The History of the Cévennes

Cévennes: Related to the Welsh "cefn," meaning "back," and to the Gaulish "Cebenna," a proper name for "the Cévennes": no certain equivalent outside of Celtic (LEBM, Etymological Lexicon of the most common terms in Modern Breton). Extensively, it means ridge, back, keel (of a boat). (An older form is kefn/kevn – Dict. celto-bret. Le Gonideg, 1850).
The name is probably Ligurian "Cemmenon" or "Cibenon." Strabo writes this name in the singular as "kèmmènon," Ptolemy in the plural as "kèmènna." Avienus writes "Cimenici regio."
The Gauls substituted the Ligurian term, which was meaningless to them, with the name "Cebenna," meaning back (in Welsh "cefn," "cefyn"; also used in Wales to designate mountains). Pliny writes "Cebenna," and Caesar "Cevennna." (H. d'Arbois de Jubainville).
Welsh "cefn," back. Etymology: Welsh < Brittonic *KEMN- = escaena (back, ridge). Related forms: Breton kein = escaena. (Dict. gall.-catalan).

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The discovery of a part of a human skull, embedded in sands and lapilli from the Pleistocene volcano of Denise near Le Puy-en-Velay, proved that humanity witnessed the last Quaternary eruptions.
Early humans, to defend themselves against the formidable animals of this period, armed themselves with spears, sharp stones (knuckle-dusters), and finally arrows that struck fatally from a distance. For this, the flint that they knew how to shape by chipping was of primary utility. The terrains they encountered in the Cévennes contained little flint, but the terrains of Aveyron had it in abundance, and the Cretaceous deposits on the left bank of the Rhône offered it plentifully. It is highly likely that there was an early movement of transhumance by tribes of fishermen and hunters between the banks of the Rhône or the coastal areas and the high Cévennes plateaus, where it is evident they could abundantly supply the necessary flint. In the Neolithic period, when early man had learned to finely shape and polish stones, he used the hard materials he found, especially in the volcanic regions, such as basalt, quartz, jadeite, fibrolite (aluminosilicate), actinolite, etc.

The large number of caves and rock shelters found in the limestone of Ardèche, the country of Gras, the causses of Saint-Remèze, etc., as well as in Lozère, the Cévennes, the Causse Noir, the Méjean causses, Sauveterre, Séverac, and Larzac, allowed prehistoric humanity to multiply there. Thus, there are numerous megalithic monuments left behind; Aveyron possesses a tenth of the classified dolmens in France. The menhirs or standing stones are also very numerous: the menhir was a stone of primary utility, and its sacred character ensured its preservation. One must have wandered over these immense plateaus, whether in foggy weather or during the famous snowstorms called "Siberian," to fully realize the necessity of these landmarks for everyone—shepherds, transhumants, and traders of flint.

In Haute-Loire, Velay has revealed, apart from the finding at Denise, no traces of the Paleolithic period or chipped stone; the Neolithic period or polished stone is not much better represented there. Velay, enclosed by high mountains and large volcanic plateaus, communicating only through narrow gorges with the Loire or Allier, and not at all with the Lower Rhône, seems to have been outside the seasonal explorations mentioned above. Only eight dolmens are reported there: among these, one must mention the one that stood at the summit of Mont-Anis and dominated the station where Le Puy-en-Velay was established. Its sacred character survived the religions of prehistory and the Druids; it became the stone of the lepers, the stone of fevers, and remains the object of a continued pilgrimage.

The Bronze Age at least led to some fortunate discoveries: the museum of Le Puy-en-Velay has preserved most of the objects collected at Saint-Pierre-Ainac, at an altitude of 850m and 13km east of Le Puy-en-Velay. This included a peddler's trinket consisting of 78 objects, either new for sale or broken for melting. Additionally, the museum of Lyon acquired a small treasure of gold jewelry from the Montée des Capucins in Le Puy-en-Velay. However, from the Iron Age, very little has been found in Haute-Loire, despite dedicated archaeological research.

Lozère, open towards the valley of the Lot in the southwest, much like the Dordogne, was clearly inhabited since the Paleolithic period, but it did not yield many finds from this era. However, a flint working workshop was active at Saint-Léger-de-Malzieu, an excellent deposit of lake-origin flint. Conversely, the Neolithic period has yielded finely shaped axes and spear points, simulacra of axes for tombs carved in jadeite, necklaces in jet, bone needles, un-turned pottery, and the remains of a whole type of early civilization. Prehistory in Lozère has led to significant work by Abbé Delaunay, Abbé Solanet, Malafosse, Dr. Prunières especially, and Marcellin Boule. It was on the occasion of a finding made in 1873 that Dr. Prunières, supported by Dr. Broca, revealed the existence of prehistoric trepanation on intentionally perforated skulls, where the healing marks of the bone are clearly visible.

The museum of the Agricultural Society in Mende contains a treasure from the Bronze Age found at Carnac, near La Malène, on the Méjean causse: arrowheads, vases, buttons, bracelets, rings, etc.
It should be noted that the dolmens and tumuli of the Causses continued to receive burials until the end of the Merovingian period; coins from the bishops of Mende from the 12th century have been found there, demonstrating the great permanence of traditional life on the causse.
The prehistoric stations and caves of the Gard department (stations of Collorgues, Fontbouisse; cache of Vers; caves of Meyrannes, Sartanette cave, caves of Gardon, etc.) have provided particularly interesting prehistoric documents to the archaeological museum and the museum of Nîmes.
The oppidum of Murviel-lès-Montpellier, that of Nages, near Nîmes, the caves of Bize, and the dolmen of Villeneuve-Minervois are, outside of the Rhône valley, the main prehistoric curiosities of Lower Languedoc; we must add the collections of the archaeological society museum of Montpellier and those of the museum of Narbonne, partly composed of objects found in the vicinity of these cities.
The Tarn department has provided few prehistoric monuments or objects.

At the dawn of the historical period, the entire Southeast of France was inhabited by the Ligurians. They created what has been called the civilization of the oppida, common to the region we are discussing and Provence. This civilization replaced that of the caves but directly derived from it.

What are, indeed, from the point of view of human activity, the characteristics of the French Mediterranean south? It encompasses two major routes of exceptional importance: one oriented from East to West, which, through the valleys of Argens and Arc, then through the plain of Lower Languedoc, the valley of Aude, and those of Hers and Garonne, leads from Italy to the Atlantic with an easy bifurcation towards Spain; the other, oriented from South to North, the valley of the Rhône, which leads directly to the North Sea.

The first route brought bronze, the second brought amber. But also, these two great passages are bordered by steep mountains where strong positions abound, from which one can safely monitor the plains. Finally, it highlights the inevitable importance of economic exchanges between the mountain and the plain.
The oppida, acting as road knots and centers of cultivated zones, thus marked an undeniable progress over the age of caves, but this progress was further accentuated by the relationships that the inhabitants, taking direct contact with Hellenistic civilization, maintained with the trading posts that the Phoenicians in the 8th century, and then in the 6th century the Phocaeans, established on the coast (Marseille, La Rouanesse near Beaucaire, Agde).

It is likely that in the middle of the 4th century, the Celts or Gauls invaded the region, militarily occupying the oppida in order to dominate the autochthonous population, which was probably more numerous than they were. However, a fusion seems to have occurred quite quickly, and, in the absence of other testimonies, the curious Gallic coins would suffice to show how easily the rough conquerors underwent the civilizing influence of Greek merchants.

The year 218 BC saw one of the most famous events in history take place in the region we are discussing, whose repercussions would be considerable: Hannibal's expedition. The Carthaginian army, although it generally managed to gain the benevolent neutrality of the Gauls, still had to contest the crossing of the Rhône with the Volci, and then, neglecting the troops that the Romans had disembarked in Marseille, plunged into the Alps to cross them. It is well known how the conflict between Rome and Carthage ended. One of its consequences was the Roman conquest of Spain, and this conquest, in turn, had the fatal consequence of the occupation of the Gallic coast. Despite the relative ease of maritime communications, the victors soon thought of using and improving the road that the Punic invaders had taken. They took advantage of the weakness of their Marseille allies, who were unable to defend themselves against the aggressions of the Celto-Ligurians, to come to their aid and methodically occupy the country: Nice in 154, Aix in 123, Nîmes in 120, Narbonne in 118, Toulouse in 106.

The route followed by Hannibal became a Roman road, the Domitian Way, and the conquered region became Gallia Transalpina and, a little later, Provincia Romana, a military government from which Provence retains the name. The Romans, indeed, had to occupy the hinterland to protect the Domitian Way from raids, and it is very interesting to note that the part of the Provincia located on the right bank of the Rhône almost had the same boundaries as our 18th-century Languedoc: it encompassed the Helvii (Vivarais), the Volci Arecomici (Lower Languedoc), and the Volci Tectosages (Toulousain and Albigeois). The land of the Ruteni (Rouergue) remained outside the Province, just as at the end of the 18th century, it belonged to the government of Guyenne and to the intendancy of Montauban, forming a large salient that extends into the heart of Languedoc. However, the land of the Vellaves (Velay) and that of the Gabales (Gévaudan) remained outside the Roman Province.

This would naturally serve as the base of Caesar's operations for the conquest of Gaul, and it is he who first mentions mons Cevenna, which he forced his troops to cross, despite the heavy snow, in February 52 BC. This simple maneuver was intended to mask the arrival in Auvergne, from the North, of the ten legions he had concentrated in the region of Langres: it was the beginning of the campaign that would mark the siege of Avaricum and the failed attack on Gergovie.

After the conquest, the Roman Province became Narbonnaise, a proconsular province. It was administered with that profound respect for local traditions and meticulous accuracy that was everywhere the mark of Roman genius. In the old Celto-Ligurian towns, colonies of veterans or Roman citizens formed the framework of a wholly peaceful occupation, as the indigenous population easily accepted the victors. At the end of the 4th century, the Narbonnaise Première, detached from the greater Narbonnaise, closely resembled our Languedoc. Narbonne prevailed over Nîmes, Béziers, and even Toulouse. The wines of Biterrois were already renowned.

The Romanization of this region, already touched by Hellenism, was so profound that it had two curious consequences: the first is that even today, the population speaks a language deeply rooted in transformed vulgar Latin; the second is that Christianity progressed there less rapidly than on the banks of the Saône, Loire, or Seine. It would not truly organize itself until the second half of the 4th century, and it is permissible to say that, through the centuries, the Languedocian genius, however marked by Christianity, remained fiercely Roman at heart.

The great invasions were marked by the settlement, in 419, with the consent of Emperor Honorius, of the Visigoths in Aquitaine (Nantes, Bordeaux, Toulouse). By the middle of the 5th century, they had occupied the rest of Narbonnaise. These barbarians, who had been for some time already in the service of the Empire, did not destroy the Gallo-Roman civilization but utilized it as best as possible, so that the region did not provide many purely "Visigoth" monuments, except for burial sites and jewelry. Historians have also shown that the invaders must have been far fewer than the Gallo-Romans; they acted largely as somewhat rough garrison troops.

The end of the 5th century marked the peak of the Visigoth kingdom, which then extended from Orleans to the columns of Hercules, encompassing almost all of Spain. However, the victory won by Clovis at Vouillé in 507 drove the Visigoths from the Southwest of France, though they managed to retain the old Narbonnaise minus the district of Toulouse. This region, a province of the Visigoth kingdom of Spain, then took the name of Septimanie or Gothia.

The 8th century saw the appearance of the Saracens. It is now widely understood that these new invaders acted primarily as plunderers, unable to build lasting structures, and that the region has not retained any major "Arab antiquity." The extraordinarily vivid memory of the "Moors" or "Saracens," both here and in Provence, likely stems from the fact that, for five centuries, the crusade was constantly preached for the deliverance of Spain and that, well before the great expeditions to the Holy Land, many Frenchmen from the South had, in small groups, crossed the Pyrenees to fight the Infidels.

In any case, it was through Narbonne that, in 719, the Arabs began the adventurous expedition which Charles Martel finally put an end to at Poitiers in 732. However, they managed to keep Septimania until 760, when they were ultimately expelled by Pepin the Short.
Under the Merovingians and Carolingians, Toulouse remained the capital of Aquitaine and changed masters according to the divisions that plagued these two dynasties. Charlemagne had retained Septimania as an administrative division of his Empire, a "march" whose role was to strengthen the Spanish march, the future county of Barcelona.

In the anarchy that followed the disintegration of Charlemagne's Empire, the counts of Toulouse, once simple officials depending on the emperor, king, or duke of Aquitaine, became hereditary counts. The county of Toulouse, detached from the duchy of Aquitaine, became, from the beginning of the Capetian dynasty, one of the great fiefs directly reporting to the Crown. However, the king was far away in the north, and his sovereignty was largely theoretical.

During the 11th and 12th centuries, the dynasty of the counts of Toulouse continued to grow in power. Without going into the complexities of this history, it is enough to state that at the dawn of the 13th century, the count of Toulouse possessed Toulouse, Agenais, Quercy, and Rouergue; he was duke of Narbonne (former Septimania) and marquis of Provence (Comtat Venaissin and Valentinois), and he had as vassals the counts or viscounts of Foix, Astarac, Armagnac, Pardiac, Lomagne, Razès, Albi, Carcassonne, Narbonne, Béziers, and Nîmes. It is clear how this vast domain differed from the future province of Languedoc; it heavily encroached on Gascony, but it lacked the ecclesiastical counties of Viviers, Velay, and Gévaudan.

Protected by enlightened princes, inheritor of the Gallo-Roman civilization, and maintaining relations with the East through the port that Montpellier had at the mouth of the Lez—relations that the crusades had only developed further—the population of the county of Toulouse was, at least in literature and manners, well ahead of the North of France. Whether driven by Christian convictions, attraction to the East, a taste for adventure, or ambition, the complexity of reasons that led Count Raymond IV to take the cross and die, in 1105, as Count of Tripoli, remains a fascinating historical tapestry.

Toulousain civilization was characterized by the frequency of small private property, by the small number of serfs (especially in the plain), by the use of "written law" of Roman origin, and by the grouping of the population in towns and large villages, the latter generally having succeeded a Gallo-Roman villa. Hence the early power of the "communes," which, from the 12th century onwards, were directed by consuls or capitouls and enjoyed genuine administrative autonomy and, to some extent, political autonomy. It is here, through the continuous rise of a bourgeoisie that lent money to spendthrift lords that it had earned through trade and thus made them its debtors, that Languedoc, much like Provence, resembled Italy far more than Northern France.

In stark contrast to Northern France, Toulouse civilization was heavily secular. The Church, however, played its role here as elsewhere; in the chaos of the early Middle Ages, it was the only real framework of the country. It maintained as much as it could of Greco-Latin culture, organized charity, created "free towns," and facilitated the reduction of serfdom. But it is a fact that the southerners, at least those from the plain who had numbers and wealth on their side, did not provide the Church with theologians or mystics. As in Provence, the weakness of Benedictine monasticism was striking, and one must also consider the significant role of Northern men in the foundations that did arise.

Caught up in the worldly life of the cities where they resided, the bishops, who generally belonged to the nobility of the county, were often influenced negatively by it. The same could be said for the priests who, in the absence of a genuine peasantry, had to be recruited from the people of the communes. This led to a certain relaxation of doctrine and morals, a tolerance regarding faith that, at this time, could only be explained by an unusual indifference. Even during the crusade, the Northerners noted the bravery and brilliance of the southerners, but also criticized their levity and skepticism.
On the other hand, well before the regular establishment of the universities of Toulouse and Montpellier, studies flourished, especially law and medicine, followed closely by letters. As in Bologna or Salerno, local teaching owed a great deal to the intellectual contributions of Arabs and Jews.

We will see later that the religious architecture of the country maintained close ties with that of Lombardy and Catalonia, producing some great monuments and a school of sculpture that was distinctly Languedocian. However, nothing would be more uniquely original than the literature of the troubadours, celebrated for its art, its technique, the subtlety of the expressed sentiments, and the prominent, revered place it gave to women. This poetry contributed significantly to the softening of manners, to the enrichment of sensitivity, and in the 13th century, while it began to fade in its country of origin, it carried, along with the prodigious architecture of Île-de-France and Burgundy, the mark of French genius directly to Italy and Germany.

The kings of France, who had just endured a harsh experience dealing with the powerful dukes of Normandy and the counts of Anjou, could not allow such a peril to reconstitute itself in the South. They feared the counts of Toulouse might settle in Spain as the Plantagenets had done in England, potentially dismembering France once again. Philip Augustus, that great king who had successfully reclaimed Normandy and Anjou, took advantage of an extraordinary opportunity to intervene.

The states of the count of Toulouse were filled with religious dissidents whom history has called Cathars, and also Albigensians because they were particularly numerous around the city of Albi. This movement was a mix of Arianism and Manichaeism brought initially by the Visigoths and maintained by merchants who traveled from Eastern Europe, of Judaism supported by the numerous Jewish communities living peacefully in the region with flourishing schools, and even of Islamic ideas left by the Arabs. The extreme laxity of southern manners allowed this movement to benefit from astonishing tolerance. Practically, the Cathars, under the pretext of repudiating the corruption of a highly hierarchical and wealthy society, tended towards a sort of communal asceticism. Freeing the spirit from the grip of matter was their primary concern; to achieve this, they advocated chastity, restricted nourishment to the point of extreme starvation, and, logically, they permitted libertinism and abortion for those who did not feel capable of leading the pure, strict life of the "perfect." From Christ's famous words about the sword, they concluded that society had neither the right to punish nor to wage war. They were, in short, what we would today call anarchists and pacifist conscientious objectors.

The papacy initially tried to convert them through peaceful preaching, but it was in vain. In 1208, the assassination of the papal legate prompted Pope Innocent III to preach the crusade against them. As in all these massive enterprises, material considerations quickly mingled with religious reasons. If the southern nobility saw in the weakening of Catholicism an opportunity to seize the Church's vast property, the northern nobility saw in the crusade a lucrative opportunity to take hold of the lands of the heretical lords. Furthermore, while part of the population was deeply attached to the new ideas, another part—the merchants and shopkeepers—saw their businesses deteriorating as traditional Catholic churches, abbeys, and profitable pilgrimages were neglected. Thus, the southern nobility, which provided the necessary military frameworks for resistance, found themselves engaged in a relentless struggle. Cautiously, the king of France was content to simply authorize a small number of lords to participate in the crusade.

Fifty thousand Northern soldiers led by the ruthless abbot of Cîteaux, Arnaud Amalric, rushed to the South. After the brutal capture of Béziers and Carcassonne, whose inhabitants were mercilessly massacred in 1209, Simon de Montfort took command. An insensitive yet devout man, he was honest, highly intelligent, a fierce warrior, and a remarkable administrator. He led the methodical disarmament operations of the country through flying columns and the systematic eviction of compromised local lords. Until then, the count of Toulouse, Raymond VI—very indecisive and without firmly established convictions—had simply let things unfold.

However, the brutal methods of the crusaders, who behaved as violent foreigners in a conquered land (following strict papal instructions), ended up gaining unanimous support for Raymond VI from both his Catholic and heretical subjects. He finally took up arms and, genuinely raising the banner of independence for the Occitan-speaking lands against the "Barbarians" from the North, he called for help from the king of Aragon, his brother-in-law. What was initially framed as a religious struggle quickly became deeply political. The two princes were defeated by Simon de Montfort at Muret, at the very gates of Toulouse, on September 12, 1213, and the king of Aragon died bravely in battle. Thus, hopes of independence were shattered, but many Languedocians still lament the tragic consequences of that disastrous day.
In any case, the power of Toulouse was decisively ruined. It must be noted that the king of France was not directly responsible as a suzerain; it was not a royal army but a crusading army that had laid the country to waste. The monarchy strategically reserved itself.

In 1215, the year of Bouvines and the Magna Carta, the heir to the Crown, the future Louis VIII, occupied Toulouse while the pope formally dispossessed Raymond of his estates. Raymond took up arms again in 1217 and successfully reoccupied Toulouse, where the occupying "French" were massacred. Montfort laid siege to the city in retaliation, but on June 25, 1218, a projectile struck him fatally in the head, and the siege was lifted. During his brief three-year reign (1223-1226), Louis VIII, eager to officially reap the fruits of his father's policy, took up the cross against the Albigensians under conditions that were far more favorable to the French Crown than to the papacy. He died during the expedition, but the county was definitively reoccupied. Finally, after various alternations, Raymond VII, son of Raymond VI, renounced the struggle. Through the Treaty of Meaux (1229), orchestrated by Blanche of Castile, he retained only part of his domains on the strict condition of marrying his daughter to Alphonse of Poitiers, brother of Louis IX. It was understood that upon the death of Raymond VII, which occurred in 1249, Alphonse of Poitiers would become count of Toulouse, and if he died without children, the county would fully revert to the Crown—which is exactly what occurred in 1271.

Since then, Languedoc, which would never be granted as an apanage, was administered directly by royal officials. The firm yet deeply benevolent policy of Louis IX and his brother soon repaired the ruins caused by the crusade, and the inhabitants of the county became, it must be proclaimed, unconditional Frenchmen. The repression of Albigensianism, an ungrateful and sometimes odious task, was then left to the work of the Inquisition.

As early as 1207, the future St. Dominic had organized the ideological fight against heresy. It was in Toulouse that, in 1215, he founded the Order of Preachers to suppress it, and that, in 1229, a council gathering the bishops of the South instituted the infamous tribunal of the Inquisition. The King's men tried at every moment to repress its excesses, nearly reigniting open war several times. But the terrible rigors of the tribunal, which lasted until the middle of the 14th century and effectively extirpated the last remnants of heresy, seem to have left indelible memories and profoundly transformed the character of the inhabitants. From being historically tolerant and indifferent, they became fiercely passionate, as the turbulent course of their later history will show.

The assimilation was primarily the masterful work of Philip the Fair. In a curious turn of historical events, it was Languedoc that provided him with the brilliant legal experts he would use in his struggle against the papacy. Beaucaire and Nîmes developed rapidly, the king of France took firm hold of Montpellier (which the Treaty of Meaux had previously left to the king of Aragon), and in the absence of Marseille, he took full advantage of Aigues-Mortes as a royal port. The 13th century also saw the prestigious foundation of the Universities of Toulouse (1229) and Montpellier (1289).

The territory of Languedoc was still to undergo significant changes. By the Treaty of Amiens (1279), Agenais and Armagnac came under the influence of the duchy of Guyenne, which the king of England held as a fief of the king of France. On the other hand, following the acquisition of Lyon, Philip the Fair, in 1307, made clever contracts with the bishops of Puy-en-Velay, Mende, and Viviers, which practically united Velay, Gévaudan, and Vivarais with the Crown. The occupation of this last region gave France almost the entire right bank of the Rhône. Philip the Fair had a bridgehead built at Villeneuve in front of Avignon, and Philip of Valois had another built at Sainte-Colombe in front of Vienne. The same king completed, in 1349, the final acquisition of Montpellier. Finally, as a consequence of the unfortunate Treaty of Brétigny (1360), Rouergue was ceded to the king of England, and although Charles V successfully reconquered it ten years later, it would henceforth follow the administrative destinies of Guyenne. The boundaries of Languedoc would not truly change again until the complete dissolution of the province during the Revolution.

Except for the incursion of the Black Prince, who in 1355 pushed fiercely as far as Carcassonne, Languedoc would not be directly affected by the battles of the Hundred Years' War. However, its unshakeable loyalty and patriotism would play a crucial role in the broader fight against the English. The province continued to provide massive amounts of money and men for national defense; cities fortified themselves everywhere to be able to stop the enemy, and our kings recognized these vital services by granting the States of the province an exceptional political role.

It is fascinating to note the critical importance that the ancient Voie Regordane—a Roman road traditionally attributed without hard evidence to Emperor Gordian—had during the Hundred Years' War. This road, leading from Nîmes to Clermont-Ferrand via Alès and the valley of the Allier, had long been one of the great European pilgrimage routes, the via Tolosana. It linked the famous sanctuaries of Notre-Dame-du-Port, Brioude, and Le Puy-en-Velay, crossed the Cévennes, flowed down into Nîmes, reached the sanctuary of Saint-Gilles, then that of Saint-Guilhem, from where, via Toulouse, it would cross the Pyrenees to arrive at Compostela in Spain. As this road, via Bourges and Orléans, led safely to Paris, it became, after the union of Languedoc, the great longitudinal axis of the royal domain. During the Hundred Years' War, it served as its major strategic and political artery since, on one hand, the Rhône valley was only partially French, and on the other, the English heavily intercepted the routes of Aquitaine. It was along this path that Languedocians and Gascons would travel to fight for the "king of Bourges" alongside Joan of Arc.

The incorporation of Provence into the Crown in 1483 made Marseille the main French port on the Mediterranean, inevitably leading to the gradual decline of Aigues-Mortes and Montpellier's trade. The general prosperity that followed the end of the Hundred Years' War was once again brutally ruined by the Wars of Religion, which took on a character of exceptional bitterness and cruelty in the region. Generally speaking, Toulouse and Carcassonne remained staunchly Catholic and embraced the League's extreme cause against Henry III; while the rest of the province, not to mention Agenais, fell into the hands of Protestants. One can easily imagine the degree of fury reached during the struggle when, after the assassination of Henry III, the legitimate heir to the throne turned out to be a Protestant. The parliament of Toulouse, fiercely supported by a fanatical population, inflicted on the Huguenots harsher rigors than those of the Inquisition in the 13th century. Just as in the past, and for similar societal reasons, the local nobility provided the Reformed with their most hardened military leaders.

The Edict of Nantes was merely a temporary truce. In this volatile region where the two confessions were so intimately mixed, each fiercely claimed that the Edict was too favorable to the other. Taking full advantage of Louis XIII's minority, the Protestants, who had meticulously retained their military organization, took up arms once again. As soon as the young king effectively took power, the rebels were severely punished, but the heavily fortified city of Montpellier only capitulated after a formal, brutal siege in 1622. The subsequent peace of Montpellier hardly lasted, and the year 1627 saw the general uprising of the Protestants across the country, marked by the famous, tragic siege of La Rochelle. After the capitulation of that coastal city in 1628, the king turned his armies against the Protestants of Languedoc, who everywhere opposed him with fierce resistance behind the thick walls that their cities had built in the 16th century to stop the English. Louis XIII had Privas ruthlessly razed as a terrifying example, but immediately afterward, demonstrating the same admirable moderation he had shown to the surviving inhabitants of La Rochelle, he granted the Reformed the famous peace of Alès (1629). This agreement strictly maintained the religious stipulations of the Edict of Nantes but permanently ruined the Protestants' political claims to form a state within a state.

The firm centralizing measures that Cardinal Richelieu deemed necessary to take in Languedoc to prevent the recurrence of similar rebellions—particularly by strictly limiting the financial powers of the local States—provoked initially passive resistance from part of the episcopate, the nobility, and the parliament. However, this resistance escalated into open rebellion when the Duke of Montmorency, the powerful governor of the province, sought to play a major part in the vast aristocratic conspiracy to which Gaston d'Orléans lent his highly uncertain authority. The steadfast loyalty of the Protestants and the local communes ultimately ruined the ambitious hopes of the conspirators. Montmorency, defeated and captured at the Battle of Castelnaudary, was swiftly beheaded in the courtyard of the Capitole in Toulouse in 1632. It was a tragic, weak echo of the Battle of Muret.

This is where it is appropriate to briefly describe the administration of the province. At its head was the governor, who, from 1526 to 1632, was almost always a member of the Montmorency family. Richelieu astutely made the governor a mere decorative figure, effectively replaced by the lieutenant general in the actual exercise of executive functions. The parliament of Toulouse, the second oldest in the country after that of Paris, founded in 1303 by Philip the Fair and abolished by the same king in 1312, was restored in 1419. But given that France was then engaged in the most critical period of the Hundred Years' War, it was only definitively reconstituted in 1443. Its magistrates were widely noted for their legal expertise, their uncompromising Catholicism, and, unfortunately in the 18th century, for their unreasonable political pretensions and their stubborn opposition to the essential administrative and financial reforms contemplated by the monarchy. The popularity they earned at the time as bold opponents of the Crown led to a fatal ambiguity, and the Revolution would tragically clarify this by sending 53 of them to the guillotine.

Languedoc was, from its initial union with the Crown, a proud "country of States," and the States of Languedoc early on held an importance commensurate with the sheer size and wealth of the province. The fierce patriotism with which they voluntarily voted, during the darkest, most desperate moments of the Hundred Years' War—after the terrifying disasters of Crécy, Poitiers, and Azincourt—the necessary financial subsidies for national defense earned them, from our kings, a profound recognition from which they derived a continually renewed prestige and political authority.

The States, which met annually, mostly in the luxurious settings of Montpellier or Pézenas, included 22 archbishops or bishops, 22 powerful barons, and 44 deputies representing the towns; the archbishop of Narbonne traditionally served as its president. Their grand meetings were celebrated occasions for sumptuous, highly codified ceremonies.

The most essential of the "franchises and liberties" of Languedoc consisted in the formal consent of taxes by the Estates. However, when the monarchy, at the end of the 15th century, had regained sufficient strength to resume its long task of centralization and unification, this consent gradually became a mere bargaining tool intended to save face. Even after the strict reforms of Richelieu, the Estates continued to serve effectively as an essential intermediary between the local communes and the central power. They actively regulated the distribution of taxes according to the shifting resources of each area, and, above all, they allocated part of the massive provincial budget—in agreement with the royal intendant—for the execution of major public works, foremost among them the construction of the famous Canal du Midi. The assembly, on the other hand, retained the powerful right to formally express remarks or grievances that the King's Council always examined with careful attention.

The franchises of the province also consisted of the significant remnants of autonomy that the local communes had stubbornly retained from the time when they functioned as true Italian-style republics. Independently of the obvious inconvenience these independent freedoms presented for sovereign royal power, they often resulted in the complete ruin of the communes' finances, which recklessly borrowed and taxed their citizens indiscriminately. Already, Henry IV had begun to put them under strict guardianship; Louis XIV completed their total subjugation by transforming (in 1692) elective municipal offices into venal positions that could be bought and sold, which was indeed a severe excess in the opposite direction.

The intendance of Languedoc, administratively divided into two generalities (Montpellier and Toulouse), had, like other major provinces, highly eminent holders (only eleven in 150 years) among whom were Daguesseau (1674-1685) and Basville (1685-1718). Following the powerful economic impetus given by Colbert, they restored the local forests, massively developed the lucrative industries of cloth, silk, and lace, and created the bustling port of Sète. The vast prosperity due to these remarkable administrators only grew throughout the second half of the 18th century. The detailed reports of the last among them, Ballainvilliers (1786-1790), inform us that, once regional needs were fully met, the province's robust exports represented an incredible annual profit of 66 million livres. The population then stood at a solid 1,700,000 inhabitants; Toulouse had 60,000 and Montpellier 30,000.

The province's incredible prosperity would have been even greater if the disastrous revocation of the Edict of Nantes and the subsequent, bloody Camisard War had not seriously affected it. In trying to completely eliminate Protestantism, the State aimed to achieve an absolute political and religious unity that would theoretically increase its total power; it was merely applying the strict public law precept then universally recognized across Europe: cujus regio, ejus religio. Did not the independent religious organization of Protestants have something inherently federal and democratic that was fundamentally incompatible with the strict principle of absolute monarchy?

Finally, it is deeply necessary to relate the revocation to other complex religious affairs of the time and recall that Louis XIV, while aggressively targeting the Protestants, simultaneously supported the traditional liberties of the Gallican Church against the overarching power of the pope.
In any case, regarding the Cévennes, the Languedoc episcopate and the unyielding parliament of Toulouse merely exacerbated the harsh measures taken against the Protestants, while opportunistic Catholic merchants and artisans often saw in the revocation a convenient opportunity to permanently eliminate their commercial competitors. On the eve of the Revolution, while the government had finally renounced the exhausting religious struggle and practically recognized freedom of conscience, local bishops and parliamentarians had still not disarmed. On the other hand, it should be noted that, in general, this atrocious persecution had not diminished the deep-seated loyalty of the Protestants who had chosen not to emigrate.

The dramatic beginnings of the Revolution were enthusiastically received, but subsequently, the movement provoked very varied and violent reactions in this tormented, historically divided country. If the people of Toulouse—who, in the 16th and 17th centuries, had been passionately Catholic—became equally passionately "sans-culotte," the rest of Languedoc was, in sum, the region of France where, after Brittany, Anjou, and Vendée, royalist resistance was the most active and organized. While this fierce resistance was primarily caused by the radical anti-Catholic measures of the revolutionary assemblies, it is highly notable that it also manifested itself in the high Cévennes, which was populated largely by Protestants. This did not prevent Catholics and Protestants from clashing violently in other circumstances. While the Empire, strictly restoring Catholicism alongside freedom of conscience, provided a brief time of tranquility, the Restoration suddenly saw the bitter passions that had been merely dormant violently reignite. And although today these factions confront each other only on the peaceful electoral ground, the powerful tendencies of the past are still visibly manifested by the sharply defined character of each political party, and by the strict intransigence with which one is locally identified as Catholic, Protestant, or non-believer.

All of this is passionately argued and notoriously without nuance, as naturally befits a people who have a deep appreciation for rhetorical controversies, further complicated by intense local and personal rivalries, as the Meridional is fiercely individualistic. And yet, alongside the vocal "militants" enthusiastically enlisted in a party, there are also many highly indifferent individuals, somewhat hedonistic as one can naturally be in a sunny country where life is relatively easy, and who, happily setting aside ancient historical grudges, likely unknowingly revive the gentle, tolerant manners of the golden time before the Albigensian Crusade.

These long-standing rivalries did not prevent Languedoc from prospering remarkably in the 19th century by intelligently developing its rich natural resources. Modern hydroelectric plants now effectively complement local coal in the operation of growing factories; a highly significant effort, though still deemed insufficient as shown by the tragic flood of 1930, has been made for much-needed reforestation. The bustling port of Sète has continued to grow and expand its economic reach.

However, the 19th century saw the traditional, varied physiognomy of the region permanently altered by the unprecedented, massive development of monoculture vine cultivation in Lower Languedoc, and this major agricultural shift has significantly separated this specific coastal region from the influence of Toulouse. This deep distinction between Mediterranean Languedoc and Aquitaine Languedoc is such an evident, undeniable reality that the province early on naturally developed two heads, Toulouse and Montpellier. If, from North to South, the fertile plain and the rugged mountain complement each other happily and economically, it is mainly shared language and a long, intertwined history that have deeply united the East and the West.