Ménessaire

Ménessaire is a small rural commune in the Côte-d'Or department of the Bourgogne-Franche-Comté region, in central-east France. It is an unusual piece of the map: a Côte-d'Or exclave that sits on the border between the Nièvre and Saône-et-Loire departments, cut off from the rest of its own department. The commune lies within the Morvan Regional Natural Park and includes the Mont de Gien, which at 721 metres is the highest point anywhere in Côte-d'Or. In local Burgundian speech the name is written Meunsiâre. Its best documented moment in history came near the end of the Second World War: on 25 May 1944, during the Liberation of France, German occupying forces attacked Ménessaire, one of several Morvan communes targeted because some of its inhabitants had supported the French Resistance. The Duc family had sheltered a number of Maquisards, and their farm was burnt down by the Germans after the Maquisards had fled.