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Vendee Coast, France

July 10, 2013 by · Comments Off on Vendee Coast, France 

Vendee Coast, France, The Vendée (French pronunciation: ​[vɑ̃.de]) is a department in the Pays-de-la-Loire region in west-central France, on the Atlantic Ocean. The name Vendée is taken from the Vendée river which runs through the southeastern part of the department.

The area today called the Vendée was originally known as the Bas-Poitou and is part of the former province of Poitou. In the southeast corner, the village of Nieul-sur-l’Autise is believed to be the birthplace of Eleanor of Aquitaine (1122-1204). Eleanor’s son, Richard I of England (the Lionheart) often had his base in Talmont. The Hundred Years’ War (1337-1453) turned much of the Vendée into a battleground.

Since the Vendée held a considerable number of influential Protestants, including control by Jeanne d’Albret, the region was greatly affected by the French Wars of Religion which broke out in 1562 and continued until 1598. Eventually King Henri IV issued the Edict of Nantes and the Wars came to an end. The revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685 caused many Huguenots to flee from the Vendée.

It is also remembered as the place where the peasants revolted against the Revolutionary government in 1793. They resented the harsh conditions imposed on the Roman Catholic Church by the provisions of the Civil Constitution of the Clergy act (1790) and broke into open revolt after the Revolutionary government’s imposition of military conscription. A guerrilla war, known as the Revolt in the Vendée, led at the outset by peasants who were chosen in each locale, cost more than 240,000 lives before it ended in 1796 (190,000 Vendeans who were republicans or royalists and 50,000 non-Vendean republican soldiers; according to the Jacques Hussenet and Centre Vendéen de Recherche Historique’s book “Détruisez la Vendée”). The Revolt in the Vendée must not be confused with the revolt of the Chouans, which took place at the same time in Maine and Bretagne.

In 1815, when Napoleon escaped exile on Elba for his Hundred Days, the Vendée refused to recognise him and stayed loyal to King Louis XVIII. General Lamarque led 10,000 men into the Vendée to pacify the region. A failed rebellion in the Vendée in 1832 in support of Caroline Ferdinande Louise, duchesse de Berry, the former King Charles X’s widowed daughter-in-law, was an unsuccessful attempt to restore the Legitimist Bourbon dynasty during the reign of the Orléanist monarch, King Louis Philippe of the French (1830-1848).

Madame Veuve Clicquot-Ponsardin

December 4, 2012 by · Comments Off on Madame Veuve Clicquot-Ponsardin 

Madame Veuve Clicquot-Ponsardin, Madame Clicquot, née Ponsardin, Widow Clicquot or Veuve Clicquot (16 December 1777 – 29 July 1866), known as the “Grand Dame of Champagne”, was a French businesswoman who took on her husband’s wine business when widowed at 27. Under her ownership, and her skill with wine, the company developed early champagne using a novel technique. The brand and company of Veuve Clicquot Ponsardin still bears her name.

Barbe-Nicole Ponsardin, born 16 December 1777 in Reims, was the daughter of a wealthy father, Ponce Jean Nicolas Philippe Ponsardin (from 1813, Baron Ponsardin), a textile manufacturer and politician. Her mother was Jeanne Josephe Marie-Clémentine Letertre Huart.

She married François Clicquot at the age of 21. Her husband died six years later. Her husband’s death may have been suicide, but it was attributed to typhoid. In her own right, Madame was wealthy by virtue of her very well connected family. Napoleon and Josephine had both stayed at her father’s hotel. Her father was made mayor of Rheims by Napoleon’s decree.

Her champagne today
Her husband François died in 1805, leaving his widow (veuve in French) in control of a company variously involved in banking, wool trading, and champagne production. Under Madame Clicquot’s control, the house focused entirely on champagne, and thrived using funds supplied by her father-in-law. Under her management and her skill with wine, the company developed early champagne using a novel technique called riddling. Prior to this invention the second fermentation of wine to create champagne resulted in a very sweet wine with large bubbles and sediment from the remains of the yeast used in the fermentation in the bottle (which creates the bubbles in the wine) resulting in a cloudy wine.

Windward Islands

January 3, 2012 by · Comments Off on Windward Islands 

Windward IslandsWindward Islands, The Windward Islands are called such because they were more windward to sailing ships arriving in the New World than the Leeward Islands, given that the prevailing trade winds in the West Indies blow east to west. The trans-Atlantic currents and winds that provided the fastest route across the ocean brought these ships to the rough dividing line between the Windward and Leeward islands. Vessels in the Atlantic slave trade departing from the African Gold Coast and Gulf of Guinea would first encounter the southeasternmost islands of the Lesser Antilles in their west-northwesterly heading to final destinations in the Caribbean and North and Central America. The chain of islands form a part of the easternmost boundary of the Caribbean Sea.

The Antillean Windward Islands from north to south are:

Dominica
Martinique (an overseas department of France)
Saint Lucia
Saint Vincent
Grenadines
Grenada

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