Châtellerault lies on the river Vienne, a few km downstream from its confluence with the Clain in Cenon-sur-Vienne.
History
Châtellerault was an important stronghold on the northern march of Poitou, established by the Count of Poitiers to secure his borders in the early 10th century. The count's local representative, the Vicomte de Châtellerault was established as a hereditary appointment by the time of Airaud who was probably a kinsman of the counts of Auvergne and dukes of Aquitaine; his heirs were vicomtes (viscounts) until the mid-11th century.
The title, Vicomte de Châtellerault, passed in turn to each of three great French noble families: La Rochefoucauld, Lusignan and, from the thirteenth century until the French Revolution, to the family of Harcourt.
From medieval times, Châtellerault was known for its cutlery and swordmaking industry, and in 1816 the commune became a center for arms manufacture for the French government. The Manufacture d'armes de Châtellerault was one of France's four principal state-owned arms manufacturers, providing most of the infantry small arms used by the French Army and Navy. MAC was created in 1819, and operated continually until it was closed as a weapon manufacturing facility in 1968. It saw the creation in 1886, and later the mass production, of the Lebel rifle which was the main French infantry weapon used during the First World War (1914–1918). It also was the source of the first 500,000 production Model 1891 Mosin–Nagant rifles, as the Russian armament industry could not tool up quickly enough to produce them for the rearmament of the Imperial Russian Army.
The facility has now been transformed into the central repository (Centre des Archives de l'Armement et du Personnel) of all the French military archives related to armament matters. Archived and declassified MAC records are open to bona fide scholars and researchers upon written request.
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