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Guise
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Guise is a commune in the Aisne department in Hauts-de-France in northern France. The city was the birthplace of the noble family of Guise, Dukes of Guise, who later became Princes of Joinville.
The remains of the medieval castle of Guise, the seat of the Dukes of Guise, is within the commune. Originally an early medieval wooden motte and bailey castle, it was rebuilt in stone and then massively expanded during the 12th-16th centuries. It was remodelled by Marquis de Vauban in the late 17th century to meet the advances in siege technology then taking place. Much of the castle was reduced to rubble during the First World War and, from 1952 onwards, it has been undergoing restoration by the Club du Vieux Manoir. Nowadays it is a popular tourist site.
Guise was the birthplace of Camille Desmoulins (1760-1794), a journalist and politician who played an important part in the French Revolution, and that of Jeanne Macherez who was a heroine during the World War I.
Over a period of 20 years, beginning about 1856, Jean-Baptiste Godin built the Familistery of Guise (the Social Palace), an industrial and communal residential complex that was a separate community within Guise. It expressed many of his ideas about developing social sympathy through improved housing and services for workers and their families, influenced by the ideas of the philosopher Charles Fourier. In 1880 Godin created a cooperative association by which the workers owned and managed the complex. This continued until 1968.
On the 29th of August 1914 the Battle of St. Quentin (1914) was fought in and around the town. A memorial in Guise celebrates this event.
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