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Flag of Sully-sur-Loire - Image by Ivan Sache, 15 June 2014
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The municipality of Sully-sur-Loire (5,455 inhabitants in 2011; 436 ha; municipal website) is located on river Loire, 40 km south-east of Orléans.
Sully is famous for its bridge over the Loire, more than 400 m in length, which had to be rebuilt six times. The original bridge, known as the Romans' bridge, was flooded by the Loire in 1363. A first suspension bridge, erected in 1836, had to be rebuilt in 1859. The French army destroyed the bridge on 18 June 1940 to slow down the advance of the German troops. Rebuilt and air-raided, the bridge was revamped in 1947. During the harsh 1984-1985 winter, the break of a suspension cable caused the collapse of the bridge's roadway, fortunately without casualty. The bridge was eventually rebuilt as a beam bridge.
The castle of Sully was mentioned for the first time in 1102. Watching
the bridge and protecting the town, the castle was added a donjon in
1219 by King Philip II Augustus. The castle was completely rebuilt in
1395 by Guy de la Trémoille, who hired Raymond du Temple, the
architect of the king and of the Duke of Orléans.
Maximilien de Béthune (see below) purchased the castle in 1602. He
added the Artillery tower, equipped with thick walls and cannons, and
increased the castle's walls. The parish church, once erected inside
the castle's yard, was rebuilt in the village, while a levee was set
up to protect the castle from flooding. In 1794, the Duke of Sully
decided to suppress the emblems of the feudal system: the donjon was
suppressed while the fortifications topping the towers were replaced
by conic roofs. Damaged by air raids in June 1940 and August 1944, the
castle of Sully was acquired in 1962 by the General Council of Loiret (website). It is the place of the Sully and Loiret Music Festival, organized every year in May-June since 1962.
Maurice de Sully (1105/1120-1196; biography), born in serfdom in Sully (therefore his name, which has nothing to do with the lords of Sully), was taught by the Benedictine monks of the abbey of Fleury. Sent to the Paris theology school, he studied with the future King Louis VII. A famous predicator and theologian, Maurice de Sully was elected in 1160 Bishop of Paris by the Metropolitan Chapter. Impressed by the early Gothic cathedrals of Saint-Denis, Sens, Noyon, Laon and Senlis, Maurice de Sully decided to replace the old St. Stephen church, built in the 6th century. In 1163, Pope Alexander III set up the cornerstone of the Notre-Dame cathedral. Supported by King Louis VII, the nobles and the canons, Maurice de Sully erected several churches, abbeys, hospitals and leper-houses all over the diocese of Paris.
Maurice de Sully was the king's confessor. Louis VII dictated him his
last will. Philip II Augustus, christened by the bishop, appointed him
warden of the Royal treasure when he went on the Crusade. Maurice de
Sully retired in 1196 in the St. Victor abbey, located close to the
merging Notre-Dame cathedral, whose choir had just been finished (the
building of the cathedral would be achieved in the 14th century by
Raymond du Temple). A chronicler reports that Maurice de Sully "did
not sit on the bishop's throne but in the choir, chanting the psalms
like any other clerk". The bishop died on 11 September 1196 while
reciting the Credo.
Maximilien de Béthune, Duke de Sully (1559-1641; biography) is an emblematic character of the French national historiography, often presented as "the good minister of a good king".
In July 1572, Maximilien de Béthune was presented by his father to
King Henry of Navarre, who married on 18 August 1572 Margaret of
Valois. Maximilien escaped during the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre,
which occurred one week later (24-25 August). He would then support
Henry, first as a fierce soldier during the Wars of Religion, and then
as a wise minister of King of France Henry IV. Maximilien de Béthune
was injured during the battle of Ivry (1590) and during the siege of Chartres (1591). In 1593, he recommended Henry to abjure the Protestant religion to fulfil the expectations of the people of Paris. However, the sentences Paris vaut bien une messe! / La Couronne vaut bien une messe !)(Paris / The Crown is well worth a mass) is apocryphal.
Peace was restored in 1598 by the proclamation of the Edict of Nantes
and of the Treaty of Vervins. Henry IV commissioned Maximilien de
Béthune to rebuild the kingdom, which had been completely ruined by
the Wars of Religion. A great soldier, Maximilien de Béthune was
appointed Superintendent of the Fortifications, Grand Master of the
Artillery (1599), and Governor of the Bastille fortress in Paris
(1602). However, he has remained famous as the Superintendent of the
Finances (1598); within a few years, he absorbed the deficit and
increased the Royal Treasure kept in the Bastille. Appointed Grand
Voyer (1599) and Superintendent of the Buildings (1602), Maximilien de
Béthune improved the ways of communication all over the kingdom. Roads were revamped or built from scratch, while the digging of the Canal of Briare, connecting rivers Seine et Loire, was initiated. In Paris,
Maximilien de Béthune ordered the building of the Place Royale (today, Place des Vosges), of the Place Dauphine and of the St. Louis
Hospital, and the revamping of the Louvre and Tuileries palaces.
Maximilien de Béthune was made Duke of Sully and Peer of France in
1606. The Duchy of Sully included the domains of Sully-sur-Loire,
Moulinfrou, Senely, Saint-Gondon and La Chapelle-d'Anguillon. Sully
was also Sovereign Prince of Henrichemont, a new town he had founded
in Berry in 1608.
Sully was disgraced after the assassination of Henry IV on 14 May
1610. Regent Marie de' Medici forced him to resign in January 1611
from his charges of Superintendent of the Finances and Governor of the
Bastille. The duke bitterly retired in the castle of Sully, where he
wrote his memoirs Œconomies royales. The memoirs are a masterpiece of successful disinformation: the author magnified his friendship with the "good king" and did not mind overvaluing his contribution to the progress of the kingdom; he distorted or even invented several facts and quoted famous sentences he had never pronounced.
In the 18th century, the physiocrats "rehabilitated" Sully and Henry
IV, forging the legend of Sully as the protector of agriculture. His
famous sentence, Les labourage et pastourage sont les deux mamelles
de la France (Ploughing and grazing are the life-blood of France),
indeed written in Sully's memoirs, have been consistently taught to
generations of pupils.
Whatever the legend says, historians consider Sully as the first
French modern statesman. He was a Protestant from the old nobility,
while his successors were Catholic, either from the church (Richelieu
and Mazarin) or from the robe (Colbert and Louvois) nobility. Sully
set up, decades before Colbert, the état de finance, an early kind of administrative monarchy characterized by the supremacy of the
Superintendent of the Finances over the Chancellor of France (Minister
of Justice); this hierarchy has been preserved until now.
Ivan Sache, 15 June 2014
The flag of Sully-sur-Loire is white with the municipal coat of arms
in the middle.
The arms of Sully-sur-Loire are "Azure semy of mullets or pierced of
the field a lion rampant of the second". These were the arms of the
Barons of Sully in 1313. The Municipal Council adopted on 7 July 1961
the design proposed by the heraldist Robert Louis. The arms previously
used, unofficially, had an orle of eight mullets pierced.
Pascal Vagnat & Brian Timms 15 June 2014