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 MONTARGIS, a town of central France, capital of an arrondissement in the department of Loiret, 47 m. E.N.E. of Orléans by rail. Pop. (1906), 11,038. The town is traversed by the Vernisson, by numerous arms of the Loing, and by the Briare canal, which unites with the canal of Orléans a little below it. It has a church (Ste Madeleine), dating in part from the 12th century and including a fine choir of Renaissance architecture, and still preserves portions of its once magnificent castle (12th to 15th centuries), which, previous to the erection of Fontainebleau, was a favourite residence of the royal family. A handsome modern building contains the town-hall, public library, and museum; in the courtyard is a bronze group, “The Dog of Montargis”; the town has a statue of Mirabeau, born in the neighbourhood. Montargis is the seat of a sub-prefecture, and has tribunals of first instance and of commerce and colleges for both sexes. It manufactures paper, gold chains, rubber, tar, asphalt, chemical manures, woodwork and leather. The town is an agricultural market, and its port has trade in coal, timber, sheep and farm produce.

Montargis was formerly the capital of the Gâtinais. Having passed in 1188 from the Courtenay family to Philip Augustus, it long formed part of the royal domain. In 1528 Francis I. gave it as dowry to Renée d’Este, daughter of Louis XII., the famous Huguenot princess; from her it passed to her daughter Anne, and through her to the dukes of Guise; it was repurchased for the Crown in 1612. From 1626 till the Revolution the territory was the property of the house of Orléans. Montargis was several times taken or attacked by the English in the 15th century, and is particularly noted for its successful defence in 1427. Both Charles VII. and Charles VIII. held court in the town; it was the latter who set the famous Dog of Montargis to fight a duel with his master’s murderer whom he had tracked and captured.  MONTAUBAN, ARTHUR DE (d. 1479), French magistrate and prelate, belonged to one of the great families of Brittany. To satisfy a private grudge against Gilles, brother of Duke Francis II. of Brittany, he intrigued to such good purpose that Gilles was arraigned for treason, and finally assassinated in prison in 1450. When Montauban’s duplicity was discovered he was deprived of his office of bailli of Cotentin and banished. He then turned monk, and through the support of his brother, John de Montauban (1412–1466), Louis XI.’s favourite, obtained the archbishopric of Bordeaux in 1468. He died in Paris on the 9th of March 1479.  MONTAUBAN, a town of south-western France, capital of Tarn-et-Garonne, 31 m. N. of Toulouse by the Southern railway. Pop. (1906), town, 16,813; commune, 28,688. The town, built mainly of a reddish brick, stands on the right bank of the Tarn at its confluence with the Tescou. Its fortifications have been replaced by boulevards beyond which extend numerous suburbs, while on the left bank of the Tarn is the suburb of Villebourbon, which is connected with the town by a remarkable bridge of the early 14th century. It is a brick structure over 200 yds. in length, and though its fortified towers have disappeared it is

otherwise in good preservation. The hôtel de ville, on the site of a castle of the counts of Toulouse and once the residence of the bishops of Montauban, stands at the east end of the bridge. It belongs chiefly to the 17th century, but some portions are much older, notably an underground chamber known as the Hall of the Black Prince. Besides the municipal offices it contains a valuable library, and a museum with collections of antiquities and pictures. The latter comprise most of the work (including his “Jesus among the Doctors”) of Jean Ingres, the celebrated painter, whose birth in Montauban is commemorated by an elaborate monument. The Place Nationale is a square of the 17th century, entered at each corner by gateways giving access to a large open space surrounded by houses carried on double rows of arcades. The prefecture, the law-courts and the remaining public buildings are modern. The chief churches of Montauban are the cathedral, remarkable only for the possession of the “Vow of Louis XIII.,” one of the masterpieces of Ingres, and the church of St Jacques (14th and 15th centuries), the façade of which is surmounted by a handsome octagonal tower. Montauban is the seat of a bishop, a prefect and a court of assize. It has tribunals of first instance and of commerce, a chamber of commerce and a board of trade arbitration, lycées and a training college, schools of commerce and viticulture, a branch of the Bank of France, and a faculty of Protestant theology. The commercial importance of Montauban is due rather to its trade in agricultural produce, horses, game and poultry, than to its industries, which include nursery-gardening, cloth-weaving, cloth-dressing, flour-milling, wood-sawing, and the manufacture of furniture, silk-gauze and straw hats. The town is a junction of the railways of the Southern and Orléans companies, and communicates with the Garonne by the Canal of Montech.

With the exception of Mont-de-Marsan, Montauban is the oldest of the bastides of southern France. Its foundation dates from 1144 when Alphonse Jourdain, count of Toulouse, granted it a liberal charter. The inhabitants were drawn chiefly from Montauriol, a village which had grown up around the neighbouring monastery of St Théodard. In the 13th century the town suffered much from the ravages of the Albigensians and from the Inquisition, but by 1317 it had recovered sufficiently to be chosen by John XXII. as the head of a diocese of which the basilica of St Théodard became the cathedral. By the treaty of Brétigny (1360) it was ceded to the English; but in 1414 they were expelled by the inhabitants. In 1560 the bishops and magistrates embraced Protestantism, expelled the monks, and demolished the cathedral. About ten years later it became one of the Huguenot strongholds, and formed a small independent republic. It was the headquarters of the Huguenot rebellion of 1621, and was vainly besieged by Louis XIII. for eighty-six days; nor did it submit until after the fall of La Rochelle in 1629, when its fortifications were destroyed by Richelieu. In the same year the plague cut off over 6000 of its inhabitants. The Protestants again suffered persecution after the repeal of the Edict of Nantes.  MONTAUSIER, CHARLES DE SAINTE-MAURE, (1610–1690), French soldier, was born on the 6th of October 1610, being the second son of Léon de Sainte-Maure, baron de Montausier. His parents were Huguenots, and he was educated at the Protestant College of Sedan under Pierre du Moulin. He served brilliantly at the siege of Casale in 1630. Becoming marquis de Montausier by the death of his elder brother in 1635, he was the recognized aspirant for the hand of Mme de Rambouillet’s daughter Julie Lucine d’Angennes (1607–1671). Having served under Bernard of Saxe-Weimar in Germany in 1634 he returned to the French service in 1636, and fought in the Rhenish campaigns of the following years. He was taken prisoner at Rantzau in November 1643, and only ransomed after ten months’ captivity. On his return to France he became a lieutenant-general. On the 15th of July 1645 he married “the incomparable Julie,” thus terminating a courtship famous in the annals of French literature because of the Guirlande de Julie, a garland of verse consisting of madrigals by Montausier, Jean Chapelain, Guillaume Colletet, Claude de