![[Flag]](../images/f/fr-frcom.gif)
Last modified: 2022-03-06 by ivan sache
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Flag of Franche-Comté - Image by Olivier Touzeau, 1 August 2017
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Franche-Comté was originally the County of Burgundy, which was different from the Duchy of Burgundy. The name Comté was then used in the feminine ("la Comté"), and this use was kept in the name of "la Franche-Comté", which should have been in modern French "le Franc-Comté". Therefore, "le comté" is the cheese produced in "la Comté".
The German Emperor Friedrick Barbarossa inherited Franche-Comté
in 1155. The province was then successively allocated to the houses
of Ivrea, Hohenstaufen and Chalon.
In 1295, King of France Philip the Handsome purchased the
County of Burgundy and granted it to his son Philip the Tall as his
apanage. The name of
Franche-Comtéappeared for the first time in 1366. similar to
the Swiss Franches-Montagnes, the name
expressing the aspiration to freedom of the inhabitants of the area.
In 1384, Philip the Bold, son of King John
the Good, who had already been granted the
Duchy of Burgundy as his apanage,
married the heir of the County and unified it with the Duchy. The
four great Dukes of Burgundy struggled against the feudal lords in
Franche-Comté and increased the powers of the States and of the
Parliament
In 1477, the last Duke of Burgundy, Charles the
Bold, died and his enemy, King of
France Louis XI, invaded Franche-Comté. In 1493, Charles VIII
retroceded the province to Maximilian of Austria, who had married
Mary of Burgundy, Charles the Bold's daughter. In
1598, Isabel, daughter of King of Spain Philip II, married the
Archduke of Austria.
The inhabitants of Franche-Comté were rather happy with the
very distant Spanish and later Austrian administration, which allowed
them a de facto independence. For instance, the town of
Besançon was a kind of independent
municipal republic, since Emperor Rudolf II "confirmed" a charter
granted by an "earlier emperor" without noticing it was a
pure forgery. Therefore, the Comtois were scared when the Kings
of France increased pressure to reincorporate them into the
Kingdom of France.
In 1635, Richelieu ordered the invasion of the
Franche-Comté because his enemy Gaston
d'Orléans had found shelter there. France appointed
Swedish mercenaries led by Bernard of Saxe-Weimar, who totally
looted the province during the Ten Years' War.
In 1648, by the Peace of Westphalia, Mazarin, on Louis XIV's behalf,
withdrew from Franche-Comté, which became a neutral territory.
Twenty years later, Louis XIV "claimed" Franche-Comté as his
inheritance from his defunct wife Maria-Theresa of Austria. After the
invasion of the province, Louis XIV retroceded it to Spain. Franche-Comté ws eventually incorporated to France in 1678 by the Treaty of Nijmegen.
The great local hero of the time was Jean-Claude Prost (1607-1681),
a merchant from Saint-Claude who started a guerilla in 1636 and
resumed it in 1668. In 1674, Prost, about to be captured, could
flee to Milan, which was then a Spanish possession, where he died
seven years later. Prost was better known by his nickname of Lacuzon.
In the local patois, cuzon means "worry", and the nickname
refered to Prost's severe face.
The Principality of Montbéliard, now in Franche-Comté, was incorporated to France in 1793.
Ivan Sache, 27 January 2003
The flag of Franche-Comté is a banner of the arms,"Azure billetty or a lion rampant crowned or armed and langued gules", assigned to the province by Jacques Meurgey in his Notice historique sur les blasons des anciennes provinces de France (Historical note on the coats of arms of the ancient French provinces, 1941).
According to Meurgey, the ancient owner of the province, the House of Swabia, bore "Azure a lion or". The billets were subsequently added as a mark of cadency and the arms were granted to the house of Burgundy-Comté.
The arms ascribed to the province in the Armorial
Général (and never used) are "Sable a fess or quarterly or a pallet sable".
Ivan Sache, 14 June 2009
![[Flag]](../images/f/fr-frcop.gif)
Flag "of Franche-Comté" - Image by Olivier Touzeau, 7 June 2021
A yellow flag with a red saltire was allegedly flown from 1933 to 1936 on the Town Hall of Pontarlier to represent Franche-Comté.
"Even Nicolas Vernot is doubtful. 'We all know the Franche-Comté flag with
the lion. So did this variation really exist? This flag is quite surprising.'
This is why the historian, who is in the process of writing a book on the
emblems of Franche-Comté, is appealing. Does anyone remember a yellow flag
with a red saltire, which, according to his research, was hoisted on the balcony
of the Town Hall of Pontarlier in the years 1933-1936, and perhaps even
later? At that time, André Pidoux de la Maduère was judge at the
Pontarlier court. He sat there from 1933 to 1936 and would have succeeded in
convincing the municipality to fix in the center of the balcony of the Town
Hall this flag with a red St; Andrew's cross that Pidoux, judge and
historian, considered as the “national†flag of the Franche-Comté. 'It is a
very curious approach. It must have intrigued or even shocked. André Pidoux
was an ultraconservative. At a time when historically there was only one
national flag, this initiative must have made quite a few people angry',
says the historian."
[L'Est Républicain, 30 July 2012]
