The history of Lille dates back to the 11th century when Baudouin V of Flanders endowed the recently founded collegiate church of Saint-Pierre with a charter in 1066.
The city, capital of the Burgundian region, enjoyed a period of great influence and prosperity in the 15th century. Attached to the kingdom of France after Louis XIV's conquest in 1667, and enlarged by Vauban, the town suffocated in the mid-nineteenth century within its two-century-old ramparts, unsuited to the development of the large textile industry. In 1858, Napoleon III decided to annex the neighboring communes and extend the city walls. The two world wars were particularly painful ordeals. The Trente Glorieuses were a period of deindustrialization and reconversion to tertiary activities. The city's historic heritage, which had been neglected until the 1960s, was enhanced at the end of the 20th century.
The site and emergence of the town The town's name derives from a passage in the 1066 Charter of Endowment of the Collegiate Church of Saint-Pierre: "in loco progenitoribus Illa nominoto", in French "le lieu que nos aïeux appelaient Illa", our ancestors referring to the probable period of formation of the first urban nucleus, the castrum, around the year 1000.
In 1325 the most expensive "rentes" (royalties) paid by the people of Lille to the "Maison Saint-Nicolas" (hospice) for their homes were mainly located near the "Marché" (or forum or Grand Place) at the beginning of rue Grande-Chaussée. Prices fell as one approached the "Rivage" or "portus", the port of embarkation on the Basse-Deûle, no doubt because the land was more humid or subject to flooding, making it more difficult to build on. The wealthiest chose to live higher up, on the healthier chalk near the "Marché", and close to the Paris-Flanders road.
Until the digging of the "Canal de l'Esplanade" (or "Canal de la Moyenne-Deûle") in 1750, goods transported by water had to transit overland between the "Haute" and "Basse" Deûle. Historians and geographers have considered this break in the longitudinal slope, leading to port activity, to be a key factor in the town's development.
In addition, the configuration of the valley floor at this point makes it relatively easy to cross between the motte-and-bailey castle and the place known as Fins (the future parish of Saint-Maurice), where a session of the itinerant count's court was held in 875 and where the presence of a church, attesting to the presence of a settlement, is mentioned in the 1066 founding charter of the collegiate church of Saint-Pierre. The two opposite lower slopes were the first settlements mentioned in medieval texts in the 11th century. The toponymy insula (island) was born in this context. It refers either to the feudal motte surrounded by the Canal Saint-Pierre and the Canal du Cirque, or to a higher, drier islet in the center of the valley, used for crossing the valley (approximately at the site of the Opera house).
In the Middle Ages, these two traffic routes encouraged the urbanization of the "island" and its surroundings. The medieval town was criss-crossed by numerous canals. Some of these canals follow the ancient watercourses from which the town originated, but many are artificial, created by the ditches of successive enclosures or dug for specific needs. Subject to heavy silting and considered infectious agents, they were filled in or covered over during the 19th century. The charter consecrating the collegiate church of Saint-Pierre in 1066 is the oldest complete historical document. It was recently translated by Professor Stéphane Lebecq. This document attests to the existence of an incorporated town whose origins date back at least to around 1000.
Middle Ages From the 11th century onward Lille's cloth fair became increasingly renowned. In 1144, sources mentioned the "parish of Saint-Sauveur", which gave its name to the "Saint-Sauveur" district.
In 1213 the city was sacked and besieged by Philippe Auguste to punish the people of Lille for their betrayal of the Count of Flanders Ferrand.
The Counts of Flanders, Boulogne, and Hainaut, England and the Holy German Empire joined forces to wage war against France and its king Philippe Auguste. During this war, the French king Philippe Auguste defeated the Count of Flanders and the German Emperor Otto IV, ending with the French victory at Bouvines in 1214. Count Ferrand de Portugal was imprisoned and the county fell into disarray, with his wife Jeanne, Countess of Flanders and Constantinople, ruling the city. The countess was said to be much loved by the people of Lille.
In 1224, the hermit Bertrand de Rains, no doubt urged on by local lords, tried to pass himself off as Baudoin I of Constantinople, father of Jeanne de Flandre who had disappeared at the battle of Andrinople. He incites the counties of Flanders and Hainaut to sedition against Joan to regain her lands. She appealed to her cousin King Louis VIII the Lion. The latter unmasked the impostor, who was then hanged by Countess Jeanne. In 1226, the king agreed to release Ferrand de Portugal, who died in 1233, along with his daughter Marie, shortly afterward. In 1235, Jeanne granted a charter to the city of Lille, under which mayors and aldermen were chosen each All Saints' Day by four commissioners appointed by the sovereign. On February 6, 1236, she founded the Comtesse Hospital within the walls of her Lille palace, which remains one of the most beautiful buildings in Old Lille. It was in her honor that the maternity ward of Lille's regional university hospital was named the Jeanne-de-Flandre Hospital in the 20th century.
When the Countess died without issue in 1244 at the Abbey of the Rest of Notre-Dame de Marquette, the counties of Flanders and Hainaut passed to her sister Marguerite II de Flandre and then to Marguerite's son, Guy de Dampierre.
Following the victory of the Flemish militia at the Battle of the Golden Spurs in 1302, Lille in turn drove out the Leliaerts and joined its Flemish compatriots. Lille nevertheless came under French rule from 1304 to 1369, after the battle of Mons-en-Pévèle. Lille had a population of 10,000 around 1300.
The County of Flanders became part of the Duchy of Burgundy following the marriage in 1369 of Marguerite de Male, Countess of Flanders, to Philip II the Bold, Duke of Burgundy. In 1385, the Duke created the Council of Lille, comprising a Chamber of Accounts and a court of justice, the Conseil de Flandre. This sedentary council handled financial and judicial affairs for all the duke's territories except Burgundy. Later, John the Fearless moved the Council of Flanders to Ghent but kept the Chambre des Comptes in Lille, where it was responsible for the financial affairs of all territories except Brabant, Holland, Friesland, and Burgundy. Lille became one of the three capitals of the Burgundian duchy, along with Brussels and Dijon. Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy and more powerful than the King of France, made Lille an administrative and financial capital. At that time, the population would have been in the region of 15,000 to 20,000.
On February 17, 1454, a year after the capture of Constantinople by the Turks, Philip the Good organized a pantagruelian banquet in his ducal palace in Lille, which became famous as the "Banquet of the Pheasant Vow". The duke and his retinue swore an oath on a trimmed pheasant to help Christendom.
In 1477, on the death of Charles the Bold, the last Duke of Burgundy, his heiress Mary of Burgundy married Maximilian of Austria, bringing the city to the Habsburgs, who thus took the title of Count of Flanders. In 1477, the Lille Chamber of Accounts was abolished. At the end of the reign of the German Emperor Charles V, known as Charles V, Spanish Flanders fell to his eldest son. Lille thus came under the control of Philip II of Spain, King of Spain. The city remained under Spanish rule until the reign of Philip IV of Spain.
Modern times
The French conquest and the Ancien Régime
In 1667, the city, once again rich and prosperous, was besieged and taken by Vauban in eight days (July 20–27) simultaneously with Douai under the eyes of the Sun King. Lille then became French on May 2, 1668, under the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, which provoked the discontent of the people of Lille. In the same year, Vauban, appointed governor, improved and extended the city's fortifications, encompassing the new districts of Saint-André and La Madeleine to the northwest, as far as the Citadelle. The intramural area was thus increased from 142 to 206 hectares, to which were added 205 hectares of fortifications. These works won the confidence of the Flemish subjects. From April to December 1672, the King appointed D'Artagnan governor of the city, temporarily replacing Marshal d'Humières.
During the War of the Spanish Succession, which pitted France against the coalition of Great Britain, the United Provinces, Austria and Prussia, the fortified town was besieged in mid-August 1708 by the 75,000 men of the Duke of Marlborough and Prince Eugene of Savoy. The Lille garrison, commanded by Marshal de Boufflers, numbered 15,000 men. At the end of October, Boufflers was forced to abandon the city, retreating with 5,000 men to the Vauban citadel. He finally surrendered in early December. The city was then occupied for five years by coalition troops. Lille was returned to France when peace was signed in Utrecht on April 11, 1713.
During the 18th century, the Age of Enlightenment, Lille remained deeply Catholic.
The French Revolution
In 1789, the town suffered riots and the destruction of several religious establishments, notably the collegiate church of Saint-Pierre. In 1790, the first elected municipality was set up, replacing the old municipal administration, the Magistrat, which dated back to the Middle Ages. In 1792, the French Revolution prompted the Austrians, then present in the United Provinces, to lay siege to Lille on April 20, until a truce on May 18. A new siege began in the autumn, accompanied by a bombardment that lasted from September 29 to October 3. Faced with resistance from the people of Lille, led by their mayor François André, and pressure from the revolutionary armies, Albert de Saxe-Teschen lifted the siege on October 8. This bombardment is depicted by the painter Louis Joseph Watteau, in a painting kept by the Lille Museum, entitled "Tableau du Bombardement de Lille en 1792" (Painting of the Bombardment of Lille in 1792), which shows the flooding of the Wazemmes sector from the Haute-Deûle and "la lunette de Fives formée par la Chaude-Rivière" (the Fives lunette formed by the Chaude-Rivière), caused to protect the city from the Austrians.
On October 12, 1792, the National Convention unanimously decreed that "Lille has well deserved its fatherland". To celebrate the city's resistance, the inhabitants placed dummy cannonballs on certain facades (notably in the facades of the "rang du beau regard"), around the "place du théâtre". Similarly, the "Column of the Goddess", originally sculpted to appear on the Arc de Triomphe de l'Étoile, was erected in 1845 on the "Grand'Place" to commemorate the event.
The implementation of the republican calendar, which came into force in October 1793, was not self-evident among Catholics: the Société Populaire de Lille (Lille People's Society) struggled to cope with the fact that the people of Lille stopped working on Sundays (in the republican calendar, the day of rest is the decadi), and even celebrated the day. On Frimaire 18, Year II (December 8, 1793), she asked the municipality to stop dancing on "the old Sundays". On 7 Pluviose An II (January 26, 1794), she protested against teachers who gave their pupils the day off "on the former Sundays and feast days". Protestants in Lille, on the other hand, had no difficulty in adopting the new rhythm of life and held their assemblies and worship services on decadi instead of Sundays.
The 19th century