Beaupréau

Beaupréau lies in the Mauges country of western Anjou, a bocage of hedged farms, small ponds and woods, where the Èvre curves around the south and west of the town. A limestone statue of a woman wearing a torque, the so-called Lady of Beaupréau, shows that people lived here as early as the second century BC. The name appears in Latin as Bello-Pratellum in the eleventh century and means “beautiful meadow”.

In the Middle Ages the land belonged to a lordly family descended from a certain Josselin de Rennes, in the days when the Mauges were a march disputed among Brittany, Anjou and Poitou. Beaupréau later became the seat of a duchy, passing through the Montespedon, Scépeaux, Gondi, Cossé-Brissac and Villeroy families. During the Wars of Religion the town sided with the Catholic League against Henri IV, and in 1590 a soldier’s betrayal let League troops loot the castle and town. In March 1793 the Vendée army’s Division of Cholet and Beaupréau counted 9,000 men under d’Elbée, and republican and Vendéen troops fought in the town in April 1793 and February 1794. From 1804 to 1815 Beaupréau housed a school of arts and crafts.