page_title: Castellane
section_title: 17th and 18th century
hierarchical_section_title: Castellane / 17th and 18th century
caption_attribution_description: This file was uploaded with Commonist. La clue de Taulanne est un passage resserré emprunté par l'ancienne RN 85 (ou route Napoléon), actuellement RD 4085, à environ 1000 m d'altitude (1007 m à la Roche Percée).
context_page_description: Castellane is a commune in the Alpes-de-Haute-Provence department in southeastern France. With about 1,600 inhabitants, Castellane has the distinction of being the least-populated sub-prefecture of France.
  Its inhabitants are referred to as Castellanais.
context_section_description: The plague struck the town again in 1630.
  The Jansenist bishop Jean Soanen tried to make the celebrations of Saint-Sacrement, Saint-Jean and Saint-Éloi more sedate and less unbridled, the youth of the town having a tradition of celebrating with drums, music and gunshots. The youth refused, resisted, made even more noise and even revolted, preventing the procession of the octave du Saint-Sacrement from leaving the church on June 22, 1710. In 1726 the youth of Robion, whom the priest wanted to prevent from dancing on Sunday, also revolted.
  The Austrian-Sardinian army briefly occupied the town in 1746 during the war of the Austrian Succession. In December 1746, Provence was invaded by an Austrian-Sardinian army. A troop of 2,000 men took Castellane, then the surrounding villages, as far as the château of Trigance. After some difficulty, the Spanish and French armies coordinated a counteroffensive, which began at the start of January when French soldiers under the orders of the Count of Maulévrier took an Austrian outpost in Chasteuil. The Austrian commander, Maximilian Ulysses Browne, reinforced his right wing with four battalions garrisoned at Castellane, and six on the south bank of the Verdon. Seven other battalions formed a second available squadron. Nine battalions and ten squads of Spaniards were stationed in Riez and 2,500 Swiss paid by Spain were stationed at Senez. The 21st of January, Hispano-French troops went on the offensive, commanded by the Frenchman Maulévrier and the Spanish Marquis of Taubin. The Spanish left their quarters by night and advanced on Castellane through the clue de Taulanne, while the French passing through the Vodon gorge. The difficult marches necessary to approach in this way nonetheless allowed a coordinated attack around 7am.
  The first outposts were taken without difficulty, which allowed Maulévrier to connect on his left with Taubin, and to send a column of dragoons onto the right bank to cut the Austrians' retreat. This assault took the Austrian-Sardinians fortifications without difficulty, the French-Spanish entered the town and did prevent the last Austrians from retreating. In all, they took 287 Austrians prisoner, including the baron de Neuhaus, the lieutenant-general in command. The Austrian-Sardinians also had a hundred-odd dead, versus twenty Franco-Spanish soldiers. The villages of La Garde, Eoulx, Robion, Taloire, Trigance and Comps were evacuated on January 22.
  In 1760, a tax imposed by the king of Piedmont-Sardinia on sales of cloth brought a large reduction in the town's textile production. Production of cadis, a local form of wool, and of cordeillat, a coarse woolen fabric, continued until the Revolution, and was used by the local residents.
  Until the Revolution salt was produced from two local salt marshes.
  On the eve of the French Revolution, several fiefs existed on the actual territory of the commune: Éoulx, Le Castellet-de-Robion (which became a barony in 1755), Chasteuil, Taulanne and Castillon, plus Castellane. On the same territory there were nine parishes: Castillon, La Baume, Taulanne, La Palud, Chasteuil, Taloire, Villars-Brandis, Robion, et Castellane. The parish of Éoulx overlapped the community of La Garde.
  The city of Castellane alone paid more tax than Digne; it was an important rural town, both for its judiciary functions (with eight lawyers and five prosecutors) and for its production, with twelve factories: among which were six hat shops, two wax factories, one faïence works, one tile factory, one silk fabrication works, and the leather industry was also represented. A royal post office was also installed in Castellane near the end of the Ancien Régime.
caption: Clue de Taulanne
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