathon was ran on 12 March 2006. The stadium, the sports hall and the finish line were decorated with groups of three flags, made of two French national flags flanking a vertically divided green-white flag. Since there were quite a lot of these flags and since they do not feature the colours of the organizing club Rambouillet Olympique (red and white), I believe that these flags represented Rambouillet. It is probable that the municipality uses simpler, cheaper flags than the one presented above, using the colours of the town (probably green for the forest and white for the castle).
Ivan Sache, 13 March 2006