Guided tours of the site by volunteers of the association Histoire, Culture et Patrimoine du Pays de Rié. Throughout the afternoon.
Along an educational route, the volunteer guides of HCP Pays de Rié offer a guided tour of the site. They address three topics both geographical and historical: - The ancient island of Rié, - The battle of Rié Island with the presence of Louis XIII, April 16, 1622, - The battle of Mathes and the death of the Vendéen generalissimo, Louis de La Rochejaquelein, June 4, 1815. On this promontory of the former island of Rié, the dunes and marshes invite to the memory of the Wars of Vendée. Catholics and Protestants in the seventeenth century, royalists and Bonapartists in the nineteenth, men fought in this place for their religion or their ideals.
In this former island of Lower Poitou, six years before the Great Siege of La Rochelle, Louis XIII had inflicted a heavy defeat on the Protestant armies of the West. Two centuries later, during the Hundred Days episode, General Louis de La Rochejaquelein of Vendée had fallen in battle on these same battlefields, without having managed to restore Louis XVIII to the throne.