LECTOURE  , a

town of south-western France, capital of an arrondissement in the department of Gers, 21 M . N. of Auch on the Southern railway between that city and Agen . Pop . (1906), town, 2426; commune, 4310 . It stands on the right bank of the Gers, overlooking the river from the summit of a steep plateau . The church of St Gervais and St Protais was once a cathedral . The massive tower which flanks it on the north belongs to the 15th century; the rest of the church dates from the 13th, 15th, 16th and 17th centuries . The hotel de ville, the sous-prefecture and the museum occupy the palace of the former bishops, which was once the property of Marshal Jean Lannes, a native of the town . A recess in the wall of an old house contains the Fontaine de Houndelie, a spring sheltered by a double archway of the 13th century . At the bottom of the hill a church of the 16th century marks the site of the monastery of St Geny . Lectoure has a tribunal of first instance and a communal college . Its industries include distilling, the manufacture of wooden shoes and biscuits, and market gardening; it has trade in grain, cattle. wine and brandy .

Lectoure, capital of the Iberian tribe of the Lactorates and for a

short time of Novempopulania, became the seat of a bishopric in the 4th century . In the 11th century the counts of Lomagne made it their capital, and on the union of Lomagne with Armagnac, in 1325, it became the capital of the counts of Armagnac . In 1473 Cardinal Jean de Jouffroy besieged the town on behalf of Louis XI. and after its fall put the whole pupulation to the sword . In 1562 it again suffered severely at the hands of the Catholics under Blaise de Montluc .