For the saint of this name, see Saint Drogo.
 Please help improve this article by expanding it. Further information might be found on the talk page. (May 2007)

Coordinates: 48°44′14″N 1°21′59″E / 48.737222°N 01.366389°E / 48.737222; 01.366389

Commune of Dreux
Dreux village St Pierre.jpg
Saint-Pierre Church in Dreux
Location
Dreux is located in France
Dreux
Administration
Country France
Region Centre
Department Eure-et-Loir
Arrondissement Dreux
Intercommunality Drouais
Mayor Gérard Hamel
(2001–2008)
Statistics
Elevation 75–139 m (246–456 ft)
Land area1 24.27 km2 (9.37 sq mi)
Population2 31,849  (1999)
 - Density 1,312 /km2 (3,400 /sq mi)
Miscellaneous
INSEE/Postal code 28134/ 28100
1 French Land Register data, which excludes lakes, ponds, glaciers > 1 km² (0.386 sq mi or 247 acres) and river estuaries.
2 Population sans doubles comptes: residents of multiple communes (e.g., students and military personnel) only counted once.

Dreux is a town and commune in northwest France, in the Eure-et-Loir département.

Contents

[edit] Politics

Dreux came to national attention, in 1983, when the National Front (Front National) party made its first electoral breakthrough, winning control of the city council and deputy mayorship. This came at a time of rising unemployment and popular resentment directed at the visible and impoverished community of immigrants, many of whom were Muslims. Françoise Gaspard, the former Socialist mayor who had lost the election to the National Front, later wrote a book, Une petite ville en France(A Small Town in France)

[1], about her experience and the times.

[edit] History

In the Middle Ages, Dreux was the centre of the Comté de Dreux. The first comte de Dreux was Robert, the son of King Louis the Fat. The first large battle of the French Wars of Religion occurred at Dreux, on December 19, 1562, resulting in a hard-fought victory for the Catholic forces of the duc de Montmorency.

[edit] Chapelle royale de Dreux

The House of Bourbon-Penthièvre was one of the greatest land owning families in France before the French Revolution. In 1775, the lands of the comté de Dreux had been given to the duc de Penthièvre by his cousin Louis XVI. In 1783, the duke sold his domain of Rambouillet to Louis XVI. On November 25 of that year, in a long religious procession, Penthièvre transferred the nine caskets containing the remains of his parents, the comte and comtesse de Toulouse, his wife, Marie Thérèse Félicité d'Este, princesse de Modène, and six of their seven children, from the small medieval village church next to the castle in Rambouillet, to the chapel of the Collégiale Saint-Étienne de Dreux[2]. The duc de Penthièvre died in March 1793 and his body was laid to rest in the crypt beside his parents. On November 21 of that same year, in the midst of the French Revolution, a mob desecrated the crypt and threw the ten bodies in a mass grave in the Chanoines cemetery of the Collégiale Saint-Étienne. In 1816, the duc de Penthièvre's daughter, the duchesse d'Orléans, had a new chapel built on the site of the mass grave of the Chanoines cemetery, as the final resting place for her family. In 1830, Louis-Philippe I, King of the French, son of the duchesse d'Orléans, embellished the chapel which was renamed Chapelle royale de Dreux, now the necropolis of the Orléans royal family.

[edit] Heraldry

Arms of Dreux

The arms of Dreux are blazoned :
Chequey Or and azure.

[edit] Births

Dreux was the birthplace of:

[edit] Twin towns

Dreux is twinned with:

[edit] External links

[edit] References

  1. ^ Françoise Gaspard, Une petite ville en France, Gallimard, collection "Au vif du sujet", Paris, 1990, ISBN 2070721574
  2. ^ G. Lenotre, Le Château de Rambouillet, six siècles d'histoire, Calmann-Lévy, Paris, 1930, reprint: Denoël, Paris, 1984, (215 pages), chapter 5: Le prince des pauvres, pp. 78-79
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