duendology asked: “Delfe, help me, help us! 😉 I’ve been trying to establish which parts of the France southern region (usually administratively now having different names) belonged to the historic “Auvergne”? Is there, perhaps a historic map with this region marked? So I could see this territory in its full historical context?”
First I’ve to confess I’m pretty
much ignorant of Southern France and Auvergne geography (even if I’m currently living “not-so-far” from there – shame on me), so I did learn a lot of things about the history of Auvergne.
Before speaking more specifically of
Auvergne, a “tiny” point; France has two important
administrative divisions: “région” (created in 1955) and “département” (created
in 1790). The 27 régions are subdivided into 101 départements (the
région of Auvergne, for
example, has 4 départements). Therefore, the number of régions is going to be
reduced to 18 in
2016, and Auvergne
will be merged with the
région of Rhône-Alpes. Lyon will most certainly become the administrative
center, so Clermont-Ferrand will lose its
official title of Auvergne’s
capital.
Now, back to the main topic!
Current Auvergne is basically a combination of historic Auvergne and the provinces of Bourbonnais and Velay. The name Auvergne come from gallic tribes of Arvernes, one of
the most famous and powerful confederation of Gaul.
I’m not going to trace the whole history of Auvergne
(I don’t want you to fall asleep and Wikipedia does that 1000 times better than me here anyway) but the “city of Arvernes”, in fact,
covers more or less the territory of 18th century Auvergne. With the Revolution, France is divided in départements, and the province of Auvergne
is split between Puy-de-Dome, Cantal, Haute-Loire and Allier in 1790. A entity similar of
historic Auvergne
is finally brought back in 1955 with the creation of administrative régions.
18th century Auvergne
on a map of current France (with départements divisions) ;
today’s Auvergne
is in red (I made a map combining this map to another one I found on Wikipedia; it’s not a
perfect match, but it makes things easier to visualize)
A map of the provinces of Marche, Bourbonnais, Limousin and Auvergne (in red), dating apparently from 1763. [source]
And a map of the “cité des Arvernes” with actual Auvergne limits. [source]
“In the period of which we speak, there reigned in the cities a stench barely conceivable to us modern men and women. The streets stank of manure, the courtyards of urine, the stairwells stank of mouldering wood and rat droppings, the kitchens of spoiled cabbage and mutton fat; the unaired parlours stank of stale dust, the bedrooms of greasy sheets, damp featherbeds, and the pungently sweet aroma of chamber pots. The stench of sulphur rose from the chimneys, the stench of caustic lyes from the tanneries, and from the slaughterhouses came the stench of congealed blood. People stank of sweat and unwashed clothes; from their mouths came the stench of rotting teeth, from their bellies that of onions, and from their bodies, if they were no longer very young, came the stench of rancid cheese and sour milk and tumorous disease. The rivers stank, the marketplaces stank, the churches stank, it stank beneath the bridges and in the palaces. The peasant stank as did the priest, the apprentice as did his master’s wife, the whole of the aristocracy stank, even the king himself stank, stank like a rank lion, and the queen like an old goat, summer and winter. For in the eighteenth century there was nothing to hinder bacteria busy at decomposition, and so there was no human activity, either constructive or destructive, no manifestation of germinating or decaying life that was not accompanied by stench.
And of course the stench was foulest in Paris, for Paris was the largest city of France. And in turn there was a spot in Paris under the sway of a particularly fiendish stench: between the rue aux Fers and the rue de la Ferronnerie, the Cimetiere des Innocents to be exact. For eight hundred years the dead had been brought here from the Hotel–Dieu and from the surrounding parish churches, for eight hundred years, day in, day out, corpses by the dozens had been carted here and tossed into long ditches, stacked bone upon bone for eight hundred years in the tombs and charnel houses. Only later–on the eve of the Revolution, after several of the grave pits had caved in and the stench had driven the swollen graveyard’s neighbours to more than mere protest and to actual insurrection–was it finally closed and abandoned. Millions of bones and skulls were shovelled into the catacombs of Montmartre and in its place a food market was erected.”
~Patrick Süskind “The Perfume. The Story of a Murderer”
even the king himself stank, stank like a rank lion
“In the winter of my twenty-first year, I went out alone on horseback to kill a pack of wolves.This was on my father’s land in the Auvergne in France, and these were the last decades before the French Revolution.” – The Vampire Lestat
I-want-my-IWTV 
