Mortagne

Mortagne-au-Perche stands on a height in the rolling country of the Perche, a market town whose churches and old streets reflect its role as a regional centre. Its position brought together the farms and villages of the surrounding hills. In the seventeenth century Mortagne became one of the centres of a remarkable movement across the Atlantic. Robert Giffard recruited settlers from the Perche for New France, and families from Mortagne joined the voyages to the St Lawrence valley, carrying the names and skills of their home country to a distant colony.