In December 1665, Rochefort was chosen by
Jean-Baptiste Colbert as a place of "refuge, defence and supply" for the
French Navy. The
Arsenal de Rochefort served as a naval base and
dockyard until it closed in 1926. In September 1757, Rochefort was the target of an ambitious
British raid during the
Seven Years' War. Another infrastructure of early Rochefort from 1766 was its
bagne, a high-security
penal colony involving
hard labour.
Bagnes were then common fixtures in military harbors and naval bases, such as
Toulon or
Brest, because they provided free labor. During the
Jacobin period of the French Revolution (1790–95), over
800 Roman Catholic priests and other clergy who refused to take the anti-
Papal oath of the "Civil Constitution of the Clergy" were put aboard a fleet of prison ships in Rochefort harbour, where most died due to inhumane conditions. Off Rochefort, from the island of
Île-d'Aix where he had spent several days hoping to flee to
America,
Napoleon Bonaparte surrendered to Captain
F. L. Maitland aboard
HMS Bellerophon, on 17 July 1815, ending the "
Hundred Days". Rochefort is a notable example of 17th-century "ville nouvelle" or
new town, which means its design and building resulted from a political decree. The reason for building Rochefort was to a large extent that
royal power could hardly depend on rebellious
Protestant La Rochelle, which
Cardinal Richelieu had to
besiege a few decades earlier. Well into the 20th century, Rochefort remained primarily a
garrison town. The
tourist industry, which had long existed due to the town's
spa, gained emphasis in the 1990s. ==Population==