Poitou was a
province of west-central
France whose capital city was
Poitiers.
The region of Poitou was called
Thifalia (or Theiphalia) in the sixth century.
There is a
marshland called the
Poitevin Marsh (French
Marais Poitevin) on the
Gulf of Poitou, on the west coast of France, just north of
La Rochelle and west of
Niort.
Many of the
Acadians who settled in what is now
Nova Scotia beginning in 1604 and later to
New Brunswick, came from the region of Poitou. After the Acadians were
deported by the
British beginning in 1755, a number of Acadians eventually took refuge in Poitou and in
Québec. A large portion of these
refugees also migrated to
Louisiana in 1785 and following years became known as Cajuns (see
Cajuns).
Perhaps paradoxically, during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries Poitou had been a hotbed of
Huguenot (French Calvinist) activity among the nobility and bourgeoisie and was severely impacted by the
French Wars of Religion (1562-1598).
Post revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, a strong counter-reformation effort was made by the French Roman Catholic Church, this in part was subsequently in 1793 responsible for the three year long open revolt against the French Revolutionary Government in the Bas-Poitou (Département of
Vendée). Indeed during Napoleon’s Hundred Days in 1815, the Vendée stayed loyal to the Restoration Monarchy of King Louis XVIII and Napoleon was forced to send 10,000 troops under General Lamarque to pacify the region.
As noted by Lampert, "The persistent Huguenots of 17th Century Poitou and the fiercely Catholic rebellious Royalists of what came be the Vendée of the late 18th Century had ideologies very different, indeed diametrically opposed to each other. The common thread connecting both phenomena is a continuing assertion of a local identity and opposition to the central government in Paris, whatever its composition and identity. (...) In the region where
Louis XIII and
Louis XIV had encountered stiff resistance, the
House of Bourbon gained loyal and militant supporters exactly when it had been overthrown and when a Bourbon loyalty came to imply a local loyalty in opposition to the new central government, that of
Robespierre.
Poitou Donkeys
The
Baudet de Poitou is a distinctive and rare breed of
donkey associated with the region.
In Fiction
- Large parts of the "Angelique" series of historical novels take place in 17th Century Poitou.
See also
- Poitevin, the French regional language spoken in Poitou (Saintongeais is for Saintonge).
