BORDEAUX


Meaning of BORDEAUX in English

n.

City (pop., 1999: city, 215,363; metro. area, 753,931), southwestern France.

Lying on the Garonne River above its junction with the Dordogne , Bordeaux has long been noted for its wine production. As Burdigala, it was the chief town of the Bituriges Vivisci, a Celtic people. Under Roman rule it was capital of Aquitania Secunda. As part of the inheritance of Eleanor of Aquitaine , Bordeaux became English in 1154 on her husband's accession to the English throne as Henry II . It enjoyed great prosperity through a thriving trade with the English until it was united to France on the English defeat in the Hundred Years' War (1453). As a Girondin centre, it suffered severely in the French Revolution . In 1870, during the Franco-Prussian War , the French government was transferred to Bordeaux, as it was again in 1914 at the outbreak of World War I. Its university, founded in 1441, educated such figures as Montesquieu .

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