Angoulême

Angoulême crowns a rocky plateau above the Charente, with the river port of L'Houmeau below, created in 1280, where the navigable stretch of the Charente to the sea begins. The Romanesque cathedral of Saint-Pierre stands on the plateau, and the Touvre, a strong spring-fed river joining the Charente, powered the paper mills that came to the town in the sixteenth century.

The Treaty of Brétigny put Angoulême and the Angoumois into English hands in 1360; Charles V's troops expelled the English in 1372. The county went to Louis of Orléans in 1394 and then to his son Jean, who returned from English captivity and enlarged the count's castle. Jean's grandchildren Marguerite, later Queen of Navarre, and Francis I were born in the Angoumois, and Francis raised the county to a duchy in 1515. In 1619 Marie de' Medici, escaping from Blois, took refuge in the city with the Duke of Épernon, governor of the Angoumois, who had rebuilt its ramparts.