Champagne

Champagne, historical and cultural region encompassing the present-day northeastern French département of Marne and parts of Ardennes, Meuse, Haute-Marne, Aube, Yonne, Seine-et-Marne, and Aisne départements. The region is coextensive with the former province of Champagne, which was bounded on the north by the bishopric of Liège and by Luxembourg, on the east by Lorraine, on the south by Burgundy, and on the west by Île-de-France and by Picardy. Historical Champagne is also coextensive with the modern-day région of Champagne-Ardenne.

The name of Champagne is probably derived from the Latin Campania (“Land of Plains”); mentions of Campania appear in chronicles from the early 6th century ce. The area of the province of Champagne was first formed into a political unit in the 10th century with the union of the counties of Troyes and Meaux under the house of Vermandois. The count of Blois and Chartres acquired Champagne in the early 11th century. For the next 100 years Champagne was dependent on Blois and was split among members of the house of Blois. In 1125, Thibaut IV became Thibaut II the Great of Champagne, reuniting the counties. The wide extent of their holdings made Thibaut and his successors major feudal lords, and it was during the 12th and 13th centuries that Champagne reached its apogee. The counts of Champagne were a real threat to the kings of France because their lands encircled the royal domain, and the counts alternately strove to dominate the kings or to free themselves from royal control. Thibaut II was frequently at odds with Louis VI and Louis VII. The conflict ended in 1284 when Joan of Navarre and Champagne, heiress to the county, married the future king of France, Philip IV. When Joan’s son became King Louis X in 1314, Champagne was united to the crown of France.

In the 12th and 13th centuries, Champagne became the site of commercial fairs at the crossing of roads from Flanders, Germany, Italy, and Provence. There were six great fairs in Champagne, each of which lasted 49 days: one at the town of Lagny, one at Bar-sur-Aube, two at Provins, and two at Troyes. These fairs, at which northern cloth was exchanged for spices, dyes, and precious objects from Mediterranean lands, made Champagne the commercial and financial centre of Europe for a time. Transactions by merchants at the fairs were often made through letters that promised payment at a future fair and that were transferable to another person. Such transactions were the beginnings of the use of credit, and by the 13th century the fairs served as a regular banking centre for Europe. By the end of the 14th century, however, the fairs had declined in importance. Commerce was diverted from the region by the growth of new trade routes and because of political disruption in Champagne stemming from the Hundred Years’ War (1337–1453).

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In the first half of the 16th century, the territories of the former county were merged with the extensive former domains of the bishops of Reims, Chalons, and Langres to form the military gouvernement of Champagne. Economically, Champagne prospered because of the textile industries of Reims and Troyes, the metallurgy of Saint-Dizier, and the region’s great vineyards. Along with the other traditional French provinces, Champagne was abolished as a separate entity in 1790.

As a frontier region, Champagne has been invaded whenever France is attacked from the east—from Louis XIV’s wars with the Habsburgs to the Battle of Valmy (1792) and thence to World War I, when the Marne River valley was fiercely contested by France and Germany for almost the entire duration of the war (1914–18).

Champagne consists mostly of flat plains interrupted by low hills and by the valley of the Marne River. Much of its population is of Celtic origin, and the region’s name is popularly thought to derive from the Celtic kann pan, “the white country,” after the chalk exposures seen everywhere and the limestone escarpments (or côtes) that mark the eastern margin of the region. The region itself is traditionally divided into two parts, the Dry (Pouilleuse) Champagne in the west and the Wet (Humide) in the east. Traditionally, in the Dry Champagne crops could be raised easily only in the river valleys, the areas between them being restricted to pasturage and fodder crops. The Wet Champagne, in contrast, could be farmed almost everywhere. Today, however, agriculture in the Dry Champagne has been transformed, being both highly mechanized and productive. The main crops include cereals, sugar beets, and alfalfa (lucerne). Throughout Champagne large modern farms predominate and are linked to an important food-processing industry. The region gave its name to the most famous type of wine produced from its extensive vineyards.