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46-481: Spanning the departments of Orne , Manche , Mayenne , and Sarthe , the Normandie-Maine park was created in 1975 with a total area of 234,000 hectares (580,000 acres). As of 2011, the parkland has expanded to a total area of 257,000 hectares (640,000 acres) and includes 164 communes with fourteen associated partner communes; the number of inhabitants within the park is approximately 171,000. The park encompasses

92-456: A county of the United States . At the 2001 census, the median population of a department in continental France was 511,000 inhabitants, which is 21 times the median population of a United States county, but less than two-thirds of the median population of a ceremonial county of England and Wales. Most of the departments have an area of between 4,000 and 8,000 km (1500 to 3000 sq. mi.), and

138-495: A more uniform division into departments ( département ) and districts in late 1789. The process began on 4 August 1789 with the elimination of provincial privileges, and a 22 December 1789 decree (with letters patent in January 1790) provided for the termination of the provincial governments. The modern department system, as all-purpose units of the government, was decreed on 26 February 1790 (with letters patent on 4 March 1790) by

184-509: A population between 320,000 and 1 million. The largest in area is Gironde (10,000 km (3,900 sq mi).), while the smallest is the city of Paris (105 km (41 sq mi).). The most populous is Nord (2,550,000) and the least populous is Lozère (74,000). The departments are numbered: their two-digit numbers appear in postal codes , in INSEE codes (including "social security numbers") and on vehicle number plates . Initially

230-405: A president. Their main areas of responsibility include the management of a number of social and welfare allowances, of junior high school ( collège ) buildings and technical staff, and local roads and school and rural buses, and a contribution to municipal infrastructures. Local services of the state administration are traditionally organised at departmental level, where the prefect represents

276-399: A three-digit number. The number is used, for example, in the postal code and was until recently used for all vehicle registration plates . Residents commonly use the numbers to refer to their own department or a neighbouring one, for example inhabitants of Loiret may refer to their department as "the 45". More distant departments are generally referred to by their names, as few people know

322-646: A younger brother, Marc-Pierre, Comte d'Argenson (1696-1764), who served as Minister of War from 1743 to 1747. His father was Lieutenant General of Police and Controller-General of Finances , one of the most important positions in the Ancien Régime . He was a member of the Noblesse de robe or Nobles of the robe , a class that formed the Second Estate whose rank derived from holding judicial or administrative posts. They were usually hard-working professionals, unlike

368-525: Is commonly associated, though not all are officially recognised or used. Unlike the rest of the French possessions in Africa , Algeria was divided into departments just like Corsica or Normandy from 1848 until its independence in 1962. These departments were supposed to be "assimilated" or "integrated" to France sometime in the future. There are a number of former departments in territories conquered by France during

414-411: Is known as the prefecture ( préfecture ) or chef-lieu de département and is generally a town of some importance roughly at the geographical centre of the department. This was determined according to the time taken to travel on horseback from the periphery of the department. The goal was for the prefecture to be accessible on horseback from any town in the department within 24 hours. The prefecture

460-555: Is not necessarily the largest city in the department: for instance, in Saône-et-Loire department the capital is Mâcon , but the largest city is Chalon-sur-Saône . Departments may be divided into arrondissements . The capital of an arrondissement is called a subprefecture ( sous-préfecture ) or chef-lieu d'arrondissement . Each department is administered by a departmental council ( conseil départemental ), an assembly elected for six years by universal suffrage , with

506-574: The Ponts et Chaussées (Bridges and Highways) infrastructure administration. Before the French Revolution , France gained territory gradually through the annexation of a mosaic of independent entities. By the end of the Ancien Régime it was organised into provinces . During the Revolution they were dissolved, partly in order to weaken old loyalties. The National Constituent Assembly decided to create

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552-651: The 1823 French intervention ending the trienio liberal ) and the 1833 territorial division of Spain , which forms the basis of the present day Provinces of Spain with minor modifications, are also based on the French model of departments of roughly equal size. Most French departments are assigned a two-digit number, the Official Geographical Code, allocated by the Institut national de la statistique et des études économiques ( Insée ). Overseas departments have

598-512: The Considérations sur le gouvernement de France (Amsterdam, 1764) and Essais dans le goût de ceux de Montaigne (Amsterdam, 1785). The latter, which contains many useful biographical notes and portraits of his contemporaries, was republished in 1787 as Loisirs d’un ministre d’état . D'Argenson's most important work, however, is his Mémoires , covering in great detail the years 1725 to 1756, with an introductory part giving his recollections since

644-678: The French Revolution and Napoleonic Empire that are now not part of France: Dutch Republic : Holy Roman Empire : Dutch Republic : Holy Roman Empire : Dutch Republic : Holy Roman Empire : Holy Roman Empire : Electorate of the Palatinate Electorate of the Palatinate Kingdom of Prussia : Imperial Free City of Wesel (after 1805) Notes for Table 7: Ren%C3%A9 Louis de Voyer de Paulmy d%27Argenson René-Louis de Voyer de Paulmy, marquis of Argenson (18 October 1694 – 26 January 1757)

690-471: The ISO 3166-2 country subdivision codes for the metropolitan departments. The overseas departments have three digits. Originally, the relationship between the departments and the central government was left somewhat ambiguous. While citizens in each department elected their own officials, the local governments were subordinated to the central government, becoming instruments of national integration. By 1793, however,

736-585: The National Constituent Assembly . Their boundaries served two purposes: The old nomenclature was carefully avoided in naming the new departments. Most were named after an area's principal river or other physical features. Even Paris was in the department of Seine . Savoy , during its temporary occupation, became the department of Mont-Blanc . The provinces continued to exist administratively until 21 September 1791. The number of departments, initially 83, had been increased to 130 by 1809 with

782-634: The President of the Departmental Council as executive of the department. Before 1982, the chief executive of the department was the prefect ( préfet ), who represents the Government of France in each department and is appointed by the President of the French Republic . The prefect is assisted by one or more sub-prefects ( sous-préfet ) based in the subprefectures of the department. Since 1982,

828-561: The Sarthe river valley and the large Forest of Andaines . The park contains seventeen sites that have been listed as Natura 2000 protected areas. Twelve of these prtected areas are managed by the park, with 5 being managed by other external bodies. List of Natura 2000 sites wiuthin the Normandie-Maine Regional Natural Park; The park also contains a Regional Nature Reserve that is 0.37 hectares in area, making it

874-569: The Territoire de Belfort ; the remaining parts of Meurthe and Moselle were merged into a new Meurthe-et-Moselle department. When France regained the ceded departments after World War I , the Territoire de Belfort was not reintegrated into Haut-Rhin. In 1922 it became France's 90th department. Likewise the Lorraine departments were not changed back to their original boundaries, and a new Moselle department

920-651: The UMP , said in December 2008 that the fusion of the departments with the regions was a matter to be dealt with soon. This was soon refuted by Édouard Balladur and Gérard Longuet , members of the committee for the reform of local authorities, known as the Balladur Committee. In January 2008, the Attali Commission recommended that the departmental level of government should be eliminated within ten years. Nevertheless,

966-412: The Balladur Committee has not retained this proposition and does not advocate the disappearance of the departments, but simply "favors the voluntary grouping of departments", which it suggests also for the regions, with the aim of reducing the number of regions to 15. This committee advocates, on the contrary, the suppression of the cantons. Each department has a coat of arms and a flag with which it

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1012-826: The Republic (all created in 1946) – French Guiana , Guadeloupe , Martinique and Réunion – the total number of departments in the French Republic had become 101. In 2015 the Urban Community of Lyon was split from Rhône to form the Métropole de Lyon , a sui generis entity, with the powers of both an intercommunality and those of a department on its territory, formally classified as a "territorial collectivity with particular status" ( French : collectivité territoriale à statut particulier ) and as such not belonging to any department. As of 2019 Corse-du-Sud and Haute-Corse are still administrative departments, although they no longer have

1058-423: The administrative basis for the local organisation of police, fire departments as well as, in certain cases, elections. Each department is administered by an elected body called a departmental council ( sg. conseil départemental , pl. conseils départementaux ). From 1800 to April 2015, these were called general councils ( sg. conseil général , pl. conseils généraux ). Each council has

1104-626: The aristocratic Noblesse d'épée or Nobles of the Sword . His grandfather and great-grandfather both served as French ambassador to the Republic of Venice . D'Argenson qualified as a lawyer, and held successively the posts of councillor at the Parlement (1716), maître des requêtes (1718), councillor of state (1719), and Intendant of justice, police and finance in Hainaut . During his five years’ tenure of

1150-623: The blame on him; the intrigues of the courtiers passed unnoticed by him; whilst the secret diplomacy of the king neutralized his initiative. He concluded the marriage of the Louis, the Dauphin to Maria , a daughter of King Augustus III of Poland , but was unable to prevent the election of the Francis, Grand-Duke of Tuscany as Holy Roman Emperor in 1745. On 10 January 1747 Louis XV thanked d'Argenson for his services. He then retired into private life, eschewed

1196-414: The country's capital city, is a commune as well as a department. In continental France ( metropolitan France , excluding Corsica ), the median land area of a department is 5,965 km (2,303 sq mi), which is two-and-a-half times the median land area of the ceremonial counties of England and the preserved counties of Wales and slightly more than three-and-half times the median land area of

1242-533: The court, associated with Voltaire, Condillac and d’Alembert, and spent his declining years in working at the Académie des Inscriptions , of which he was appointed president by the king in 1747, and revising his Mémoires . Voltaire, in one of his letters, declared him to be "the best citizen that had ever tasted the ministry". He died on 26 January 1757. D'Argenson left a large number of manuscript works, of which his son, Marc Antoine René, Marquis de Paulmy , published

1288-458: The government had been placed by Louis XV virtually in the hands of the two brothers. The marquis d’Argenson endeavoured to reform the system of international relations. He dreamed of a "European Republic", and wished to establish arbitration between nations in pursuance of the ideas of his friend the abbé de Saint-Pierre . But he failed to realize any part of his projects. The generals negotiated in opposition to his instructions; his colleagues laid

1334-620: The government; however, regions have gained importance since the 2000s, with some department-level services merged into region-level services. The departments were created in 1790 as a rational replacement of Ancien Régime provinces with a view to strengthen national unity; the title "department" is used to mean a part of a larger whole. Almost all of them were named after physical geographical features (rivers, mountains, or coasts), rather than after historical or cultural territories, which could have their own loyalties, or after their own administrative seats. The division of France into departments

1380-499: The last office he was mainly employed in provisioning the troops, who were suffering from the economic confusion resulting from John Law's system and the aftermath of the Mississippi Bubble . D'Argenson returned to court in 1724 to exercise his functions as councillor of state. At that time he had the reputation of being a conscientious man, but ill-adapted to intrigue, and was nicknamed "la bête". He entered into relations with

1426-640: The new Savoyard territory, while the department of Alpes-Maritimes was created from Nice and a portion of the Var department. The 89 departments were given numbers based on the alphabetical order of their names. The department of Bas-Rhin and parts of Meurthe , Moselle , Vosges and Haut-Rhin were ceded to the German Empire in 1871 following France's defeat in the Franco-Prussian War . A small part of Haut-Rhin, however, remained French and became known as

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1472-407: The numbers corresponded to the alphabetical order of the names of the departments, but several changed their names and some have been divided, so the correspondence became less exact. Alphanumeric codes 2A and 2B were used for Corsica while it was split but it has since reverted to 20. The two-digit code "98" is used by Monaco . Together with the ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 country code FR, the numbers form

1518-442: The numbers of all the departments. In 2014, President François Hollande proposed abolishing departmental councils by 2020, which would have maintained the departments as administrative divisions, and transferring their powers to other levels of governance. This reform project has since been scrapped. The first French territorial departments were proposed in 1665 by Marc-René d'Argenson to serve as administrative areas purely for

1564-533: The philosophers, and was won over to the ideas of reform. He was the friend of Voltaire , who had been a fellow-student of his at the Jesuit college Louis-le-Grand , and a leading member of the Club de l'Entresol , an early modern think tank , the history of which he wrote in his memoirs. It was then that he prepared his Considérations sur le gouvernement de la France , which was published posthumously by his son. D'Argenson

1610-478: The prefect retains only the powers that are not delegated to the department councils. In practice, their role has been largely limited to preventing local policy from conflicting with national policy. The departments are further divided into communes , governed by municipal councils . As of 2013, there were 36,681 communes in France. In the overseas territories , some communes play a role at departmental level. Paris ,

1656-460: The revolutionary government had turned the departments into transmission belts for policies enacted in Paris. With few exceptions, the departments had this role until the early 1960s. These maps cannot be used as a useful resource of voter preferences, because Departmental Councils are elected on a two-round system, which drastically limits the chances of fringe parties, if they are not supported on one of

1702-408: The smallest nature reserve in France, called La carrière des Vaux . The park is spread across 163 communes. 48°29′24″N 0°13′17″W  /  48.49000°N 0.22139°W  / 48.49000; -0.22139 Departments of France In the administrative divisions of France , the department ( French : département , pronounced [depaʁtəmɑ̃] ) is one of

1748-428: The status of departmental " territorial collectivities ": region and department functions have been managed by a " single territorial collectivity " since 2018. Despite the intention to avoid the old nomenclature, often the names of pre-1790 provinces remained in use. For example, the name of Berry , though no longer having an official status, remains in widespread use in daily life. The departmental seat of government

1794-575: The territorial gains of the Republic and of the First French Empire . Following the defeats of Napoleon in 1814–1815 the Congress of Vienna returned France to its pre-war size and the number of departments was reduced to 86 (three of the original departments having been split). In 1860 France acquired the County of Nice and Savoy , which led to the creation of three new departments. Two were added from

1840-480: The three levels of government under the national level (" territorial collectivities "), between the administrative regions and the communes . There are ninety-six departments in metropolitan France , with an additional five overseas departments , which are also classified as overseas regions. Departments are further subdivided into 333 arrondissements and 2,054 cantons (as of 2023). These last two levels of government have no political autonomy, instead serving as

1886-455: The two rounds by a moderate party. After the 1992 election, the left had a majority in only 21 of the 100 departments; after the 2011 election, the left dominated 61 of the 100 departments. (Mayotte only became a department after the election.) Key to the parties: The removal of one or more levels of local government has been discussed for some years; in particular, the option of removing the departmental level. Frédéric Lefebvre , spokesman for

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1932-487: The year 1696. They are, as they were intended to be, valuable "materials for the history of his time". There are two important editions, the first, with some letters, not elsewhere published, by the marquis d’Argenson, his great-grand-nephew (5 vols., Paris, 1857 et seq.); the second, more correct, but less complete, published by J. B. Rathery, for the Société de l’Histoire de France (9 vols., Paris, 1859 et seq.). The other works of

1978-420: Was a politician who served as Minister for Foreign Affairs from November 1744 to January 1747 and was a friend of Voltaire . His younger brother, Marc-Pierre, Count of Argenson (1696-1764), was Minister of War from 1743 to 1757. René-Louis de Voyer de Paulmy was born 18 October 1694, eldest son of Marc-René de Voyer de Paulmy d'Argenson (1652-1721) and Marguerite Le Fèvre de Caumartin (1672-1719). He had

2024-484: Was a project particularly identified with the French revolutionary leader the Abbé Sieyès , although it had already been frequently discussed and written about by many politicians and thinkers. The earliest known suggestion of it is from 1665 in the writings of d'Argenson . They have inspired similar divisions in many countries, some of them former French colonies. The 1822 territorial division of Spain (reverted due to

2070-632: Was also the friend and counsellor of the minister Germain Louis Chauvelin . In May 1744 he was appointed member of the council of finance, and in November of the same year King Louis XV chose him as secretary of state for foreign affairs, his brother, Marc-Pierre, Comte d'Argenson , being at the same time secretary of state for war. France was at that time engaged in the War of the Austrian Succession , and

2116-463: Was created in the regained territory, with slightly different boundaries from the pre-war department of the same name. The reorganisation of Île-de-France in 1968 and the division of Corsica in 1975 added six more departments, raising the total in Metropolitan France to 96. By 2011, when the overseas collectivity of Mayotte became a department, joining the earlier overseas departments of

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