National Stud Farm
The abbey was secularized at the French Revolution (1790); in 1806 Napoleon established the National Stud Farm (Le Haras National) in the grounds of the former monastery, to breed improved horses for the use of the cavalry. The stud farm structures were rebuilt for more modern functionality during the Second Empire.
Read more about this topic: Montier-en-Der Abbey
Famous quotes containing the words national and/or farm:
“Perhaps our national ambition to standardize ourselves has behind it the notion that democracy means standardization. But standardization is the surest way to destroy the initiative, to benumb the creative impulse above all else essential to the vitality and growth of democratic ideals.”
—Ida M. Tarbell (1857–1944)
“I respect not his labors, his farm where everything has its price, who would carry the landscape, who would carry his God, to market, if he could get anything for him; who goes to market for his god as it is; on whose farm nothing grows free, whose fields bear no crops, whose meadows no flowers, whose trees no fruit, but dollars; who loves not the beauty of his fruits, whose fruits are not ripe for him till they are turned to dollars. Give me the poverty that enjoys true wealth.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)