Episode Notes
Conquest: When Besançon Became French, 1670–1740
Join historian Benjamin Bernard and producer Sage Tanguay as they learn about the French conquest of Besançon in the late seventeenth century through visits to Besançon’s Saint-Jean Cathedral and its citadel. They explore the significance of this period for the “sister city” relationship between Charlottesville and Besançon.
Sister Revolutions is a limited-run documentary series made possible by the Charlottesville Sister Cities Commission, Brown Residential College at the University of Virginia, and America 2026. You can learn more about each of these organizations on their websites: www.cvillesistercities.org (http://www.cvillesistercities.org) , https://browncollege.virginia.edu/ and www.america2026.eu (http://www.america2026.eu)
Sister Revolutions is produced and hosted by Benjamin Bernard and Sage Tanguay
With production assistance from Sophia Moore
French Transcription and Translation by Oriane Guiziou-Lamour
And English voiceover by Tracey Gerlach
The music in this episode was provided by Blue Dot Sessions
This episode featured the voices of:
• Dr. Katlyn Carter from the University of Notre Dame
• Mathieu Fantoni from the Cathédrale Saint-Jean de Besançon
• Gaelle Cavalli from La Citadelle Besancon
• Noelle Antolin and Styvie Bearns
Special thanks to
• Elizabeth Smiley of the Charlottesville Sister Cities Commission
• Bertrand Van Ruymbeke of America 2026
• Prof. Ari Blatt, Chair of the University of Virginia French Department
• Florent Werguet, Head of international relations for the City of Besancon
• Hugo Toudic Associate director of the University of Chicago center in Paris
Sister Revolutions is hosted by Symposia: a production of Brown Residential College at the University of Virginia and the Virginia Audio Collective at WTJU 91.1 FM.
in cooperation with the Charlottesville sister cities commission and America 2026 symposia is proud to present a special documentary Series in cooperation with the Charlottesville sister cities commission and America 2026 symposia is proud to present sister revolutions welcome to Sister Revolutions a multi-episode series about the Dual histories of bizon France and Charlottesville USA in the long 18th century I’m Benjamin Bernard a historian at the University of Virginia and I’m Sage tangue the producer of symposia at Brown Residential College that’s hosting this podcast series over the course of this miniseries you’ll hear about how the French and American Revolutions affected our two cities and the role that our cities played in the founding of two new nations so Ben what inspired this project well Sage it really started with the sister City’s cultural diplomatic relations ship between our two towns Charlottesville and bizon I began to wonder how we could use that relationship to understand the histories of our cities better through comparison as a historian I study the age of democratic revolutions and stories of revolutions tend often to be National stories or at least of Capital Cities and I began to wonder how local experiences maybe do or don’t track with those National stories so can that local experience cont contradict or complement in some way the stories that we tell about the revolutions and I think this kind of question is important for our communities today to be able to connect with the histories of our our democracy and our our nation so let’s do a quick example to see what I mean Sage what do you think of when you think of Charlottesville in the 18th century H well of course here at the University of Virginia we’re just absolutely abolutely immersed in Jeffersonian history I mean Montello Thomas Jefferson’s estate is a big tourist attraction of the town and not to mention the University of Virginia too that’s exactly right so did you know that the American ambassador to France during the revolution is from Charlottesville isn’t it Thomas Jefferson yeah it’s Jefferson who who became the third president of the USA okay but did you also know aha that the French ambassador to to America during the French Revolution did his military training in Biz and came from a family in franch con see that’s the one I didn’t know I knew Jefferson went to France but I definitely didn’t know that the French Ambassador was in bonan I think that’s wild okay absolutely so his name is duu and I think it’s pretty interesting that America’s first diplomatic friendship is forged by these two Statesmen one from Charlottesville and the other from bizon a question immediately comes to mind for me what was it about those two cities in that moment that made them able to produce these Statesmen that would become so important for this founding diplomatic relationship the answer to that question uh is going to tell us something new potentially about our two cities what I’m wondering is what does it really mean to be sister cities now and I think maybe understanding this history can help us be better sister cities today well exactly I think we can articulate in each new moment what that relationship of sister cities means and that’s easier to do and we have a better handle on where we’re coming from I I should add too that there’s a great deal of excitement among historians right now for 2026 that’s going to be the 250th anniversary or semi Quin Centennial of the Declaration of Independence in 1776 so historians in the next couple years will be assessing the legacy of the Revolution so we received a grant from the Charlottesville sister cities Commission mented by Brown College and the America 2026 commission and using this funding we traveled to bonan to interview historians and curators and to meet City representatives and to tour historic sites over the course of this miniseries we’re going to tell the stories of bonan and Charlottesville from the late 1600s through the French and American Revolutions in the late 18th and early 19th centuries in the episodes to come you’ll be hearing about the Fantastic cultural and economic efflorescence of the City through the 18th century Enlightenment as well as the Byzantine experience with the French Revolution then we’ll return to charlotesville to consider its history during this period And how that period is remembered today so let’s begin today with bizon the first step to the French Revolution after all was becoming French so in this first episode we’re going to talk about how bizon became part of the French Kingdom Under The absolutist King Louis the 14th focusing on the 1660s to 1680s to do that we’ll meet curators at the Cathedral of B and the Citadel overlooking the city on the way to bonan we stopped in Paris where we met up with one of Ben’s old colleagues at a bustling Cafe to discuss comparative revolutionary history I’m Caitlyn Carter I am an assistant professor of history at the University of Notre Dame um in South Bend Indiana and uh I studi the origin of representative democracy in the late 18th century uh looking primarily at the United States and France and how they set up representative government kind of For the First Time Caitlyn Carter was a few years ahead of me in graduate school we did our doctoral degrees in history at Princeton with the same adviser David Bell Caitlyn’s always been interested in the comparative history of revolutions her work and her teaching as well deal with the French and American Revolutions as part of a common Atlantic culture let’s take a listen to our conversation with her what do we mean as historians when we talk about the French Revolution or the American Revolution yeah that’s such a great question I mean often we talk about the late 18th into the 19th century as an age of revolutions I say revolutions with an S sometimes you’ll see age of Revolution without an S and I think there’s not a lot of serious debate about that but I actually do think that incompasses a lot of the kind of questions that you’re raising which is if we think about this as an age where there are a lot of Revolutions in the sense of changes of political regime that’s one way of looking at it you could also look at it as a time when there’s a lot of experimentation in terms of thinking about social hierarchies and think about religion in in all these kind of different Realms um so I think you’re right like it depends on what aspect you’re interested in um how you would talk about what these different revolutions are about or what their outcomes are all of that depends on where you put the end point of that Revolution or what aspect of it you’re focusing on can you tell us a little bit about what the comparative method does for your understanding and hisor understanding of the French and American Revolutions looking at them side by side can really help illuminate some of the unique factors in each situation that might show you oh this thing that wasn’t a factor in you know the United States clearly was a big factor um in France and it helps you see that and see kind of How It’s operating by looking at a comparison where it’s not there when we talk about the legacy of the age of revolutions today you know I think as a historian you know maybe you feel the same way we sort of see the 18th century around us all the time right but I think we have these very nationally driven stories about the revolution on the other hand people today also have not just nationalist sentiment but very local Civic connections one thing that I tell my students for example we’re studying the American Revolution is that especially right now in the United States this is true but the story of the history of a nation’s founding especially when the nation still exists as such and lives under the Constitution that was written at that moment is always kind of tied up with national identity it’s thus inherently politicized in in the present moment it serves as this kind of Mythology right and it makes doing history of that fraud [Music] Ben could you describe your experience of entering bonon for the first time well when we got out of the train station you know it became immediately clear to me why the history of bezon looks the way that it does because the train station is on a hill on one of the sort of lesser developed sides of town it’s a little more modern and Industrial but it’s on a hill that overlooks the entire city and a kind of valley below it so you have a quite nice view from certain perspectives of the city and the river that hooks in this kind of Oxo around the historic City Center and then across the river you have this massive Cliff with the Citadel sitting on top of it I mean you couldn’t miss it no absolutely not and so you could see this kind of strategic topography that gives the city such a characteristic shape and that also made it such an important Garrison it’s a case study in geography and history going hand inand mhm it absolutely is a beautiful city and it it kind of reminded me a bit of Charlottesville it’s it’s pretty forested there are lots of hills it’s also like not too big but not too small either so if you want to walk across the city you could kind of do it in an hour um but a bike would be better and a car isn’t like completely necessary to get around so many of the main roads have multiple Lanes so a lane for bikes a lane for Walkers a lane for cars a lane for buses and taxis and that just seems so wonderful and practical that you know people commuting from outside the city can kind of go right to the parking lot and then get around from there by bus or on foot or or by tram the other thing that’s immediately noticeable is how old some of these buildings are and I know that for you it felt like an 18th century Paradise of of like oh my gosh there so much of this is is so old you know that scene in Disney’s Beauty and the Beast with they a quiet Village and then everyone comes at it’s like you know it’s more built up than that right it’s it’s not an alaan Village but you know you’re walking around and you see this 18th century architecture in the city center I mean it it it’s it’s kind of astounding I’m not sure that you know Even after spending a dozen years in France and specifically looking out for 18th century sites I’m not sure that I’ve been in a place quite like that where you feel that that time capsule feeling a little bit yeah I would say architecture is a big part of the experience of being in bonan while we were exploring the town uh we we started going up this hill to the Citadel but before the Citadel you happen upon another really important Historic Landmark as you’re walking up the road you pass this kind of ruins of columns in in a little Park on your left and pass Victor Hugo’s house on your right or at least his the house in which he was born and lived for 6 weeks um and you pass underneath this second Century Roman triumphal Arch to go into the cathedral the black gate as it’s called dates back probably to the emperor Marcus aelius sometimes triumphal arches have inscriptions on them so you can know precisely what they were built for and and when they were dated it was called the black gate because it was dirty and covered in soda now that it’s cleaned it’s not really black anymore it’s still the black gate but yeah it’s a yellow gate wonderful yellow gate yeah black anal so m is an art historian and a curator his job essentially is to curate the cathedral itself and so he works for the French state for their cultural Services you know in much the same way that an art historian might in a museum so this gate was the the Gate of the of a neighborhood which was an independent city so was a functional G for the city for it was in the 18th century I can show you it is integrated into the kind of late medieval early modern architecture of the houses around it and specifically the domain of the Archbishop so the cathedral itself and the buildings around the cathedral are built into the black gate we entered in the in the realm of the Archbishop when we went through the the gate okay so bringing the parliament from do to was the way to to break down the the power that the Archbishop had on B because he had to to deal with the the new administrative power and he has lost with the conquest all the rights he had like a lord he could uh do the Justice make some kind of flws and couldn’t anymore because he was under the parliament so it was the way for the king to say yeah I’m the master of the new region and the AR Bishop constrict your power what I thought of when I first saw the triumphal Arch is that when Louis the 14th in the 17th century undertook Wars of Conquest in uh what were former carolingian territories known as lotharingia in the Middle Ages so in the in the north of France in in what is now Belgium and and so on but also in the East including conquering banso and fr con he actually had erected um two triumphal arches in Paris in the Roman Style to commemorate these victories that were expanding the margins of his uh his land Empire I did didn’t we go to see one of them in Paris I think do you remember the the kind of tral arch yeah absolutely absolutely and I think you know as much as architecture is something that you experience while you’re in this place it’s also clear that there’s a historical code built into the the buildings and these arches that we’re seeing what’s interesting to me is to think that Louis the 14th basically conquered the city of Besson and then brought into Paris this triumphal Arch tradition that had marked the conquest of bonon in the 2 Century in some form so while we’re exploring this little uh green space that’s right beside the black gate we just had a a funny interaction with some other people in the town U my name is Noel and uh my mother is originally from B she immigrated to the United States with my father in the 1970s so I was born and raised in San Francisco California um but we’ve always come to this area to visit family and you know learn about the area and eventually I met my husband sty whose family is from Virginia and when I visited his family and that area for the first time I really saw started to see similarities between both places in terms of the geography the communities the the hills the you know the caves and and the streets of the city as well you know just like The Pedestrian streets the buildings the university Vibe and when I visited Charlottesville for the first time it did actually strike me a lot and and what about you sty well my name is sty and I was actually born in Mexico City and like Noel said my dad is from Virginia I would spend my summers in Virginia with my grandparents and my cousins in Charlottesville actually but uh as we were driving down we both were commenting how similar the the landscape is you know the sister city concept is actually one that I’ve tried to figure out because a lot of times you see sister sees they don’t seem to have anything similar with each other and it seems kind of a kind of a loose concept you know it’s like how who decided they were sister cities so I’ve actually thought about that in the past cuz I’ve seen I was like well what does that have to do one with the other but coming here you can I definitely see the similarities right obviously a sister city isn’t going to be exactly your replica one or the other so sister cities probably are more of a cultural connection than a physical connection if that makes sense and I guess the big picture is you know are these just efforts to bring people closer together and people across the globe to find similarities with one another and look maybe we do have some kind of Common Thread some kind of common history and and interest that you know unite us so the first time I went to Virginia and I tried Virginia ham it took me back to France really yes and there’s a place in Co pepper called calh that makes like the most amazing Virginia ham and I made st’s dad take me there because I said this is the closest thing to so obviously there are some noticeable similarities between Charlottesville and bonon but what is the whole sister City’s relationship actually about my name is Elizabeth Smiley and I’m currently on the Charlottesville sister City’s commission the sister city concept actually in the United States really started after World War II it started in Europe immediately at the end of the second World War as a peace building initiative between countries who had been enemies during the war wow France was actually where the sister city movement began and it’s grown ever since and the idea is that the more connections we make with people in other countries and the more we get to know one another across countries the more cultural understanding there is that promotes a sense of global citizenship and the more that promotes and sustains peace do you know how and when and why Charlottesville and bizon became paired of sister cities well I know a little bit I wasn’t there at the start but it really started at the initiative of several people who for various reasons had lived and worked in bezanson a woman named Louisa Dixon worked and lived in BZ for many years and recognized how many similarities there were between banson and Charlottesville when she returned to the United States she was instrumental in beginning to talk to our city officials and to citizens in Charlottesville about the possibility of becoming sister cities really I think she was the driving force but she got the then city council and the then mayor very interested and enough community members in Charlottesville got on board with that that um in 2004 we signed an official proclamation of Friendship with bz which starts the process of getting to know each other and courting and that generally takes two to three years and then in 2006 we became official sister cities so the next day we headed out first thing to the cathedral but Ben why are we going to a medieval Cathedral if this is an 18th century History Podcast that is an excellent question question a couple reasons first of all I also kind of thought this might be a medieval story with the cathedral I thought that you know just looking at it it looks maybe older than some of these like 18th century mansions and houses like it looks older than Montello right I think we can agree on that but it turns out that when you have an 18th century city a city that comes to uh kind of great prominence everything is going to be refracted by that right everything is going to be uh affected or changed in some way and one of the things I was surprised to learn from Mato fonton about is just how much of an impact that Century had on the history of religion and the cathedral so to set the scene a little bit for our listeners imagine just walking into a a giant Cathedral with beautiful stained glass windows as we begin to talk over some coffee this beautiful organ music breaks out once again here is Matthew fanton the curator of the cathedral so we have this goldage for the Arts and the culture in the Renaissance time and then the 17th century well was time of War we call it the great Century in France the grand because we have this legend of the Sun King conquering and making actually we we have drawn the frontiers of France in the 17th century before we had but actually it was a time of War something I had to realize through the course of this project was that a country actually has to conquer itself like the actual bounds of what constitutes the country that was really unclear but no no it’s it’s a great question you know historians for the past few decades following from a historian called Benedict Anderson like to think of a Nation as what he calls an imagined community so it doesn’t necessarily mean that nations are completely made up but the unifying idea is that people agree that they share something in common with each other you know many commentators have talked about whether what makes a nation is sharing a language or a climate or Bloodlines uh or a form of government and what we’re seeing specifically in the French context is that some of the borders that we like to think of as natural to France today that familiar hexagon shape really emerged during this period under Louis the 14th’s foreign policy one of the points that I made in my dissertation is that the Conquering of French con and a few other uh of these territories amounted to a kind of colonialism over land that is to say Louis the 14th is trying to conquer adjacent territories and make them more for French and he does this using some of the same techniques that the French are also using overseas so they create Elite schools they create incentives for integration they try to kind of use both the carrot and the stick and the difference here in retrospect is that these territories successfully became part of France and still are whereas many overseas colonies from this period including Haiti and Louisiana and so on are no longer part of France even though they may be part of what we call a francony the French speaking World there are some natural boundaries that he’s looking towards rivers and and mountain ranges and so on and some of them in fact go back even to uh territories that were held by the emperor Charlamagne around the year 800 this is territory that it seems like Louis the 14th is trying to claim back set us up on a linear timeline right now where are we sure well we’re in the third quarter of the 1600s the 17th century before the conquest before Louis the 14th’s armies come in Bon actually had close ties to German lands so the Holy Roman Empire is an a glomeration of States headed by an elected Emperor but he’s always elected from the same family the hapsburgs and bons is actually an important free Imperial City under the Holy Roman Empire they do not have a lord they do not have a local Prince they are kind of directly under the emperor himself but the emperor doesn’t have the bandwidth to be overseeing all of these free Imperial cities across the Empire and so what that means is that b actually has a a large number of privileges it’s a very special kind of place to live if you’re an elite Bourgeois of the kind of Finance or mertile class and we see this most especially during the Renaissance when the granvel family from bizans becomes important advisers to the Holy Roman Emperor so Nicola granvel is basically number two for the Holy Roman Emperor himself this kind of gets forgotten today because the Germans don’t remember the greville family because they’re in a French speaking land now and the French don’t really remember the family because they were serving the German Emperor their family Mansion is now the Muse duton the important Civic Museum of time and clock making in B the story of the conquest really picks up around 1660 so France and Spain have been at War for many many years as part of this dynastic conflict between the French Bourbon and the the hbur dynasties as part of the brokering of a peace treaty in 1659 Louis the 14 the young king agrees to marry the Spanish infanta princess named Maria Teresa who happens to also be his first cousin this is one of the the terms of the Treaty of the Pyrenees they stage a whole kind of wedding celebration on an island in the river in the Pines mountains that separates France and Spain so Louis the 14th put forward the case through this obscure Roman law that he should inherit his wife’s family’s Crown instead of a male Heir in the Spanish line this is some megalomaniacal fake news sage like that’s I was about to say so the Spanish naturally disagree they claim that the crown has to be passed through the male line so the a daughter can’t inherit the crown and pass it to her husband this is kind of a thorny constitutional question it’s not a straightforward as it it seems on the surface this is one that the French philosopher monu would write about in his Spirit of the laws in the enlightenment a generation or two later so Lou the 14th went to war to advance this dubious claim that he should inherit all his wife’s fames crown and lands as part of this foreign policy aimed at expansion he sees it as kind of Defending his claim to hbur GLS they see this as total nonsense like you slap a Latin name on whatever you think you deserve and you go to war for it right so this is in 1667 and it’s called The War of devolution based on the idea first of all that she could inherit them and second that they should devolve to Louis the 14th by virtue of his marriage so this involves a campaign in France con uh in February of 1668 uh and uh eventually they broker a peace treaty at EXA Chappelle and the terms included that Louis the 14th would withdraw from FR con so he gets checked and has to leave bizon after conquering it once but as we know bonon is a city it’s so nice he has to conquer it twice so the peace would be short and Louis the 14th prize again in 1674 we’re now in the Franco Dutch War he’s still kind of concerned with the Spanish Netherlands so the Spanish Crown basically has has this claim to the the low countries in the north of France um and so Vang this military engineer and architect the ground K who is the kind of leading uh nobleman who had defended Louis the 14th in an earlier conflict and whose family was very powerful in burgundy supervised laying Siege to bizon a second time and this time they won so in the 1678 treaty Now France acquired Bon moves the capital of the region from do to Bon they put the parliament there they get the university going um and really this ushers in that Baka the beautiful Century between the conquest that’s to say in 1674 and the outbreak of the French Revolution just over a century later and when the king died he said so it’s a legend but said I have I I loved War too much yeah like as if he conceived that it was too much war that he regretted yeah and for people it was sometime worse as in the middle age to live in this Century um but at the same time it’s not just a myth it’s not just a kind of discourse about history there’s some truth to it during this Century one in five Europeans was French um the French has the largest army they as a result of having the largest population maybe um this is the moment when people all over Europe really start to speak and Converse in French I mean Elites at least in the 18th century speak French as a kind of common International Language the way that English is today that Latin was before and this really begins during yeah the during the 14s you know yeah yeah kind of yeah it’s a ding point because also a model for all the all the kings in Europe and uh in the when it was still living when the 18 Century began because it died in 1715 and in B it was a time where the city was totally rebuilt modernized it was a time of Peace a lot of of artistic production if you walk in the city of B what you see today and it’s something that you don’t see in Paris for example we see a city of the 18th century we don’t have the high buildings of the 19th century the streets have not changed since the 18th century so we had original One Main Street which is still called The Main Street like in a village nor we don’t have this name for a city something that did change however was what sat at the top of the main Hill in the city he made something really violent when we of it there was a church uh above the cathedral the Sant Chen Church where the members of the chapter of the cathedral were buried so chapter the it was the College of the clerics of the ca okay around the Arch Bishop so there their tombs were in this church s it was demolished to build the Citadel so a way to show that the power the the the real the royal power was uh dominating the the religious F tell me more about s Anan so the stian church was built on a hillside overlooking the town of bezanson so it’s it’s quite a a a prestigious and Powerful uh position this is where the Bishops of the cathedral were historically buried you know rather than entering these important prelates in the Crypt of the cathedral itself they were Ed on the hillside and so this is an important site for the history of Christianity in in bizone which goes back what you know 14500 years before the period that we’re talking about even remarkably maybe maybe a little more than that this church of santen was raised by Louis the 14th during the conquest in order to replace it with the Citadel and so what happened at that site we don’t want to read too much into it but it’s kind of a metonym for Louis the 14th you know aggressively staking a temporal claim to the governance of the city at the expense of these different corporate bodies that each maintain their own fiefdom so the Archbishop whose own domain you know could be operated using his own legal Administration um and so here Louis the 14th is really asserting uh asserting his own dominance and so from the perspective of the Citadel this is the founding moment of the kind of modern militaristic um reach of the maybe Ben State and from the perspective of the cathedral this is this is a a serious blow and from either Direction I mean the the image of raising a church that is on a high high hill that is a burial ground for Bishops and replacing it with a a military compound that’s a pretty significant shift in a lot of ways that Hill is kind of central to the identity of Bon you know it’s so identifiable so that switch I think is definitely very significant yeah absolutely so it was the way for the king to say yeah I’m the master of the new region and the AR Bishop we we deconstruct your power why was the Archbishop of B so powerful before the conquest uh he had a prestigious Relic the O shroud of B I don’t know if you know it well I know the I’ve heard of the Shroud of Turin yeah yeah it’s the the one everyone knows that there was also one in so here we’re talking about a shroud that’s a literal shroud correct sort of right this is the Garment that’s supposedly used to cover Jesus’s body after his execution and it’s considered a holy Relic but you know real imagined I mean it sounds like there there was a garment there I don’t know but I don’t know if I mean there was fabric there I don’t know if it was 200y old you know exactly fabric I don’t want to into that controversy neither did Matthew exactly so which is the real shroud or they different shroud I won’t answer this question it’s too political but um some historian try to explain why there are two shrouds and the one of B there was just the face of the Christ and it was orange orang MH so they said that the one in ch was the the Shroud you used when he was taken down the cross and it was closed on him so we have the face and the back and it’s red because of the blood mhm and B it was a sh made and given to the Christ when he was already dead with the the creams the used to prepare the body the crops so that’s why we just have the face and it’s orange the the color of the of the spices and the products used for the prepare the the corpse yeah but yeah a lot of theories it was also contested a lot of said already in the 18th century it’s a fake don’t go there but it was love the 18th century you know critical historiographers writing in the humanist tradition it came here and it was conserved here in this part of the cathedral so when they saw that the B Tor was collapsing they took the Relic away with all the archives and The Treasure of the cathedral that was conserved in the belto they took the opportunity of the rebuilding of the apps to make a huge Rel and an exhibition place for The Relic okay that’s why in the paintings if you watch the three main paintings of the cycle we always see the Shroud exhibited I didn’t see a shroud when we went to the C we saw a Rel query but there’s no shroud there so oh no I hate to ask this where is the Shroud you know the story of the Revolution you know what happened but I will tell you also there are two different stories okay uh when the conquest happened the king came here and he asked to the clergy to see the shoud and when it was Spanish also they made copies they sent to Spain in the revolution uh people were interested to debank the the myth of the Shroud the Shroud was taken to the trial and condemned to become um paper so Sharpie to become yeah to become D to be destroyed and to to be reused in as a normal clo as a noral CL in paper and so it was a way to to destroy the sanctity of the of the Relic and he was brought to Paris uh and it disappeared at this time but some people in bu think that is was it was saved and is somewhere but it’s a legend for us there’s a whole uh medieval tradition of you know putting animals on trial for instance like you put you know you put somebody’s dog on trial for witchcraft or something like that and you know the revolution Aries who think that they’re creating a world based entirely on reason are still kind of taking those old regime rituals that have meaning for them and they’re just using it you know against the church you know for their secularization or de christianization program but uh but in a way it Taps into these very old ways of of thinking about or of of achieving a kind of communal healing yeah it’s very interesting and we still find today and it was shown in the exhibition L um a lot of prints made with the Shroud because for the pilgrimage you could would purchase copy of the sh which was also kind of fic M some of them were made on Len on so so it was kind of shr itself and we could uh I can show you some pictures um because it’s really easy to find on uh on eBay for I we talk so much of the pilgrims you know buying like pilgrimage tokens and coins that are you know printed on metal it’s interesting to hear that there’s also the cloth version yeah lot of this beautiful you see here it’s like tickets you can cut it and bring it and like a roll of tickets and each one has a print on it okay so it was a really commercial thing we know that 40,000 people could come to was to see the Shroud when was an exhibition like Trin like people would come yeah pilgrimage pilgrims so it was important for the AR bishop and they have lost it so today we are amazed by this decoration but we have to understand that we have just part of the the disposition of the 18th century I don’t know about you I loved meeting Mata I just thought he he was brilliant he has such a deep sense of the history and and such a great communicator had fely it was a great time in a beautiful space and um we we really got to see a lot of the inner workings of of the cathedral as a as an architectural Beauty for me I think the lesson was not to necessarily make prejudgments about what isn’t is not pertinent but to go in with an open mind and really to try and explore the city and its landmarks with our research questions in mind not knowing exactly where it might lead us after learning about how during the conquest Louis the 14’s armies destroyed the Church of Sten um kind of demolishing with it some of the temporal power of the Archbishop and of the cathedral uh I think it would make sense for us to go and visit the Citadel that Louis the 14th had installed on that site to kind of pick up and see where the story goes you know what’s happening with the conquest how did this happen um so I think from the cathedral that’s Ely the next spot is to to go up the massive massive Hillside um and to check out the Citadel what a track yeah and it’s hot in the summer too right it’s very [Music] hot so my name is GA cavali I’m the manager of the department for the promotion of the vah Monument which means seeing the Citadel as Von’s Legacy because there are other Museum curators here in charge of the other aspects of the Citadel my job really consists in promoting the site Gail cavali is a kind of you might think of a museum curator for architecture so her job is to take the kind of cultural patrimony in France and to kind of make it come alive for the general public so she’s interfacing both with Scholars and researchers and with the general population people of all Stripes who come and are curious to learn more about The Citadel we are sitting here in a citadel that was designed by V at the end of the 17th century on behalf of Louis the 14th because up until 1674 the province of franch comp was not French but was under the control of the hapsburg family which meant under the control of the Spanish Crown Louis the 14th conquered franch comp and asked fah to strengthen this new French Frontier City this place is a citadel part of a fortified unit AED at protecting the city of B but also aimed at keeping an eye on the city since not all people living in were necessarily pleased to become French there was a governor for the Citadel but his role was really tied to the stronghold and so in franch comp there was an intendant in charge of the province this is also when Bas gained more recognition and became more important the University was transferred here from Dole similarly the political capital of the province moved from do to B so the story of the architecture of the Citadel actually begins with the invention of gunpowder and more specifically cannonballs this type of architecture wasn’t appropriate anymore especially because of the cast iron cannonballs developed at the end of the Middle Ages such walls are too easily destroyed in Italy they developed what are called Bastion forts Bastion Fort architecture is characterized by much stockier dimensions and wall supported by large Earthworks when cannibals hit the walls the Earth Works will cushion the shock and absorb the shock protecting the ramp parts and the reason behind the star shap simply because it permitted Crossfire when cannons are installed on your Bastion they can be fired without creating blind spots unlike previous rounded shapes where enemies could move forward and were sheltered from defending fire so that’s the purpose of this new type of architecture what was so interesting to learn about Von is how um many of his ideas are not what you would expect so he’s advocating for all kinds of policies for instance for redistributing wealth to the poor that would seem to be revolutionary for their time that the monarchy wouldn’t necessarily agree with um he’s really pushing the envelope was the one who proposed a royal tidee called the de applicable to everyone in French society very controversial this was quite daring for the 17th century he also wrote books on Pig farming for instance where he studies Pig production writing that it should be more developed because it would make feeding the kingdom easier Etc he also criticized Louis the 14th for his decision to revoke the Edict of non an action that denied Protestants freedom of religion saying that it was a mistake because as a consequence many Protestants left the kingdom of France and especially people from this very region because of the proximity to the Swiss border the Swiss border yes as well as the German border it is especially true for the land of monad which is now part of FR this was also the time where the Barrack system was developed and implemented before that soldiers were housed in private homes we really owe this change to Vang and this aspect was one of the reasons behind the election of the site to the UNESCO world heritage V this is Von’s influence over the world his legacy continued in architecture up until the 19 century in an artillery where we owe him major evolutions for two centuries his influence can be found in architecture from all around the world from The Citadel of Quebec to buildings in Vietnam there was a system of central staircase with two bar rooms on each side and on each floor housing for soldiers is reproduced from the system of modules of basic cells which was elaborated and developed during V’s time so the Citadel was built by the Spanish but they were following Von’s plans and this was before the French then regained the hill can you explain how this all happened of course earlier I simplified things a little saying that FR comp was conquered in 1674 but really it was a two-step process there was a first Conquest in 1668 at this occasion Louis the 14th asked volan to start designing plans then because of the treaty between France and Spain franch comp was returned to the Spanish and exchanged for other territories particularly in the north um so this was after the wedding of Louis the 14th in 1660 to 1661 yes because one of Louis The 14th’s Alibi as we can say to conquer FR comp was the idea that he would inherit his wife family lands exactly so he asked for to design some plans Etc but when franch K has returned to Spain the Spanish realized that it might be a good idea to reinforce the Citadel a little so how did the Spanish get the plans I do not know there must have been a spy somewhere there might have been it is also possible that there was a leak since although vah designed the plans he was relying on local Architects for the construction work so there was probably a whole team behind him it wasn’t just V on his own indeed once FR comp was reconquered during the Bas Siege of 1674 Von took over the Spanish Citadel kept some elements but completed it and strengthened the defenses Legend has it that he described the Citadel by saying that it’s a quite beautiful Citadel but we only have the bones so he had to complete it especially in terms of rampart size because the Spanish made the fortifications a lot lower and volan during the siege of B got up on the hills on each side around the Citadel you can see the hills if you walk along the ramparts which are higher than the Stan Mount and so he managed to bombard the inside of the Citadel from there it seems logical since he was the person who designed it he would know the weak spots of the Citadel it would have been impossible for him to lose right because of that he really completed it by adding another front at the bottom by making the ramp Parts higher Etc so Ben what did you take away from your conversation with Gail cavali about the architect voban you know one thing I was a little bit surprised by is how much of the narrative and memory at the Citadel revolves around Von so one of the first things you see when you walk in outer Gates is a big modern statue of Von in 18th century dress and they sell replicas of it in the gift shop and I almost bought one but I didn’t you remember that I do remember so heavy though yeah I know um I went with books instead but I mean there there’s so there’s so much that’s interesting about Von but you know the guy can’t produce a hundred fortified castles around the perimeter of France by himself and so he depended on so many others and we don’t really know that much it seems to me about like how it was that one guy could design all these fortresses around France how did the Spanish get V Ban’s plans to begin with when they beat back Louis the 14th the first time isn’t it obvious to too that Von would be able to reconquer the bastions that he himself designed like he should know what their weak points are yeah I will say the the deification of vobon reminded me so much of Charlottesville and and I do think in Charlottesville we’re having this kind of reappraisal of the sort of so-called great men of history so we know a lot more now about how Thomas Jefferson worked with others we know a lot more about the enslaved people who lived at Montello as well and who accomplished much of these Grand buildings you know that they actually were laying the bricks of of the university and stuff like that so what else can we find out about the folks besides votal and who are living and working uh around the Citadel I mean is this a kind of like a university like a single sex men’s Barracks kind of situation is this what kind of community is this one might Imagine The Citadel to represent what we would later see during the 19th century meaning a very masculine and enclosed social space during the 17th and 18th century as Recent research conducted on places like the Citadel of Le shows that wasn’t the case at all we worked with a PhD student who studies these questions and we found that in a way many things were also applicable to the Citadel of B there were many women children even though soldiers technically didn’t have the right to marry and had to remain single for their 6 years commitment in the Army in reality we have records of christenings and weddings being celebrated at the citadel’s chapel there were also at least two ins which meant the presence of inke Keepers and their wives their kids it was very open to the city and there were also washerwomen who would come to do the soldiers laundry Etc soldiers could also work outside of the Citadel to add some money to their pay it was very permeable was a citadel but also a city in Italian citadela means small City and indeed that is what we have here this isn’t an enclosed space at all we can imagine that the governor had connections with the city’s nobility it turns out that Louis the 14th’s investment in bizon as an important military site has enduring consequences for the city of B today Bona has always been a military City and still is today because the Eastern Army command is in bzona as a matter of fact the largest employer after the city and the university is the Army and the Eastern Army is ground forces but in the east of France which is the reason why there are still many Barracks here during the 18th century they took up a lot of space in the city for instance there is the sell Barracks which is just at the bottom of the Citadel [Music] I myself live right next to the V Barracks located on the small hill of course you do there have always been barracks and I think the military is always played a role from time to time you can also see members of the military jog in the Citadel run to the top of the fortifications Etc there still strong ties between the city and the military coming from Charlottesville The Citadel is an incredible site and also an unfamiliar one but we also have to keep in mind that around the perimeter of France this architect vom built over 100 of these kinds of fortifications one of the things that I’m curious about is what makes this site in bonson so unique and so special what I find really quite extraordinary is how the city managed to preserve almost the entirety of its fortifications which is quite rare in France especially for the city walls of early modern towns because of the development of cars Etc so I think we are very lucky and we are also lucky to have preserved remnants of vban strategic landscape of course the city grew in size but it is still fairly easy to understand its geostrategic positioning and that’s part of what makes it a pleasant place to live in I don’t know what your impressions are of B but it is a very Green City with plenty of [Music] History so do you want to walk around a little bit and we’ll kind of look at I mean it’s a it’s a hot day but I also think we’re going to get we’re about to get an amazing view of the Panorama of the city there’s a wayn which it seems like the steps that Louis the 14th undertook to integrate B in into the French Kingdom after he conquered it were pretty successful during this period you know so it’s worth thinking about how he did that right and so on the one hand we have these programs of kind of cultural integration and moral integration on the other we have this kind of military Fortress and you know my guess is that they go hand in hand [Music] right the other another interesting thing about walking around the space that I’m noticing is that you know unlike a lot of the other 18th century buildings that we’ve been looking at this week this one is just not symmetrical at all it’s not built in a classical style that’s it could have had those kinds of ornaments but they actually don’t and that goes back to I think what G was saying about how it’s really built to be integrated into the kind of geography of this space or the Topography of it and so that makes it also a little bit awkward to visit it’s almost modernist right because it’s not Sy and it’s you’ve got these Jagged edges everywhere you don’t know what shape to expect so we’re we’re at these musical chairs I guess and each chair has a different piece of music from the 17th 18th century so I said that there’s no moat I guess I kind of lied wow I mean at least there’s no water in it but yeah there’s no water yeah oh but there are monkeys it is kind of a ditch are you serious right there where yeah this is part of the zoo oh my God the zoo is here I guess they did repurpose it wow I love that personally so the other thing that she talked about is that as part of the ecological movement of the city they had a big controversy where they decided to stop lighting the Citadel at night so you’ve noticed that at night it’s not like the Eiffel Tower or even like in Athens or something where the main monument in town is sort of lit up with flood lights you can see it from everywhere and they could have continued doing that but for environmental reasons to protect the Flora and Fauna um and because of the energy they decide not to do it it’s a tough balance to strike between ecology and culture right cuz it’s it’s a beautiful kind of tourist site to to be able to light up but it’s also kind of a testament to the values of the city that it’s not lit up it actually shows their Forward Thinking this yeah absolutely I’ve never you know come across a place that is serving both as a historical monument and a zoo um this is like really interesting and and very beautiful and it it’s sort of not set up like a managerie I mean these monkeys have this whole ditch to be roaming around in oh my gosh I just can’t believe [Music] it what what I was amazed to hear about is that you know just like the war effort might engage a quarter of the French population at a time like the 18th century gal cavali explained to us about how the Citadel is an entire Community if there’s still a sense that the space was kind of designed by this one architectural military genius foban we don’t get that sense about life in the space itself so we learned all about how many different kinds of people lived and worked there how many people are involved in provisioning the space and how there would be taverns and restaurants like up on the hill within the outer walls of the for ification itself so it really is kind of a little city there and in fact it doesn’t even sound like there was very much of a divide between the Citadel community and the community it was surveilling down in bason son it sounds like there was a lot of trade and and commerce between those two groups as much as it it at times seems like oh the citadels up there to watch out for the inculcation of of revolution in the town it doesn’t seem like that’s actually what happening in a a socializing sense between those two groups and I think there’s more that we can learn about this I mean you know I I I totally agree with you at the same time I remember what an effort is to like Trek up that hill especially in the summer and you think you know once you’re up that hill you are there for the day you’re going to go to the zoo you’re going to like go to the aquarium the the fish tanks in the zoo you’re going to you know sit in the restaurant have a coffee so I I I do also get the sense that maybe just that logistical separation of what it takes to go up and down the hill just by virtue of the hike to get up there I would imagine that there is some separation between the Garrison town and the city below it’s funny though from here we would need to actually go back down to the lower layer of the Citadel to get a better view of the cathedral cathedral but we can see the like the shape of the city so well from here I mean you can just see the where the river goes right just that line of green because you we have this like kind of semicircle shape of all of the tile roofs then the Ring of trees that flank the river on both sides and then beyond that the kind of modern apartment buildings all around it I don’t think I realized that outside of the river it was as built up as this yeah I I don’t think so either so actually there’s like kind of the a big residential semi-urban City around the river and this kind of Greater business on the countryside is then kind of beyond that this really gives you a good perspective yeah the green belt is what they call the trees okay lining the river and you can kind of see from a pi y interesting that they have the EU flag up there right uhhuh and the French flag on the other side sister revolutions is a limited run documentary series made possible by the Charlottesville sister cities commission Brown Residential College at the University of Virginia and America 2026 you can learn more about each of these organizations on their websites seille sister cities.org Brown col. virginia.edu and America 2026 doeu sister revolutions is produced and hosted by Dr Benjamin Bernard and Sage tangue with production assistance from Sophia Moore French transcription and translation by orian giz La and English voiceover by Tracy Ken the music in this episode was provided by Blue Dot sessions this episode featured the voices of Dr Caitlyn Carter from the University of Notre Dame mat fonton from the Cathedral sanan of bizon G cavali from The Citadel in bizon and Noel antan and sty barns we’d like to extend a special thanks to Elizabeth Smiley of the Charlottesville sister cities commission bertron Von rbec of America 2026 Professor Ari blat chair of the University of Virginia French Department Laur ver head of international relations for the city of banson and Yugo tudk associate director of the University of Chicago center in Paris sister revolutions is hosted by symposia a production of brown Residential College at the University of Virginia and the Virginia audio Collective at wtju 91.1 FM