CHÂTEAUROUX, a town of France, capital of the department of Indre, is situated in a fine plain on the left bank of the Indre, 90 miles by rail S.W. of Orleans. It is the seat of a court of assize, and tribunals of primary instance and commerce; and it has a castle, now used as the town-hall, a cathedral, erected about 1873, a society of arts and agriculture, a communal college, a theatre, and a public library. It is ill built, with narrow filthy streets. The principal manufacture is woollens, in which a great part of its inhabitants are employed; it has an active trade in woollen yarn, leather, iron, grain, and cattle, and there are quarries of lithographic stone in the neighbourhood. The castle from which it takes its name was founded about the middle of the 10th century by Raoul, prince of Déols, and passed into the possession of several noble families. In 1215 one of the earliest of the Franciscan monasteries was founded in the town by William of Chauvigny. Raised to the rank of a countship in 1497, and to that of duchy in 1616, it finally passed into the possession of Louis II. of Bourbon, prince of Condé, and the castle served for the incarceration of his wife for twenty-three years. General Bertrand was born in the castle in 1773, and his statue adorns the Place Sainte Hélène. Population of the town in 1872, 16,858; of the commune, 18,670.