Travel Guide Crèvecoeur-En-Brie

This rural commune has barely 400 inhabitants and bears a very strange name! It is said that on the return from the first crusade, the local lord was informed that his wife had cheated on him with the steward and condemned her to be tied to the tail of an untamed horse and dragged to her death. Beforehand, she would have cried out: Ah, what a heartbreak. But this is a legend! The name Crèvecœur - Creive-cor or Crève-cuer - appears in 1175 in the roles of the fiefs of the county of Champagne and Brie. There are two suggestions to the origins of the name. According to one of them, Jean de Crèvecœur, a Norman lord, whose fief is in Crèvecœur-en-Auge, left to conquer England with William the Conqueror and contributed to the victory of Hastings (1066). The lords of Auge are known as great soldiers, but also as architects in fortification for the king and great vassals. We owe them the construction of fortified castles "à la Crèvecœur". Moreover, in the Middle Ages, a "crève-cœur" was a land that was difficult to plough, heavy and difficult to drain. The land of Crèvecœur was marshy at the time, as evidenced by the places called l'Étang or Courtesoupe. These two explanations are complementary. Castles on the plains and their moats were often built on the edge of marshes or ponds, which were difficult to cross in armour. This is the case of Crèvecœur-en-Auge and Crèvecœur-en-Brie. The latter was built around a small defensive fort, from the 11th century. The first lords Pierre and Jean de Crèvecœur had accompanied their suzerain, the Count of Crecy, to the first crusade in 1096. At the beginning of the 13th century, Guy and Hugues de Châtillon, owners of the castle, had a fortified castle built. In 1220-1221, a chapel was built  and became the parish church of Saint-Jean-Baptiste. Crèvecœur-en-Brie had its moment of glory in the 13th and 14th centuries when the castle became the summer residence of the kings of France. Philippe VI de Valois married his daughter there in July 1332. The village and castle were partly destroyed by the English during the Hundred Years' War in 1430, then ravaged by the Ligueurs in the 16th century. In the 18th century, the ruins of the castle were used as a quarry for the construction of houses in the village. The current castle, in the village centre, was built on the ruins of the old castle in 1897. The second castle was built on the territory of Crèvecœur-en-Brie, at Beauregard. But do you know what the inhabitants of Crèvecœur-en-Brie are called? The Crépicordiens. You now understand the name of the local association of Godillots Crépicordiens around the common practice of hiking.