Wassy

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Wassy is a commune in the Haute-Marne department in northeastern France.

It is known mainly as the site of the massacre of Wassy in 1562, which marked the beginning of the Wars of Religion in France.

Geography

Location

Wassy is located on the Blaise, a small river falling into the Marne. As a reminder, the Blaise came from Gillancourt, near Colombey-les-Deux-Églises, and entered the Marne near Arrigny, north of Lake Der (in Antiquity, the Blaise went, parallel to the Marne, to Châlons-en-Champagne).

Urbanism

Typology
Wassy is a rural municipality, as it is part of the sparsely or very sparsely populated communes within the meaning of the INSEE density communal grid.
It belongs to the urban unit of Wassy, an intra-departmental agglomeration grouping and in 2017, of which it is city-centre.

The commune is also part of the area of attraction of Saint-Dizier, of which it is a municipality of the crown. This area, which includes , is categorized in areas from to less than .

Land use
Land use in the municipality, as reflected in the European database of biophysical land use Corine Land Cover (CLC), is marked by the importance of forests and semi-natural habitats (62.5% in 2018), which is the same as in 1990 (62.6%). The detailed breakdown in 2018 is as follows:
forest (58.6%), arable land (21%), grassland (6.5 %), heterogeneous agricultural areas (4.6%), shrub and/or grassy vegetation (3.9 %), urbanized areas (3.8%), industrial or commercial areas and communication networks (0.8%), continental waters (0.7%). The evolution of land use in the municipality and its infrastructure can be observed on the different cartographic representations of the territory: the map of Cassini (), the staff map (1820-1866) and the aerial maps or photographs of the IGN for the current period (1950 to present).

Toponymy
The rapprochement of the ancient names of Wassy, Vassy, Vuasiacus at the end of Antiquity, of surrounding toponyms (Val, Vallage, Vaux) and that of the Vadicasses is tempting. Indeed, according to the ancient geographers Strabon and Ptolemy, the Vadicasses formed a civitas (among the hundred that the Gaul counted), located at the western end of that of the Leuques (Toul, Nasium/Naix-aux-Forges); which allows for the hypothesis of a situation in the capital of the Vadicas in Wassy.

The first appearance of Wassy's name in a written document dates back to 672, in the charter of Childeric II, which granted part of the completion of this city for the foundation of the Abbey of Montier-en-Der: in foreste dervo and in fine Vuasciacense.

History

Wassy would have been destroyed again by Attila before or after his defeat at the battle of the Catalan fields.

Marie Stuart, born on , Queen of Scotland then Queen of France, wife of , received in gift p