Cambrai Totally Explained

Everything about Cambrai totally explained

Cambrai (Dutch: Kamerijk; old spelling Cambray) is a French town and commune, in the Nord département, of which it's a sous-préfecture.
Cambrai is the seat of an archdiocese whose jurisdiction was immense during the Middle Ages. The territory of the Bishopric of Cambrai, roughly coinciding with the shire of Brabant, included the central part of the Low Countries. The bishopric had some limited secular power.
The Battle of Cambrai (20 November - 3 December 1917), a campaign of World War I took place there. It was noted for the first successful use of tanks. A second Battle of Cambrai took place between 8 October - 10 October 1918 as part of the Hundred Days Offensive.

History

Roman times

Little is known with certainty of the beginnings of Cambrai. Camaracum or Camaraco, as it was known to the Romans, is mentioned for the first time on the Peutinger table in the middle of the 4th century. It was a town of the Nervii, whose "capital" was at Bagacum, present-day Bavay.
   In the middle of the 4th century Frankish raids from the north led the Romans to build forts along the Cologne to Bavay to Cambrai road, and thence to Boulogne. Cambrai thus occupied an important strategic position. In the early 5th century the town had become the administrative centre of the Nervii in replacement of Bavay which was probably too exposed to the Franks' raids and perhaps too damaged. Christianity arrived in the region at about the same time. A bishop of the Nervii by the name of Superior is mentioned in the middle of the 4th century, but nothing else is known about him.
   In 430 the Salian Franks under the command of Clodio the Long-Haired took the town. In the early 6th century Clovis undertook to unify the Frankish kingdoms by getting rid of his relatives. One of them was Ragnacharius, who ruled over a small kingdom from Cambrai.
   In 870 the town was destroyed by the Normans.

Early Middle Ages

Cambrai began to grow from a rural market into a real city during the Merovingian times, a long period of peace when the bishoprics of Arras and Cambrai were first unified (probably owing to the small number of clerics left at the time) and were later transferred to Cambrai, an administrative centre for the region. Successive bishops, including Gaugericus (in French Géry), founded abbeys and churches to host relics, which contributed powerfully to giving Cambrai both the appearance and functions of a city.
   When the treaty of Verdun (843) split Charlemagne's empire into three parts the county of Cambrai fell into Lothaire's kingdom. However on the death of Lothair II, who had no heir, king Charles the Bald tried to gain control of his kingdom by having himself sacred at Metz. Cambrai thus reverted, but only briefly, to the Western Frankish Realm. By 925 Henry the Fowler had regained control of Lothair's former domains. Cambrai henceforth belonged to the Holy Roman Empire, in an uncomfortable position on the border with France, until it was annexed by France eight centuries later after being captured by Louis XIV in 1677.
   In the Middle-Ages the region around Cambrai, called Cambrésis, was a county. Rivalries between the count, who ruled the city and county, and the bishop, ceased when in 948 Otto I granted the bishop with temporal powers over the city. In 1007 emperor Henry II, Holy Roman Emperor, extended the bishop's temporal power to the territory surrounding Cambrai. The bishops then had both spiritual and temporal powers. This made Cambrai and Cambrésis a church principality, much like Liège, an independent state which was part of the Holy Roman Empire.
   In 958 one of the first communes in Europe was established in Cambrai. The inhabitants rebelled against the bishop's power and abuses. They were severely repressed, but the discontent flared up again in the 10th and 11th centuries. In 1226, following another period of unrest, the burghers of Cambrai finally had to give up their charters and accept the bishop's authority, while retaining some freedom in the running of the town.

Prosperity in the Middle Ages

Economic activity

In the Middle-Ages the city grew richer and larger thanks to its weaving industry which produced woollen cloth, linen and cambric. Cambrai then belonged to a commercial hansa of seventeen low country cities whose aim was to develop trade with the fairs in Champagne and Paris. By the 11th century the city walls had reached the circumference they'd keep until the 19th century.

Music history

Cambrai has a distinguished musical history, particularly in the 15th century. The cathedral there, a musical center until the 17th century, had one of the most active musical establishments in the Low Countries; many composers of the Burgundian School either grew up and learned their craft there, or returned to teach. In 1428 Philippe de Luxembourg claimed that the cathedral was the finest in all of Christianity, for the fineness of its singing, its light, and the sweetness of its bells. Guillaume Dufay, the most famous European musician of the 15th century, studied at the cathedral from 1409 to 1412, and returned in 1439 after spending many years in Italy. Cambrai cathedral had other famous composers in the later 15th century: Johannes Tinctoris and Ockeghem went to Cambrai to study with Dufay. Other composers included Nicolas Grenon, Alexander Agricola, and Jacob Obrecht. In the 16th century, Philippe de Monte, Johannes Lupi, and Jacobus de Kerle all worked there.

Hundred Year's War

Even though the bishop tried to preserve the independance of his small state of Cambrésis, the task wasn't easy, wedged as the county was between its more powerful neighbours the counts of Flanders, of Hainaut and the kings of France, especially during the Hundred Years' War. In 1339, in the early stages of the war, the English king Edward III laid siege to the city but eventually had to withdraw. By the 14th century the county was surrounded on all parts by Burgundy's possessions and John of Burgundy, an illegitimate son of John the Fearless, was made bishop. However what looked like an impending annexation of Cambrésis to the states of Burgundy was made impossible by the sudden death of Charles the Bold in 1477. Louis XI immediately seized the opportunity to take control of Cambrai, but left the city a year later.

The legend of Martin and Martine

Martin and Martine are two legendary characters who have come to represent the city which they're said to have saved. There are different versions of the story. The most commonly accepted version runs as follows: around the year 1370, at the time of Bishop Robert, Count of Geneva, Martin, a blacksmith of Moorish descent established in Cambrai, was among the burghers who left the city to fight the lord of Thun-Lévêque, who was then reputed to ransom the population around the city and generally to afflict the region. Martin, armed only with his heavy iron hammer, soon came face to face with the enemy. He dealt such a heavy blow on his opponent's head that, although the helmet of the lord didn't break, because it was made of good steel, it was driven down to hisd eyes. Dazed and blinded, the lord of Thun quickly surrendered. Today the automatons of Martin and Martine, standing at the top of the town hall, strike the hours with a hammer as a reminder of that mighty blow.

The Renaissance and classical age

As the economic centre of northern Europe moved away from Bruges, the area became poorer, with an associated period of cultural decline. However the city's neutrality and its position between the possessions of the Habsburg Empire and France made it the venue of several international negotiations, including the League of Cambrai, an alliance engineered in 1508 by Pope Julius II against the Republic of Venice. The alliance collapsed in 1510 when the Pope allied with Venice against his former ally France. The conflict is also referred to as the War of the League of Cambrai and lasted from 1508 to 1516. Cambrai was also the site of negotiations in 1529 that led to France's withdrawal from the War of the League of Cognac.
   In 1543 Cambrai was conquered by Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, and annexed to his already vast possessions. He had the medieval monastery of Saint-Sépulchre demolished and a citadel built in its place.
   In 1623, the community of nuns of the English Benedictine Congregation was founded at Cambrai, which was expelled during the French Revolution and its successor community has since 1838 been established at Stanbrook Abbey, near Malvern.
   In 1677, Louis XIV, in an effort to "safeguard the tranquility of his borders for ever" ("assurer à jamais le repos de ses frontières"), decided to take Cambrai and supervised the siege in person. The city was taken on April 19 1677. By the Treaty of Nijmegen of 1678 Spain relinquished Cambrai, which has remained to this day a part of France.
   The first archbishop appointed by the king of France was François Fénelon. He came to be known as the "swan of Cambrai" ("le cygne de Cambrai"), in opposition to his rival Bossuet, the "eagle of Meaux" ("l'aigle de Meaux"), and he wrote his Maxims of the Saints while residing in the city.

The French Revolution

The city suffered from the Revolution: Joseph Le Bon, sent by the Comité de salut public, arrived in Cambrai in 1794. He was to set up an era of "terror", sending many to the guillotine, until he was tried and executed in 1795. Most of the religious buildings of the city were demolished in that period: in 1797, the cathedral, which had been dubbed the "wonder of the low countries", was sold to a merchant who exploited it as a stone quarry. Only the main tower was left standing by 1809, when it collapsed in a storm. However the cathedral's archives have been preserved (they are now at the Archives Départmentales du Nord in Lille).

Demographics

Evolution of the population of Cambrai from 1794 to 2005
(2005 : estimate) (Sources : INSEE - CassiniEHESS

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LineData = layer:front at:1870 color:red width:0.5 at:1871 color:red width:0.5 at:1914 color:red width:0.5 at:1918 color:red width:0.5 at:1940 color:red width:0.5 at:1945 color:red width:0.5 at:1973 color:red width:0.5 points:(52,82)(70,75) color:blue width:1 #1794: 15427 points:(70,75)(88,82) color:blue width:1 #1800: 13799 points:(88,82)(130,83) color:blue width:1 #1806: 15608 points:(130,83)(163,91) color:blue width:1 #1820: 15851 points:(163,91)(178,91) color:blue width:1 #1831: 17646 points:(178,91)(193,101) color:blue width:1 #1836: 17846 points:(193,101)(208,103) color:blue width:1 #1841: 20141 points:(208,103)(223,105) color:blue width:1 #1846: 20648 points:(223,105)(238,106) color:blue width:1 #1851: 21344 points:(238,106)(253,110) color:blue width:1 #1856: 21405 points:(253,110)(268,109) color:blue width:1 #1861: 22557 points:(268,109)(286,112) color:blue width:1 #1866: 22207 points:(286,112)(298,108) color:blue width:1 #1872: 22897 points:(298,108)(313,114) color:blue width:1 #1876: 22079 points:(313,114)(328,116) color:blue width:1 #1881: 23448 points:(328,116)(343,116) color:blue width:1 #1886: 23881 points:(343,116)(358,121) color:blue width:1 #1891: 24122 points:(358,121)(373,126) color:blue width:1 #1896: 25250 points:(373,126)(388,131) color:blue width:1 #1901: 26586 points:(388,131)(403,132) color:blue width:1 #1906: 27832 points:(403,132)(433,124) color:blue width:1 #1911: 28077 points:(433,124)(448,137) color:blue width:1 #1921: 26023 points:(448,137)(463,134) color:blue width:1 #1926: 29193 points:(463,134)(478,139) color:blue width:1 #1931: 28542 points:(478,139)(508,125) color:blue width:1 #1936: 29655 points:(508,125)(532,138) color:blue width:1 #1946: 26129 points:(532,138)(556,152) color:blue width:1 #1954: 29567 points:(556,152)(574,170) color:blue width:1 #1962: 32973 points:(574,170)(595,176) color:blue width:1 #1968: 37584 points:(595,176)(616,161) color:blue width:1 #1975: 39049 points:(616,161)(640,152) color:blue width:1 #1982: 35272 points:(640,152)(667,155) color:blue width:1 #1990: 33092 points:(667,155)(685,152) color:green width:1 #2005: 33100

Births

Cambrai was the birthplace of:

Amé Bourdon (1636 or 1638 - 1706), physician and anatomist
Charles François Dumouriez (1739-1823), French general
Francisco de Carondelet (1747-1807), in Noyelles, Spanish governor of Louisiana, president of the Audiencia of Quito
Louis Blériot (1872-1936), aviator
Henri de Lubac (1896-1991), Jesuit and theologian
Julien Torma (1902-1933), writer, playwright and poet
René Dumont (1904-2001), engineer in agronomy, sociologist, and environmental politician
Maurice Godelier (born 1934), social anthropologist, neo-Marxist, and French intellectual

Twin towns

Cambrai is twinned with:

Houma - Louisiana, United States

Châteauguay - Québec, Canada

Kamp-Lintfort - Germany

Esztergom - Hungary

Gravesend - Kent - UKFurther Information

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