Fère-Champagne

Fère-Champagne is a common French, located in the department of the Marne and the area Champagne-Ardenne.

Geography

History

300 years before J. - C.: presence of Gallic tribes.

The discovery of the sites of two Cemetery S mérovingiens, located on both sides of Vaure, confirms that two franques tribes were established on this site in Ve and VIe centuries. Thriving, they met and gave a name in the agglomeration which they formed: Fara (Germanic word of origin meaning colony, family). During centuries, Fara will become Féria, then Féria Campaniensis (1131), Féria Campanica (1542), and finally Fère-Champagne.

the Middle Ages: Fère-Champagne is attached to the strongholds of various lords, among whom those of Anglure and Etoges. At the time of Charles V, the borough has a castle surrounded by fortifications which will disappear rather quickly. At that time, one builds also two churches: St-Timothée, mixture of the styles Romance and Gothic and St-Aignan, as well as a maladrery. From 1330 to 1450, it is the war of Hundred-Years. Féria undergoes slaughters, epidemics, food shortages, fires and plunderings. Wars of religion, then the Sling, add to this procession of miseries.

16th century: the church St-Timothée is increased and clearing. One builds a market where are held gone and assembled. At the end of XVIIe and beginning of the XVIIIe century, one “measures the grains there” and one controls there the manufacture of the “fabrics and lattice”. Fère is at the time an active city of 1600 inhabitants.

May 9th 1756: a fire devastates the near total of the borough (250 houses, the churches and the market are destroyed). The borough is rebuilt according to a plan which gives to the center a configuration close to that we know today with only one increased church (St-Timothée) and a vast market. The life begins again and prosperous Fère.

1814: the imperial troops, beating a retreat, pass by Fère-Champagne. The Cossacks put fire at the village and the united troops of the Emperor of Russia and the King of Prussia beat the Napoleonean army with Fère-Champagne. Fère is raised once again. 1830-34: the Market is surmounted by a stage and becomes Town hall. In spite of the epidemics (Cholera, Typhoid), the economy thrives: agriculture, craft industry, weaving, factories (brewery, hosiery, cheese dairy).
The trunk road “of Paris to the Lorraine” crosses the city as from 1835 as well as the railroad (1869). The city receives electricity in 1902. It grew rich by a superb town hall built of 1894 to 1900, by a school in 1884 and even by a company of firemen in 1852.

1914: in September, Fère-Champagne is in the center of the Bataille of the Marne which will stop the projection of the German troops. June 6th, 1940: the city undergoes heavy a Bombardement followed by a violent one Incendie who destroys 80 houses of the center. A 4 years occupation finishes on August 28th 1944. These two wars were worth at the city two quotations and two Military Crosses.

Administration

Demography

Places and monuments

Church Saint-Timothée

War memorial of Fère-Champagne, work of the sculptor Robert Delandre set up a little with the variation of the borough on the driving way with the military cemetery.

Personalities related to the commune

See too

Common of the Marne

External bonds

Fère-Champagne on the site of the national geographical Institute
Fère-Champagne on the site of INSEE
Fère-Champagne on the site of Quid
Localization of Fère-Champagne on a chart of France and communes bordering
Plane on Fère-Champagne on Mapquest

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