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Poitou   Listen
Poitou

noun
1.
A low-lying region of west central France on the Bay of Biscay.  Synonym: Poitou-Charentes.






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"Poitou" Quotes from Famous Books



... seventeenth century. The disturbing influence, no doubt, was the fur-trade, which allured so many young men into the wilderness, made them unfit for a steady life, and destroyed their domestic habits. The emigrants from France came chiefly from Anjou, Saintonge, Paris and its suburbs, Normandy, Poitou, Beauce, Perche, and Picardy. The Carignan-Salieres regiment brought men from all parts of the parent state. It does not appear that any number of persons ever came from Brittany. The larger proportion of the settlers were natives of the north-western provinces of France, ...
— Canada under British Rule 1760-1900 • John G. Bourinot

... right to rule the Norman conquests, the son of the Conqueror's granddaughter, Henry Plantagenet. He had become, though not without appeal to the sword, which his father wielded powerfully on his behalf, master of Normandy, and had then married Eleanor of Poitou, who brought him a great part of South France: he then succeeded more by fair means than by force in establishing his right to the throne of England. Henry was the first to establish in France the power of the ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke

... my friends told me, at the city of Poitiers, in the province or county of Poitou, in France, from whence I was brought to England by my parents, who fled for their religion about the year 1683, when the Protestants were banished from France by the ...
— The Fortunate Mistress (Parts 1 and 2) • Daniel Defoe

... were Celtic. Hence, when the third element of the present Norman population was introduced, all that was not Italian was Welsh—just as it was in Picardy and Orleans, and just as it was not in Gascony and Poitou. There the old ...
— The Ethnology of the British Colonies and Dependencies • Robert Gordon Latham

... Poitou," he returned with enthusiasm. "They are getting as rare now as this," he declared, nodding to the cobwebbed bottle, as he rose, drew the cork, and filled ...
— A Village of Vagabonds • F. Berkeley Smith

... one November day in the year 1635, within the walls of a fortress-prison in Poitou, the prospect of a Queendom seemed as remote as a palace in the moon. She had good blood in her veins, it is true. Her ancestors had been noblemen of Normandy before the Conqueror ever thought of crossing the English Channel, and her grandfather, General ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall

... cavalier who had drawn his sword in behalf of Charles I., and had in consequence been deprived of his fortune and driven into exile by Cromwell. His paternal family was very ancient, and boasted its descent from the Courcils de Poitou, who came into England with the Conqueror. His mother was Elizabeth Drake, who claimed a collateral connexion with the descendants of the illustrious Sir Francis Drake, the great navigator. Young Churchill received the rudiments of his education from the parish ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various

... thought of following him across the sea. A more congenial life awaited her at home. She had long had a friend of humbler station than herself, Mademoiselle d'Outrelaise, daughter of an obscure gentleman of Poitou, an amiable and accomplished person, who became through life her constant companion. The extensive building called the Arsenal, formerly the residence of Sully, the minister of Henry IV., contained suites of apartments which were granted to persons ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman

... stone covers Pierre de Breze, lord of Varenne and of Brissac, grand marshal of Poitou, and governor of Normandy, who died at the battle of Montlhery on the 16th ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert

... the alarm which his impetuosity only had excited, and passed the quarter of his own gallant troops of Normandy, Poitou, Gascony, and Anjou before the disturbance had reached them, although the noise accompanying the German revel had induced many of the soldiery to get on foot to listen. The handful of Scots were also quartered in the vicinity, nor had they been disturbed ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott

... Carle passed through the valley of Moriane, The God of Heaven by his Angel sent Command that he should give thee to a Count, A valiant captain; it was then the great And gentle King did gird thee to my side.— With thee I won for him Anjou—Bretaigne; For him with thee I won Poitou, le Maine And Normandie the free; I won Provence And Aquitaine, and Lumbardie, and all The Romanie; I won for him Baviere, All Flandre—Buguerie—all Puillanie, Costentinnoble which allegiance paid, And Saxonie submitted to his power; For him ...
— La Chanson de Roland • Lon Gautier

... seize you, William, Count of Poitou, Girard de Boreuil, Arnaud de Marveil, Bertrand de Born, mischievous progenitors of jongleurs, troubadours, provencals, minnesingers, minstrels, and singers of cansos and love chants! Confusion overtake and confound ...
— Urban Sketches • Bret Harte

... of my cousine de Maisonrouge, that grande belle femme, who, after having married, en secondes noces—there had been, to tell the truth, some irregularity about her first union—a venerable relic of the old noblesse of Poitou, was left, by the death of her husband, complicated by the indulgence of expensive tastes on an income of 17,000 francs, on the pavement of Paris, with two little demons of daughters to bring up in the path of virtue. She managed to bring them up; my little cousins ...
— A Bundle of Letters • Henry James

... IV, and had married the daughter of Sully, and after Henri's death had commanded the Swiss and the Grison regiments—at the siege of Juliers. This was the man whom the king was so imprudent as to offend by refusing him the reversion of the office of governor of Poitou, which was then held by Sully, his father-in-law. In order to revenge himself for the neglect he met with at court, as he states in his Memoires with military ingenuousness, he espoused the cause of Conde with all his heart, being also drawn ...
— Massacres Of The South (1551-1815) - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... Corse (Corsica), Franche-Comte, Guadeloupe, Guyane (French Guiana), Haute-Normandie (Upper Normandy), Ile-de-France, Languedoc-Roussillon, Limousin, Lorraine, Martinique, Reunion, Midi-Pyrenees, Nord-Pas-de-Calais, Pays de la Loire, Picardie, Poitou-Charentes, Provence-Alpes-Cote d'Azur, Rhone-Alpes note: France is divided into 22 metropolitan regions (including the "territorial collectivity" of Corse or Corsica) and 4 overseas regions and is subdivided into 96 metropolitan departments ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States

... of Grotius's daughters, who survived her father, married John Barthon, Viscount of Mombas, a Gentleman of Poitou, who was obliged to quit France for having displeased Lewis XIV. He went to Holland, from whence he was also forced to fly, having been involved in the misfortunes wherein the De Wits perished, and which gave Peter Grotius, ...
— The Life of the Truly Eminent and Learned Hugo Grotius • Jean Levesque de Burigny

... ever to be deplored that the worthy Dom Gregory, whose ecclesiastical history of Poitou is the source of so much curious information concerning Villon, should have omitted, from a mistaken sense of delicacy, to chronicle precisely what it was that the poet whispered in the ears of each of the girls. All he condescends to record in his crabbed, canine ...
— If I Were King • Justin Huntly McCarthy

... Tout est a notre usage; N'epargnons le poitou [5] Poissons avec adresse [6] Messieres et gonzesses [7] Sans ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer

... Louisiana as in France. The reason of its name in French will plainly enough appear from the following history. A magistrate, no less remarkable for his probity than for the rank he holds in the law, assured me that, when he was at Sables d'Olonne in Poitou, on account of an estate which he had in the neighbourhood of that city, he had the curiosity to go and see a white eagle which was then brought from America. After he had entered the house a wren was brought, and let fly in the hall where the eagle was feeding. The wren ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz

... themselves—the short tale, the epic, the romance, the play, the history, the sermon—all find their early home, if not their actual birthplace, north, not south, of the Limousin line. It was from Normandy and Poitou, from Anjou and the Orleannais, from the Isle of France and Champagne, that in language at least the patterns which were used by all Europe, the specifications, so to speak, which all Europe adapted and filled up, went forth, sometimes not ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury

... King at the Assembly of Chatelherault had carried me in the month of July into Poitou. Being there, and desirous of learning for myself whether the arrest of Auvergne had pacified his country to the extent described by the King's agents, I determined to take advantage of a vacation of the assembly and venture as far in that direction as Gueret; though Henry, fearing lest ...
— From the Memoirs of a Minister of France • Stanley Weyman

... and cropped head that she took her own measures to be revenged, and the poor king was compelled to obtain a divorce from her. She subsequently gave her hand to the Count of Anjou, afterwards Henry II of England, and the rich provinces of Poitou and Guienne were her dowry. From this sprang those terrible wars which continued for three centuries, and cost France untold treasure and three millions of men—and all because Louis did not consult his consort ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston

... with crowns and precious stones; rather differently from some who, rich when they set out, came back heavy with leprosy, but light with gold. On his return from Tunis, our Lord, King Philippe, made him a Count, and appointed him his seneschal in our country and that of Poitou. There he was greatly beloved and properly thought well of, since over and above his good qualities he founded the Church of the Carmes-Deschaulx, in the parish of Egrignolles, as the peace-offering ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac

... century tapestry manufactory in Poitiers, an amusing correspondence took place between the Count of Poitou and an Italian bishop, in 1025. Poitou was at that time noted for its fine breed of mules. The Italian bishop wrote to ask the count to send him one mule and one tapestry,—as he expressed it, "both equally marvellous." The count replied with spirit: "I cannot ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison

... most distinguished officers of the French army, General Count de Vittre, Grand Officer of the Legion of Honor, &c. Charles de Raity de Villeneuve, Count de Vittre, was descended from an old and noble family of Poitou, was the comrade of Napoleon at the Military School, and took a glorious part in the campaign of Russia, where he was severely wounded. He also distinguished himself in the Spanish expedition in 1823, where he had under his orders General Changarnier, ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, August 1850 - of Literature, Science and Art. • Various

... refuge across the sea. Comporte, then serving as a volunteer in a Company of Infantry led by his uncle, La Fouille, was involved in one of the bloody brawls of the time that Richelieu had made such stern efforts to suppress. The Company was in garrison at La Motte-Saint-Heray in Poitou. On July 9th, 1665, one of its members, Lanoraye, came in with the tale of an insult offered to the company by a civilian in the town. Lanoraye had been marching through the streets with a drum beating, ...
— A Canadian Manor and Its Seigneurs - The Story of a Hundred Years, 1761-1861 • George M. Wrong

... part of Christendom, as from Valencia, Tuscany, Lombardy, Apulia, Malfi, and Sicily. Others come from the most northern parts of Europe, and even from inland places; as from Cracow, Cordova, Spain, Russia, Germany, Sweden, Denmark, England, Flanders, Artois, Normandy, France, Poitou, Angiers, Gascony, Arragon, and Navarre. There come many also from the western empire of the Ishmaelites or Arabs, as from Andalusia, Algarve, Africa, and even Arabia, besides what come by the Indian ocean from Havilah or Abyssinia, and the rest of Ethiopia, not omitting ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr

... threatened invasion came, and Norwich Castle was erected quite as much to drive back the Scandinavian hosts as to keep in order the citizens. Newcastle and Carlisle were of strategic importance for driving back the Scots, and Lancaster Keep, traditionally said to have been reared by Roger de Poitou, but probably of later date, bore the brunt of many a marauding invasion. To check the incursions of the Welsh, who made frequent and powerful irruptions into Herefordshire, many castles were erected in Shropshire and Herefordshire, forming a chain of fortresses which are ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield

... freed from the Oath of Allegiance and fidelity, which they had taken to him. Again, in the same King's Reign, [Anno 1259.] a Dispute having arisen about the County of Clairmont between the King and the Earls of Poitou and Anjou, a Court of Judicature, composed of the like Persons was appointed, wherein sat the Bishops and Abbots, the General of the Dominicans, the Constable, the Barons, and several Laicks. To this he subjoyns: Yet there were two Parliaments called each Year, at Christmas ...
— Franco-Gallia • Francis Hotoman

... not only is the number of our soldiers diminished but their courage marvellously beaten down, and the boldness of our enemies increased." Richemont was a sworn enemy of all such. "Never man hated more, all heresies, sorcerers, and sorceresses, than he; for he burned more in France, in Poitou, and Bretagne, than any other of his time." The French generals were divided as to the merits of Richemont and the advantages to be derived from his support. Alencon, the nominal commander, declared that he would leave the army if Richemont were permitted to join it. The letters of ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant



Words linked to "Poitou" :   France, French region, Poitou-Charentes, French Republic



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