Saint-Quentin, Aisne

For other places with the same name, see Saint-Quentin (disambiguation).

Saint-Quentin
Town hall
Saint-Quentin
Administration
Country	France
Region	Picardy
Department	Aisne
Arrondissement	Saint-Quentin
Intercommunality	Saint-Quentin
Mayor	Pierre André (2008–2014)
Statistics
Elevation	68–125 m (223–410 ft) (avg. 74 m or 243 ft)
Land area1	22.56 km2 (8.71 sq mi)
Population2	56,843  (2008)
- Density	2,520 /km2 (6,500 /sq mi)
INSEE/Postal code	02691/ 02100
1 French Land Register data, which excludes lakes, ponds, glaciers > 1 km² (0.386 sq mi or 247 acres) and river estuaries.
2 Population without double counting: residents of multiple communes (e.g., students and military personnel) only counted once.

Saint-Quentin (French pronunciation: [sɛ̃.kɑ̃.tɛ̃]) is a commune in the Aisne department in Picardy in northern France. It has been identified as the Augusta Veromanduorum of antiquity. It is named after Saint Quentin, who is said to have been martyred here in the 3rd century.

Administration

Saint-Quentin is a sub-prefecture of Aisne. Although Saint-Quentin is by far the largest city in Aisne, the capital is the third-largest city, Laon.

Mayors

The mayor of Saint-Quentin is Xavier Bertrand, a member of the right-wing UMP Party.

List of mayors of Saint-Quentin

From	To	Name	Party
2010	present	Xavier Bertrand	UMP
1995	2010	Pierre André	UMP
1989	1995	Daniel Le Meur	PCF
1983	1989	Jacques Braconnier	RPR
1977	1983	Daniel Le Meur	PCF
1966	1977	Jacques Braconnier	UDR

History

The city was founded by the Romans, in the Augustean period, to replace the oppidum of Vermand (11 km away) as the capital of Viromandui (Celtic Belgian people who occupied the region). It received the name of Augusta Viromanduorum, Augusta of the Viromandui, in honor of the Emperor Augustus. The site is that of a ford across the River Somme. During the late Roman period, it is possible that the civitas capital was transferred back to Vermand (whose name comes from Veromandis); almost nothing relating to the 4th century has been found in Saint-Quentin.

During the early Middle Ages, a major monastery developed, based on pilgrimage to the tomb of Quentin, a Roman Christian who came to evangelize the region and was martyred in Augusta, giving rise to a new town which was named after him.

From the 9th century, Saint-Quentin was the capital of Vermandois County. From the 10th century, the counts of Vermandois (descendants of the Carolingian, then Capetian families) were very powerful. The city grew rapidly: the "bourgeois" organized themselves and obtained, in the second half of the 11th century (a very early date), a municipal charter which guaranteed their commune a large degree of autonomy.

At the beginning of the 13th century, Saint-Quentin entered the royal domain. At that time, it was a thriving city, based on its wool textile industry (city “drapante”). It was also a centre of commerce boosted by its position on the border of the kingdom of France, between the Champagne fairs and the cities of Flanders (wine exportation, etc.): it had an important annual fair. It also benefited from its location in the heart of a rich agricultural region (trade of grain and “guède”, woad, a high-value blue colouring pigment).

From the 14th century, Saint-Quentin suffered from this strategic position: it endured the French-English wars (Hundred Years' War). In the 15th century, the city was disputed between the king of France and the dukes of Burgundy (it is one of the "cities of the Somme"). Ravaged by the plague on several occasions, its population decreased, while its economy was in crisis: its fair was increasingly irrelevant, and agricultural production diminished. The declining textile industry turned to the production of flax canvas. Meanwhile, the city faced major expenses to maintain its fortifications and armed troops.

Between the end of the 15th century and the mid-17th century, this strategic position was the cause of frequent misfortune. In 1557, a siege by the Spanish army ended with the looting of the city and its desertion for two years. Given back to France in 1559, it underwent intense fortification work: the medieval wall was protected by many new advanced fortifications, redesigned several times. Two districts were razed to make way for them. In the mid-17th century, the city escaped the sieges, but suffered the horrors of wars ravaging the Picardy region, accompanied by the plague (in 1636, three thousand people died, out of perhaps ten thousand inhabitants) and famine.

In the second half of the 17th century, the conquests of Louis XIV took St Quentin away from the border, and it lost much of its strategic role. At the end of the 16th century, its textile production specialized in fine flax canvas (“batiste” and lawn). This brought prosperity, particularly in the 18th century, when these textiles were exported across Europe and the Americas.

The Market

During the First French Empire, difficulties in the export market brought an economic decline. At the request of the municipality, Napoleon authorized the razing of the fortifications, to allow the city to grow beyond its old boundaries. In 1814-1815, Saint-Quentin was occupied by the Russian army, but without any damage.

In the 19th century, St Quentin developed into a thriving industrial city, thanks to entrepreneurs constantly on the lookout for new technologies. Textiles and mechanical products were foremost among a wide variety of products.

In 1870, during the Franco-Prussian War, the population repelled the invader on October 8, but the city fell during the second offensive. That hopeless but heroic action had national repercussions: Saint-Quentin was decorated with the Legion of Honour. In 1871, on January 19, the French army was defeated near the town.

Ruins in St. Quentin, France during First World War.

The First World War hit St Quentin very hard. In September 1914, the city was over-run, and it endured a harsh occupation. From 1916, it lay at the heart of the war zone, because the Germans had integrated it into the Hindenburg Line. After the evacuation of the population in March, the town was systematically looted and industrial equipment removed or destroyed. The fighting destroyed it: 80% of buildings (including the Basilica) were damaged.

Despite national support, the reconstruction process was long, and the city struggled to regain its pre-1914 dynamism. The 1911 population of 11,000 was achieved again only in the mid-1950s, in the context of general economic expansion. This prosperity continued until mid-1970s, when the French textile industry began to suffer through competition from developing countries.

Population

Historical population of Saint-Quentin, Aisne

Year	1793	1800	1806	1821	1831	1836	1841	1846	1851	1856	1861	1866	1872	1876	1881	1886
Population	10,800	10,477	10,535	12,351	17,686	20,570	21,400	23,852	24,953	26,887	30,790	32,690	34,811	38,924	45,838	47,353

Year	1891	1896	1901	1906	1911	1921	1926	1931	1936	1946	1954	1962	1968	1975	1982	1990
Population	47,551	48,868	50,278	52,768	55,571	37,345	49,683	49,448	49,028	48,556	53,866	61,071	64,196	67,243	63,567	60,644

Year	1999	2008
Population	59,049	56,843

Museums

• Butterflies' Museum which has a collection of more than 600,000 insects, displaying 20,000 of them
• Antoine Lecuyer Museum which owns the largest collection of Maurice Quentin de La Tour's pastels

Transport

The Gare de Saint-Quentin is the railway station, offering connections to Paris, Reims, Amiens, Lille and several regional destinations. The A26 motorway connects Saint-Quentin with Reims and Calais, the A29 with Amiens.

Personalities

• Dudo of Saint-Quentin (born ca. 965), historian
• Charles de Bouelles (1479–1567), philosopher, mathematician and linguist
• Quentin-Claude Bendier (died 1677), scholar and bibliophile
• William Cliff, inventor of machine-woven tulle
• Marc Delmas, Expressionist composer and biographer
• Rudy Gobert, basketball player
• Kafetien Gomis athlete
• Maurice Quentin de La Tour (1704–1788), painter and pastelist
• Etienne Mendy footballer
• Jean Louis Marie Poiret (1755–1834), botanist and explorer
• François-Noël Babeuf (1760–1797), known as Gracchus Babeuf, political agitator and journalist of the revolutionary period
• Charles Rogier (1800–1885), Belgian statesman
• Félix Davin (1807-1836), French poet and journalist
• Amédée Ozenfant (1886–1966), cubist painter
• Jean-Marie Lefèvre (born 1953), modernist and minimalist poet
• Xavier Bertrand (born 1965), current Minister of Labour, Social Relations, Family and Solidarity in François Fillon's second government, conservative

International relations

Main article: List of twin towns and sister cities in France

Saint-Quentin is twinned with:

• Kaiserslautern, Germany
• Rotherham, England
• San Lorenzo de El Escorial, Spain

See also

• Battle of St. Quentin (disambiguation)
• Communes of the Aisne department
• Augusta Viromanduorum

Gallery

• 

  The Basilica

• 

  The Basilica with renovations to front entrance

• 

  The Railway Station

• 

  Félix Davin (1807-1836), French poet and journalist

References

• INSEE

External links

• Official website (French) (English)
• Official website of Saint-Quentin tourism office (French) (English)