Editing Creuse (section)

==History==
Creuse is one of the original 83 departments created during the [[French Revolution]] on 4 March 1790. It was created from the former [[provinces of France|province]] of [[County of Marche|La Marche]].

The '''County of Marche''' was a county in [[France in the Middle Ages|medieval France]] that approximately corresponded to the modern ''département'' of Creuse. Marche first appeared as a separate fief around the mid-10th century, when [[William III, Duke of Aquitaine]], gave it to one of his vassals named Boso, who took the title of count. In the 12th century, the countship passed to the family of [[Lusignan]]. They also were sometimes [[counts and dukes of Angoulême|counts of Angoulême]] and counts of [[Limousin (province)|Limousin]]. With the death of the childless Count Guy in 1308, his possessions in La Marche were seized by [[Philip IV of France]]. In 1316 the king made La Marche an ''[[appanage]]'' for his youngest son the Prince, afterwards [[Charles IV of France|Charles IV]]. Several years later in 1327, La Marche passed into the hands of the [[House of Bourbon]]. The family of [[House of Armagnac|Armagnac]] held it from 1435 to 1477, when it reverted to the Bourbons. In 1527 La Marche was seized by [[Francis I of France|Francis I]] and became part of the domains of the French crown. It was divided into ''Haute Marche'' and ''Basse Marche'', the estates of the former continuing until the 17th century. From 1470 to the Revolution, the province was under the jurisdiction of the [[Parlement of Paris]].

In 1886, [[:fr:Bourganeuf ville lumière|Bourganeuf ville lumière]], located in a remote part of Creuse, became somewhat improbably the third town in France to receive a public electricity supply. Three years later, in 1889, the construction of a primitive hydro-electric factory at [[:fr:Cascade des Jarrauds|Cascade of the Jarrauds (''Cascade des Jarrauds'')]] on the little river [[:fr:Maulde (rivière)|Maulde]] at [[Saint-Martin-Château]], {{convert|14|km|mi|sp=us}} away, established a more reliable electricity supply for the little town. The creation of a power line from the plant to Bourganeuf was supervised by an innovative engineer named [[Marcel Deprez]]; this was the first time that a power line over such a long distance had been constructed in France. The achievement was crowned with the region's first telephone line, which was installed to permit instant communication between the generating station and the newly illuminated town.