Marquise, Pas-de-Calais
Encyclopedia
Marquise is a commune
Communes of France
The commune is the lowest level of administrative division in the French Republic. French communes are roughly equivalent to incorporated municipalities or villages in the United States or Gemeinden in Germany...

 in the Pas-de-Calais department in the Nord-Pas-de-Calais region of France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

.

Geography

Marquise is a farming, quarrying and light industrial
Light industry
Light industry is usually less capital intensive than heavy industry, and is more consumer-oriented than business-oriented...

 town, situated some 10 miles (16.1 km) northeast of Boulogne, at the junction of the D191, D231 and D238 roads. The river Slack
Slack River
The Slack is a 22 km long river in the Pas-de-Calais department, in northern France.It rises at Hermelinghen on Mount Binôt, flows through Rinxent, Marquise, Beuvrequen, Slack and flows into the English Channel in Ambleteuse....

 flows through the commune, as too does the A16 autoroute
A16 autoroute
The A16 autoroute – also known as L'Européenne and forming between Abbeville and Dunkirk a part of the larger Autoroute des estuaires – is a motorway in northern France....

.

History

Part of the Flemish-speaking territory until 1346, Marquise became an English county under King Edward III after the battle of Crécy
Battle of Crécy
The Battle of Crécy took place on 26 August 1346 near Crécy in northern France, and was one of the most important battles of the Hundred Years' War...

 and the hexagonal bell-tower goes back to the English period. In 1420, in the suburbs of Marquise, at Leulinghen, the church of which was divided by the French-English border, King Henry V married Princess Katharine, daughter of Charles VI of France
Charles VI of France
Charles VI , called the Beloved and the Mad , was the King of France from 1380 to 1422, as a member of the House of Valois. His bouts with madness, which seem to have begun in 1392, led to quarrels among the French royal family, which were exploited by the neighbouring powers of England and Burgundy...

.
At the end of September and at the beginning of October 2006, Marquise was at the top of current events, on prime time television, when the local gendarmerie
Gendarmerie
A gendarmerie or gendarmery is a military force charged with police duties among civilian populations. Members of such a force are typically called "gendarmes". The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary describes a gendarme as "a soldier who is employed on police duties" and a "gendarmery, -erie" as...

 retrieved a famous painting by Maurice Boitel
Maurice Boitel
Maurice Boitel Maurice Boitel Maurice Boitel (July 31, 1919 – August 11, 2007 in Audresselles (Pas-de-Calais), was a French painter.-Artistic life:Maurice Boitel belonged to the art movement called "La Jeune Peinture" ("Young Picture") of the School of Paris, with painters like Bernard Buffet, Yves...

, stolen forty years before and taken out of France.

Population

style="font-weight: bold; font-size: 1.1em; margin-bottom: 0.5em"|Population history
1962 1968 1975 1982 1990 1999 2006
4802 4991 4953 4731 4453 4508 5065
Census count starting from 1962: Population without duplicates

Places of interest

  • The church of St.Martin, dating from the thirteenth century.
  • A watermill
    Watermill
    A watermill is a structure that uses a water wheel or turbine to drive a mechanical process such as flour, lumber or textile production, or metal shaping .- History :...

     and manorhouse of the 17th century.
  • The marble
    Marble
    Marble is a metamorphic rock composed of recrystallized carbonate minerals, most commonly calcite or dolomite.Geologists use the term "marble" to refer to metamorphosed limestone; however stonemasons use the term more broadly to encompass unmetamorphosed limestone.Marble is commonly used for...

     quarries.
  • The Commonwealth War Graves Commission
    Commonwealth War Graves Commission
    The Commonwealth War Graves Commission is an intergovernmental organisation of six independent member states whose principal function is to mark, record and maintain the graves, and places of commemoration, of Commonwealth of Nations military service members who died in the two World Wars...

    cemetery.

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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