The five other capitals of France before Paris

Paris is the capital of France. Duh! But it hasn’t always been. The capital city, as the permanent and unique seat of the government, is a modern concept so we can discount the settlements of Gaul and the various royal residences of old which included Soissons, Laon, Orléans, Troyes and Bourges. Reims, where kings were consecrated, could claim to have been a spiritual capital, if there were such a thing. 

All that aside, we can narrow down the list to five cities that have served as the French capital before Paris became the undisputed fulcrum of the nation on its liberation from Nazi occupation in 1944.

1. Versailles. The Sun King, Louis XIV, established the court in his vast palace in 1682 and it was from here that his realm was administered for the next hundred years. In the summer of 1789, the revolutionaries moved the action to Paris, which served as the capital of kingdoms and republics, with two short breaks, until June 1940.

2. Bordeaux. The port city on the Gironde has the distinction of having been the temporary capital of the country three times when Paris was threatened by a German army. It happened first during the disastrous Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1. The second occasion was in 1914, at the start of World War One. The government took refuge here again in June 1940, as the Fall of France approached. This time Paris really was lost.

3. Tours. Before Bordeaux, this city in the Loire received the fleeing government between 10 and 13 June 1940 as the German army advanced across northern France. Churchill flew here with a fighter escort to discuss what was to be done about the situation. He urged his opposite number, Paul Reynard, not to concede defeat but to fight on. He left a cigar burn on a desk of the prefecture which is still visible today.

4. Vichy. The armistice signed on 22 June 1940 allowed the Germans to occupy the north of the country, the Atlantic seaboard and Paris. This sedate town in the Massif Central was chosen as the seat of Petain’s infamous collaborationist regime which ruled over the unoccupied ‘Free Zone’. Before Vichy, Clermont-Ferrand was tried out as the de facto capital for one day but it didn’t have the facilities to support all the personnel to run a government.

5. Brazzaville, Republic of Congo. France’s colonial possessions in Africa remained beyond the reach of the Vichy government during World War Two. This city became the capital of Free France between 1943-4. When the Allies took French Algeria as part of the North African campaign, Algiers replaced Brazzaville as an impromptu capital to rival the dubiously legitimate Vichy.