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Guise (Municipality, Aisne, France)

Flag of Guise, current and former versions - Images by Olivier Touzeau, 7 July 2020

Presentation of Guise
Flag of Guise

See also:

Presentation of Guise

The municipality of Guise (4,731 inhabitants in 2018; 1,613 ha) is located 30 km north-east of Saint-Quentin.

Guise and its medieval castle were the strongholed of the Dukes of Guise. The House of Guise is partly responsible for the French Wars of Religion: Henry, third Duke of Guise (1550–1588), helped planning the infamous St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre of the Huguenots and formed the Catholic League.
Guise was the birthplace of Camille Desmoulins (1760–1794), a journalist and politician who played an important part in the French Revolution, and of Jeanne Macherez, a heroine of the the First World War.
A memorial erected in Guise celebrates the battle of Saint-Quentin, fought in and around the town on 29 August 1914.

Jean-Baptiste Godin, a manufacturer of cast-iron stoves, built over a period of 20 years, beginning about 1856, the Familistère, an industrial and communal residential complex that formed a separate community within Guise. It expressed many of his ideas about developing social sympathy through improved housing and services for workers and their families, influenced by the ideas of the philosopher Charles Fourier. In 1880 Godin created a cooperative association by which the workers owned and managed the complex. This continued until 1968.

Olivier Touzeau & Ivan Sache, 4 November 2008

Flag of Guise

The flag of Guise (photo, photo) is white with the municipal logo adoptee in 2012. The former flag of Guise (photo, photo) was white with the former municipal logo.

he logo features the town's medal adopted by the municipality in the 20th century, which shows:
- in chief, the keep of the medieval fortress, as increased in the 16-17th century and restored in 1968.
- on the left, the statue of Jean-Baptiste Godin, inaugurated on 2 June 1889 in front of the Familistère.
- on the right, the statue of Camille Desmoulins erected on the Place d'Armes. Desmoulins is represented raising a branch of horse chestnut, recalling his call to the seizure of the Bastile fortress [indeed to armed insurrection] pronounced on 12 July 1789 in the gardens of Palais-Royal. [Other versions of the event invoke a linden branch or a green ribbon.]
- in the background, the facade of the Familistère - in base, the arms of the town of Guise, dated to the 15th century.
[Guise blog, 29 July 2014]

Ivan Sache, 2 August 2020