Cycling the Canal du Midi. Declan Lyons
kingdom to the Franks following the battle of Vouille near Poitiers in AD507. Little remains of the Visigoth kingdom with the exception of a few buckles, belts and bronzes, but the Visigoths live on in place names such as the Alaric Mountain (south of the canal at Puicheric), named after their King Alaric.
The Languedoc was sandwiched between warring nations during the following centuries. The Saracens, or Moors, moved north in the eighth century and took Narbonne in AD720. In the following year a Frankish army defeated the Saracens in the Battle of Toulouse. They encircled the defeated troops and killed them – one of the worst military episodes in Muslim history.
Defeats at the hands of the Frankish leader, Charles Martel (or Charles the Hammer), and King Pippin the Younger ended the Moors’ permanent presence north of the Pyrenees in the Languedoc. The Moorish armies did cross the mountains in following centuries, and in AD920 reached the gates of Toulouse, but failed to establish a permanent presence.
Troubadours
The resulting mix of religions, races and people may have contributed to the development of a more liberal and tolerant society in southwest France. At the beginning of the second millennium the region developed its own distinct code of nobility, and the troubadours’ poetry from the 11th century exemplifies the sophisticated artistic culture thriving there.
The troubadours composed songs and poetry in Occitan (the regional language) on the theme of courtly love. Their work was highly stylised and dealt with heroic feats, war, natural beauty, philosophy, honour, and love – passionate, unrequited and illicit.
This flourishing angered the Roman Catholic Church. The verses often praised much that the Church opposed – especially physical love, adultery and romance. Satirical poems and songs about the Church and the clergy did little to assuage the former’s anger. It is not surprising that the troubadours were seen as subversive when the Church began persecuting the Cathar faith.
The Cathars and the Crusade
When driving towards southern France, motorway signs announce that you are entering the Cathar country.
Catharism was a 10th-century dualist religion with its roots in Christianity. Cathars could not reconcile the world’s evil with a just and good God; they believed that evil must come from an evil God who controlled the material world, while the good God was responsible for the spiritual one. These beliefs were similar in part to those of the earlier Gnostics.
The Cathars prayed and fasted regularly. They shunned meat, eggs and dairy foods; they ate fish, oil, vegetables and fruit. On fast days they took bread and water. The local population in southwest France admired the Cathars’ piety and contrasted it with the indulgent lifestyle of the Roman Catholic clerics.
The Church became increasingly concerned about the growth in adherents of counter-religions, who were branded as heretics. In 1056 Pope Victor II excommunicated (expelled from the Church) heretics and their accomplices, and the Church ordered the burning of heretics throughout the 12th century across Europe.
The crusade was a cruel and vindictive campaign
Lotario Conti, a student of theology and canon law, was elected pope in AD1198. The 38-year-old chose the name Innocent III. He was greatly concerned about the spread of heresy – particularly in the Languedoc – and issued a decree legalising the seizure of heretics and property belonging to their supporters. He then put pressure on Raymond VI, Count of Toulouse, to act against the Cathars.
In January 1208 Raymond VI met the pope’s legate, Pierre of Castelnau, to persuade the latter to revoke an excommunication pronounced against him (Raymond VI had refused to support Pierre’s campaign against the Cathars). The meeting between the two men was acrimonious. The following day some of Raymond’s men attacked Pierre of Castelnau’s party as they prepared to cross the Rhone, and killed the legate. Pope Innocent III used the murder as a pretext for declaring a crusade against Raymond and offered his lands as booty. The pope put his legate, Arnaud-Armaury, a former abbot, in charge.
A crusader army of 50,000 men reached the region in June 1209. They headed west from Valence (sparing Montpellier as a Roman Catholic city) and set up camp in the abandoned town of Servian, near Béziers. Béziers refused to give up 210 named Cathars, and so the crusaders breached the defences and began sacking the town. The townspeople crowded into churches and the crusaders, acting on Arnaud-Armaury’s dictate to ‘kill them all, God will know his own’, slaughtered every man, woman and child; it is estimated that they butchered up to 20,000 people.
Béziers (Stage 4)
The crusaders moved swiftly from Béziers and took Carcassonne. Simon de Montfort (who was grandfather of the Simon de Montfort who called the first English parliament) was appointed crusade leader and he picked off the towns in the surrounding countryside. His campaign was cruel and vindictive. The crusaders’ major victory came at Muret in September 1213 on the banks of the River Garonne. Poor generalship and the death of King Pedro II of Aragon, intervening on behalf of Raymond (who was his son-in-law and vassal) gave Simon de Montfort the day.
The campaign continued as the forces of the crusades tightened their hold on the lands in the south. The pope appointed the Dominican order as inquisitors to root out the remaining heretics. The Cathars fled to isolated mountain forts – these falling one by one over the following century – until the last known Cathar was burnt at the stake in 1321.
War and turmoil
Monument to Sauvian’s fallen in two world wars (Excursion 6)
The region was caught up in the turmoil of the Hundred Years’ War between England and France, which began in 1337. It suffered famines in 1332 and 1374 and a plague in 1348, when a third of the region’s population died. English armies and mercenaries pillaged the area during a period of general lawlessness. The Hundred Years’ War ended in 1453.
The War of Religion between Protestant and Roman Catholics had a major impact during the 16th century, and many of the towns and villages along what was to become the route of the Canal du Midi changed hands. The 17th century saw the French establishing greater regional control and the country emerging as a major power. However, France lost many of her colonies to England in the late 18th century, and relations between the people and the aristocracy became increasingly bitter. The French Revolution in 1789 brought about the fall of the monarchy and the establishment of a republic in 1793.
Despite wars, including the Napoleonic Wars, the south of France continued to develop and prosper in the 18th and 19th centuries. The Canal du Midi, which had been inaugurated in 1681, contributed greatly to this improvement. Wine production became a major source of wealth – the lifeblood of the region.
The region played an important role in the two world wars in the 20th century; a disproportionately large number of its men were lost in the trench wars in World War I, and in World War II the Pyrenees became a stronghold for the French Resistance.
The construction of the canal
Roman and French rulers long dreamed of linking the Atlantic and Mediterranean seas, but it was the ingenuity and dogged persistence of one man, Pierre Paul Riquet, that made it a reality.
Monument commemorating Pierre Paul Riquet (Excursion 1)
There was a strong commercial reason for linking the two seas: the route around the coast of Spain was 3000km long, and the journey was perilous. Pirates preyed on cargo ships and winter storms destroyed them. Road transport was also difficult, and carts couldn’t carry large volumes of goods. On top of these difficulties, the authorities wanted a secure transport system that was within their control.
Pierre Paul Riquet was born in Béziers on 29 June in