Ages; and commemorative tablets mark the birthplace of the chancellor D’Aguesseau and of Marshals Jourdan and Bugeaud. There is a museum of painting and sculpture, and, in connexion with the local industry, a very valuable ceramic museum. Limoges is the headquarters of the 12th army corps, and is also the seat of several learned societies, and of a court of appeal.

The principal industry is the manufacture of porcelain. The kaolin of St Yrieix is of such superior quality that it is exported even to America; the pegmatite used for enamel is obtained at Chanteloube, about 25 miles from Limoges, on the Paris railway. Thirty-five factories with eighty furnaces and fifty-four painting rooms (800 artists) employ 5800 workers of both sexes, and produce goods to the annual value of 12 millions of francs. There are many others in the immediate neighbourhood of the town. Limoges has also wool and cotton spinning-mills, and cloth factories, paper-works, foundries, <fcc. Shoemaking gives employment to 600 persons, and the manufacture of clogs to 250. There is an extensive trade in wine and spirits, cattle, cereals, and wood. The Vienne is navigable for rafts above Limoges, and the logs brought down by the current are stopped at the entrance of the town by the inhabitants of the Naveix quarter, who form a special guild for this industry.

Limoges was a place of importance even at the time of the Roman conquest, and sent ten thousand soldiers to the defence of Alesia. In 11 b.c. it took the name of Augustus (ΛugustοrRum) ; but in the 4th century it was anew called by the name of the Lcmοviοcs, whose capital it was. It then contained palaces and baths, had its own senate and the right of coinage. (Till 1837 it had a mint.) Christianity was introduced by St Martial. In the 5th century Limoges was devastated by the Vandals and the Visigoths. Viscounts were set over it by Clovis. It suffered again in the wars between the Franks and the people of Aquitaine, from Norman invasion, and from a struggle which arose between two parties into which the city was divided, led by the abbot of St Martial and by the bishop respectively. During the Hundred Years’ War it was taken again and again by the French and English. Confiscated under John Lackland, it was again ceded by Louis IX. In 1370 the Black Prince took it by assault, and gave it up to fire and sword,— a disaster from which it was slow to recover. The religious wars, pestilence, and famine desolated it in turn, but the ravages of all these were surpassed by the plague of 1630-31, which carried off more than twenty thousand persons. The wise administrations of Henri d’Aguesseau, father of the chancellor, and of Turgot enabled Limoges to recover its former prosperity. There have been several noteworthy conflagrations, destroying whole quarters of the city, built, as it then was, of wood. That of 1790 lasted for two months, and destroyed one hundred and ninety-nine houses; that of 1864 laid under ashes an area of 10,000 square metres. Limoges celebrates every seven years a curious religious festival (Fête d’Ostension), during which the relics of St Martial are exposed for seven weeks, attracting large numbers of visitors. It dates from the 10th century, and commemorates a pestilence (mal des ardents) which, after destroying forty thousand persons, is believed to have been stayed by the intercession of the saint.