Our department is part of the Occitanie region, appointed according to the Homonyme river, located in the southwest of France. INSEE and La Poste attribute code 09. Our prefecture is Foix with its almost 9000 inhabitants!
Composite material The Ariège was formed in 1790 of the addition of the former county of Foix , almost the entire Couserans , the Pays d'Olmes (Fatherland of Fabien Barthez and Perrine Laffont) of Quérigut and Donezan .
Ariège is a vast department! We are a bordering south of the Principality of Andorra and Spanish Catalonia, west of Haute-Garonne and east of the Eastern Pyrenees and Aude.
Plains and hillsides from Lower Ariège with cereal production with the 6 border summits culminating at more than 3000m. Ariège also has many historic sites from prehistory to the present day.
Birth of Ariège:
Let's go back to the 18th century with Marc-Guillaume-Alexis Vadier "The Creator of the Department".
On July 17, 1736 born in Pamiers Le Petit Marc-Guillaume-Alexis who became a French politician, whose activity will be exercised during the Revolution.
At the start of his Vadier career was a soldier from a bourgeois family in Pamiers. A rich landowner he resigned at 26 years from the army to become an advisor to the Sénéchaussée and the Presidial. The Presidial is a court deeming small baux affairs and crimes. It is a court of the old regime.
Vadier enjoys great popularity in the county of Foix because he has in his position in the presidial, ardently defended the underprivileged.
On June 20, 1789, Vadier was registered present on the oath of the palm game as a deputy.
Vadier is particularly involved during the discussion on the division of France in departments which opens on November 3, 1789. He opposed the representatives of Languedoc, Roussillon, Comminges and Couserans who want to share the territory of the County of Foix and proposes by initiating many negotiations the creation of a department of Ariège by adding Mirepoix and the Couserans.
Foix becomes the head of department.
On December 13, Vadier and Bergasse-Larizoule write "Pamiers and Foix must meet without wasting time to do the appropriate steps with the cities of Saint-Girons and Mirepoix and others for the formation of the department". The negotiation is tough, the neighboring departments do not want Ariège and want to take control of all the territories claimed by Vadier. St Girons, Mirepoix and Foix want to become a prefecture!
The division proposed by Vadier is selected. This division becomes a reference for discussions still underway for other departments. On January 18, 1790, Vadier, Bergasse-Larizoule and Jean Bernard signed, in Paris, the final agreement of the creation of the department of Ariège.
Ariège was born!
Let us continue our presentation of our Vadier deputy because his life known to many adventures that make the history of France:
In 1792 Vadier was elected deputy to the National Convention. Elected by 235 votes out of 313 voters, he is part of the mountain and voted for the death of Louis XVI without appeal or suspended.
From September 1793, he became president and dean of the general security committee, police and repressive body of terror.
VADIER reads to the agreement the dependent file, made up of false evidence, against Catherine Théot. We would probably never have been interested in Catherine Théot if Vadier as part of her presidency of the General Security Committee, had thought of being able to compromise Robespierre by Domino effect. Indirectly, at the end Vadier strategist declares Robespierre aspiring conspirator ...
After the fall of Robespierre, Vadier is accused of having covered the abuses of the terror ... The wind turns ...
Vadier sentenced to deportation, he manages to flee and hide until the amnesty passed to the separation of the Convention.
Vadier, however, fled a troubled period. It is in Belgium that a long exile will end ... At over 92, Marc-Guillaume-Alexis Vadier died on Sunday December 14, 1828 at 6 p.m., in the small house he lived at number 1251 on rue des Douze Apostles, in Brussels.
In 2005 following a request to the Council of State the Department was renamed Ariege Pyrenees.
