Caudrot is a town in southern Gironde, located between Langon and La Réole, 50 km from Bordeaux.
Inhabited by 1,200 inhabitants, it is strong in its many shops (Bakery, Pharmacy, Supermarket, Post Office, Hairdresser, Press, Pizzeria...) and the natural spaces that surround it, articulated by the Garonne and the vineyard hills. It also hosts on its territory 3 quality vineyards (Château Majoureau, Château Larquey, Château Gayon) and a renowned producer of foie gras (Autrefoie).
The origins of Caudrot date back to the 5th century when, around the year 450, the barbarian invasions, and more specifically the Huns, forced part of the populations of central Gaul to migrate south. It is therefore a caravan of about twenty people who pitch their tents on the banks of the Garonne, near the mouth of the Dropt. Over the decades that followed, the few modest cob dwellings were replaced by more robust houses. The community grew with the arrival of Gascons from Biscay and the Pyrenees, to wait for several hundred inhabitants. The small town then took the name of Codo Droti (The Tail of the Dropt).
The following centuries see Caudrot continue to extend to the bottom of the hills, where the activity of a few mills comes to enliven the tranquility of the hillsides. Legend even has it that Charlemagne, the most famous of the Carolingians, stayed at Caudrot on his return from Spain. He would have built a basilica there, founded a school, and one of his sons would have died there. Although recent research has somewhat questioned the historical veracity of its facts, the legend lives on in the streets of the town.
Under the threat of the Normans who roamed Gaul from the middle of the 9th century, the inhabitants of Codo Droti fortified the city from 862. They dug a ditch there and built a wall 8 meters high pierced by two main gates, whose vestiges appear to the eyes of the curious who will search for them, especially in the Terré district. Despite these fortifications and the heroic defense of Duke Malle, who lost his life there, the city was taken and burned. Codo Droti is ransacked. But it was without counting on the abnegation of the inhabitants who from the end of the century will start to build the destroyed buildings again.
From the 11th to the 17th century, Calsdrotum prospered, in particular thanks to the port toll activity that its geographical location allowed. The taxation of the river economy between Langon and La Réole is lucrative for the city, the priories and the lords who share the franchises along the river and the barges that use it. The Garonne then allows the significant portage of heavy goods loaded in barrels and therefore easy to tax. The foodstuffs transported are varied and numerous: wine, salt, wheat, cattle, oil, spices, fish, raw materials (leather, iron, lead, copper, etc.) and manufactured products (sheets, grinding wheels, weapons, etc.).
After the disappearance of tolls in the middle of the 18th century and the crossing of the religious wars, Caudrot developed strongly in the following century, reaching a population larger than that of today. The Bourgeois bought the moat and built the houses that today form the southern facade of the current Place des Tilleuls. The master locksmith of La Réole, Blaise Charlut, will leave him several marks of his passage in various bourgeois houses. The city continues to develop and the Saint-Christophe church benefits from the talent of the painters Bonnet and Vincent who paint in its choir trompe-l'oeil architectures today classified.
Progress accompanies the development of the town: mail delivery from 1877, installation of the telegraph in 1881 and a telephone booth in 1904.
In the doldrums of the first half of the 20th century, the two world wars led to the reduction by half of the population of Caudrot (700 inhabitants in 1948), taking in their disastrous wake Pierre Gemin, a Caudrotais resistance fighter who would pay the heaviest of sacrifices for his fight against the occupant.
In the post-war period, Caudrot will gradually manage to rebuild itself. Viticulture will impose its monopoly on polyculture which until then adorned the surrounding landscapes. Territory with a strong identity, forged by the hardships and the character of its inhabitants who each time knew how to meet the challenges of History, the town continues today its reconquest of the place which has long been its own on the banks of the Garonne.
