Aigues-Mortes (; ) is a commune in the Gard department in the Occitania region of southern France. The medieval city walls surrounding the city are well preserved. Situated on the junction of the Canal du Rhône à Sète and the Chenal Maritime to Le Grau-du-Roi, the town is a transit center for canal craft and Dutch barges.Watersteps through France - Bill & Laurel Cooper - Adlard Coles Nautical - 1991 - A Spell in Wild France - Bill & Laurel Cooper - Methuen - 1992 -
Name The name "Aigues-Mortes" was attested in 1248 in the Latinized form , which means "dead water", or "stagnant water". The name comes from the marshes and ponds that surround the village (which has never had potable water). The inhabitants of the commune are known as Aigues-Mortais or Aigues-Mortaises in French.Le nom des habitants du 30 - Gard, habitants.fr
The Occitan is equivalent to toponymic types in the Morteau Oil dialect cf. Morteau (Doubs): mortua Aqua (1105, VTF521) and Morteaue (Haute-Marne): mortua Aqua (1163, VTF521). in French means "pond of the King". In Occitan, means "pond with extension".
History
Antiquity The Roman general Gaius Marius is said to have founded Aigues-Mortes around 102 BC, but there is no documentary evidence to support this.
A Roman by the name of Peccius cultivated the first salt marsh and gave his name to the Marsh of Peccais.Gérard Noiriel, The massacre of the Italians of Aigues-Mortes, Fayard, 2010, p. 13 Salt mining started from the Neolithic period and was continued in the Hellenistic period, but the ancient uses of saline have not resulted in any major archaeological discovery. It is likely that any remains were destroyed by modern saline facilities.History of research in the commune of Aigues-Mortes
Middle Ages
In 791, Charlemagne erected the amid the swamps for the safety of fishermen and salt workers. Some argue that the signaling and transmission of news was not foreign to the building of this tower which was designed to give warning in case of arrival of a fleet, as for the at Nîmes.
The purpose of this tower was part of the war plan and spiritual plan which Charlemagne granted at the Benedictine abbey, dedicated to Opus Dei (work of God) and whose incessant chanting, day and night, was to designate the convent as Psalmody or Psalmodi. This monastery still existed in 812, as confirmed by an act of endowment made by the Badila from Nîmes at the abbey.
At that time, the people lived in reed huts and made their living from fishing, hunting, and salt production from several small salt marshes along the sea shore. The region was then under the rule of the monks from the Abbey of Psalmody.
In 1240, Louis IX, who wanted to get rid of the dependency on the Italian maritime republics for transporting troops to the Crusades, focused on the strategic position of his kingdom. At that time, Marseille belonged to his brother Charles of Anjou, King of Naples, Agde to the Count of Toulouse, and Montpellier to the King of Aragon. Louis IX wanted direct access to the Mediterranean Sea. He obtained the town and the surrounding lands by exchange of properties with the monks of the abbey.Bothamley (1916) p.221 Residents were exempt from the salt tax which was previously levied so that they could now take the salt unconstrained.Gérard Noiriel, op. cit., p. 18
He built a road between the marshes and built the to serve as a watchtower and protect access to the city. Louis IX then built the on the site of the old Matafère Tower, to house the garrison. In 1272, his son and successor, Philip III the Bold, ordered the continuation of the construction of walls to encircle the small town completely. The work would not be completed for another 30 years.
This was the city from which Louis IX twice departed for the Seventh Crusade in 1248 and for the Eighth Crusade in 1270, where he died of dysentery at Tunis.
The year 1270 has been established, mistakenly for many historians, as the last step of a process initiated at the end of the 11th century. The judgment is hasty because the transfer of crusaders or mercenaries from the harbour of Aigues-Mortes continued after this year. The order given in 1275 to Sir Guillaume de Roussillon by Philip III the Bold and Pope Gregory X after the Council of Lyons in 1274 to reinforce Saint-Jean d'Acre in the East shows that maritime activity continued for a ninth crusade which never took place.Order of Guillaume de Roussillon in 1275 - (Roger, La noblesse de France aux croisades, [Édition ? Date ?] p. 158; C. Rollat, The case of Guillaume de Roussillon in the Templar Tragedy of Pilat at Aigues Mortes) 1274–1312
There is a popular belief that the sea reached Aigues-Mortes in 1270. In fact, as confirmed by studies of the engineer Charles Leon Dombre, the whole of Aigues-Mortes, including the port itself, was in the Marette pond, the Canal-Viel and Grau Louis, the Canal Viel being the access channel to the sea. The Grau-Louis was approximately at the modern location of La Grande-Motte.
At the beginning of the 14th century, Philip the Fair used the fortified site to incarcerate the Templars. Between 8 and 11 November 1307, forty-five of them were put to the question, found guilty, and held prisoner in the Tower of Constance.Michel Melot, Guide to the Mysterious Sea, Éd. Tchou et Éditions Maritimes et d'Outre-Mer, Paris, 1970, p. 714.
Modern and contemporary periods Aigues-Mortes still retained its privileges granted by the kings.Letters Patent from Louis XI, Tours, 5 June 1470 The Protestant Jean d'Harambure "the One-Eyed", light horse commander of King Henry IV and former governor of Vendôme was appointed governor of Aigues-Mortes and the Carbonnière Tower on 4 September 1607. To do this, he took an oath before the Constable of France Henri de Montmorency, Governor of Languedoc, who was a Catholic and supported the rival Adrien de Chanmont, the Lord of Berichère. The conflict continued until 1612, and Harambure, supported by the pastors of Lower Languedoc and the inhabitants, finished it by a personal appeal to the Queen.BN L. K7 50 He eventually resigned on 27 February 1615 in favour of his son Jean d'Harambure, but King Louis XIII restored him for six years. On 27 July 1616 he resigned again in favour of Gaspard III de Coligny, but not without obtaining a token of appreciation for the judges and consuls of the city.
At the beginning of the 15th century, important works were being undertaken to facilitate access to Aigues-Mortes from the sea. The old Grau-Louis, dug for the Crusades, was replaced by the Grau-de-la-Croisette and a port was dug at the base of the Tower of Constance. It lost its importance from 1481 when Provence and Marseille were attached to the kingdom of France. Only the exploitation of the Peccais salt marshes encouraged François I, in 1532, to connect the salt industry of Aigues-Mortes to the sea. This channel, called Grau-Henry, silted up in turn. The opening, in 1752, of the Grau-du-Roi solved the problem for a while. A final solution was found in 1806 by connecting the Aigues-Mortes river port through the Canal du Rhône à Sète.Aigues-Mortes on the Dimeli and Co website
From 1575 to 1622, Aigues-Mortes was one of the eight safe havens granted to the Protestants. The revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685 caused severe repression of Protestantism, which was marked in Languedoc and the Cévennes in the early 18th century by the Camisard War. Like other towers in the town, from 1686 onwards, the Constance Tower was used as a prison for the Huguenots who refused to convert to Roman Catholicism. In 1703, Abraham Mazel, leader of the Camisards, managed to escape with sixteen companions.
During the French Revolution, the city was called Port-Pelletier. At that time the port had almost disappeared due to silting, induced by the intensification of labour in the watershed at the same time as the clearing of woods and forests following the abolition of privileges. The decline of forest cover led to soil erosion and consequently a greater quantity of alluvial deposits in the ports of the region. Thus, in 1804 the prefect "Mr. de Barante père" wrote in a reportReport cited by Antoine César Becquerel in 1865 in: Becquerel (Antoine César, M.), Memoire on the Forests and the Climatic influence (Numbered by Google), 1865, see page 54. that: "The coasts of this department are more prone to silting ... The ports of Maguelonne and Aigues Mortes and the old port of Cette no longer exist except in history" he alerted: "An inordinate desire to collect and multiply these forest clearings since 1790 ... Greed has devoured in a few years the resource of the future, the mountains, opened to the plough, show that soon naked and barren rock, each groove becoming a ravine; the topsoil, driven by storms, has been brought into the rivers, and thence into the lower parts, where it serves every day to find the lowest parts and the darkest swamps."
The massacre of Italians (August 1893)
The Massacre of the Italians at Aigues-Mortes was a series of events on 16 and 17 August 1893 which resulted in the deaths of immigrant Italian workers of the Compagnie des Salins du Midi, at the hands of French villagers and labourers. Estimates range from the official number of eight deaths up to 150, according to the Italian press of the time. The case was also one of the greatest legal scandals of the time, since no convictions were ever made.
Geography Aigues-Mortes is located in the some northwest of Marseille. By road, Aigues-Mortes is about southwest of Nîmes, and east of Montpellier in a direct line. Access to the commune is by route D979 coming south from Saint-Laurent-d'Aigouze to Aigues-Mortes town. Route D979 continues southwest through the commune to Le Grau-du-Roi. Route D62 also starts from Aigues-Mortes heading southwest parallel to D979 before turning eastwards and forming part of the southern border of the commune. Route D62A continues to Plan d'Eau du Vidourie.
The commune is composed of a portion of the wet plains and lakes of the Petite Camargue. It is separated from the Gulf of Lions (and, thus, the Mediterranean) by the town of Le Grau-du-Roi, however Aigues-Mortes is connected to the sea through the Canal du Rhône à Sète. There is only one other hamlet in the commune called Mas de Jarras Listel on the western border.
The Canal du Rhône à Sète enters the commune from the northwest and the northeast in two branches from the main canal to the north and the branches intersect in the town of Aigues-Mortes before exiting as a single canal alongside route D979 and feeding into the Mediterranean Sea at Le Grau-du-Roi.Google Maps
A rail branch line from Nîmes passes through Aigues-Mortes from north-east to south-west, with a station in the town of Aigues-Mortes, to its terminus on the coast at Le-Grau-du-Roi. This line also transports sea salt.
The communes of Saint-Laurent-d'Aigouze and Le Grau-du-Roi are adjacent to the town of Aigues-Mortes. Its inhabitants are called or ; in Occitan they are .
Aigues-Mortes is one of 79 member communes of the of South Gard and is also one of 34 communes in the Pays Vidourle-Camargue. Aigues-Mortes is one of the four communes of the of in the South of Gard.
Climate
Aigues-Mortes has a hot-summer Mediterranean climate (Köppen climate classification Csa). The average annual temperature in Aigues-Mortes is . The average annual rainfall is with October as the wettest month. The temperatures are highest on average in July, at around , and lowest in January, at around . The highest temperature ever recorded in Aigues-Mortes was on 28 June 2019; the coldest temperature ever recorded was on 4 February 1963.
Heraldry
Economy
Agriculture
Viticulture and asparagusSee "Sable-de-camargue" in the French Wikipedia Breeding of bulls and of Camargue horses. Both are raised almost wild in the surrounding marshes.