Saint-Léger. Henri Lacassagne told the story of the small town

At the invitation of the mayor, Bernard Sauboi, the Raconteur de Pays, Henri Lacassagne came to tell the story of Saint-Léger. The person who loved history, especially those of the Confluent and its surroundings, follows the history of the small town, over the last 2000 years that it has been alive. The ravages of the Visigothic vandals, the occupation of the Romans who brought the grapes, the arrival of the Normans through the Garonne, the 100 years’ war, the cultivation of hemp to provide the ropes necessary for navigation, the discovery of America which brought new plants such as potatoes, beans and tobacco, the wealth that comes from crops in the rich plain and navigation on the Garonne, then the decline with the arrival of the Canal du Midi, that of the Chemin-de-Fer and finally phylloxera which destroyed the grapes all around.

The audience was not left out

Originally, the town of Saint-Léger would be called Centudville. The old Montluc Church was built around the year 1000 and is one of the oldest in the region. In fact mention was made of the navigation on the Garonne and the Port-de-Pascau, which would have had up to 8 pubs, as well as the first suspension bridge that crossed the river, called a “wire bridge”, which allowed him to move quickly. from Guyenne to Gascony and played an important role during the transition. The same goes for floods, some of which have marked history hard, such as “lou Gran Ayagat de la Sen Jean”, the flood of the century at the end of June 1875, where the Garonne would have raged on hundreds swept away houses, villages, bridges, thousands of animals and caused more than 600 deaths. The story was lively, full of news, full of new information, such as the unfinished project of a footbridge, which would have been designed to also cancel the ferry between Montluc and Rébéquet, or a canal to reach Bayonne. Henri Lacassagne named a few families that lived in the town in the early 1900s, as well as the professions that used them. Some names still evoke memories, for others, their descendants still live in the town or those around it. The intervention of the Raconteurs de Pays ended with the name of the places called Saint-Légerois.