Angers

Angers stands on the Maine, the capital of Anjou, whose counts had once ruled England as the Plantagenets. After Philip Augustus took Anjou for the French crown in 1203, Louis IX raised the great castle above the Maine in the thirteenth century. A faculty of law was established in 1337, the beginning of the University of Angers, and four faculties of law, medicine, theology and arts were fully in place by 1432. In 1360 the county became a duchy for Louis I, who levied a toll on goods crossing the duchy to keep up the city's fortifications.

The "good King René", born in 1409, held Anjou as duke from 1434 and was also Count of Provence and King of Naples. In 1474 Louis XI marched into Angers under the pretext of a courtesy visit, put a garrison into the castle, and the old king yielded the duchy without a fight. In 1585, during the Wars of Religion, Catholics and Protestants both fought for the castle, and Henry III ordered it razed; the towers were beheaded, but the demolition stopped.