La Rochelle

La Rochelle grew on the Atlantic coast from a fishing and salt-making settlement into the Templars' largest Atlantic base and one of the main ports of western France. Its first mayor, Guillaume de Montmirail, was elected in 1199. The towers of Saint-Nicolas, the Chain and the Lantern guarded its harbour, and the salt and wine of the surrounding country went north in its ships. The Treaty of Brétigny passed the town to England in 1360, and in June 1372 it expelled the English after a naval battle in which a Castilian fleet defeated the English off the harbour.

Calvinism spread through the town from the 1550s, and from 1568 La Rochelle became the Huguenots' stronghold, running itself almost as an independent republic. It endured a siege in 1572–73. After revolts in 1622 and 1625, Louis XIII and Richelieu besieged it from 1627. They built a great dyke across the bay to keep out the English fleet, and starvation forced the surrender on 28 October 1628; the crown stripped La Rochelle of its mayor and privileges, which Louis XV restored only in 1718. Many Huguenots fled after the Revocation of 1685, and some founded New Rochelle near New York in 1688. The port revived through its trade with New France and the Caribbean.