During the Hundred Years' War, Louis II of Bourbon allows his vassals to make erecting towers and defensive edifices. Thanks to this military reinforcement, Bourbonnais becomes the "cement of the kindom France".

The Bourbons, although they had possessed in Souvigny a fortified house independant from the monastery, have founded a fief from Bourbon, initially set in meridional Berry, of which it subsits important ruins, now open to visit.

The term of fortified house applies to the fortifications of less importance, built up until the first half of the XVIth century, essentially for residency, but reinforced by the adjunction of moats, defensive walls, towers, arrowslits, and for the most improved ones, crenellations, machicolation, drawbridge etc.

Constructions of Mansions were developped from fortified houses from the late XVth century.

In the early modern era, the rural nobilitys and peasantrys' crisis, consecutive to the French Wars of Religion of the late XVIth century, gives the opportunity for a new landed gentry issued from the ennobled bourgeoisie to buy one or several seigneuries.

Traduction : Louis Fongarnand