On 1 January 1599, Henri IV of France appointed Humphrey Bradley, an English land drainage engineer from Brabant, , or "master of dykes of the Kingdom", which essentially gave him a monopoly of all dyking and land reclamation work throughout the country. Bradley also enjoyed the support of Maximilien de Béthune, Duke of Sully, chief minister to the king. Early in the seventeenth century he contracted to drain parts of the Marais de Saintonge, but was not able to carry the work forward until after 1607, when the was formed by royal edict. He did not himself direct the work, but entrusted it to two brothers, Marc and Jérome de Comans. They brought a good number of workers from the Low Countries; by about 1610 the area between Muron and Tonnay-Charente had come to be known as the Marais de la Petite-Flandre, the "marsh of little Flanders". It is believed that a number of working horses were also brought from the Low Countries, possibly of Brabant, Flemish or Friesian type. Drainage of the Marais Poitevin, the marshlands of Poitou, did not begin before 1640, by which time Bradley is thought to have died. Horses were brought to the area from Germany in about 1685. Interbreeding between these various imported horses and local stock of indeterminate type led to the development of the Poitevin, a large, heavy, slow horse well adapted to marshy terrain.