Aigues-Mortes, Gard Département, Occitanie, France

🇫🇷 Aigues-Mortes (Aigas Mòrtas) 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 centre for canal craft and Dutch barges.

History 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. 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: Middle Ages In 791, Charlemagne erected the Matafère Tower  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 Magne Tower  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. Residents were exempt from the salt tax which was previously levied so that they could now take the salt unconstrained.

He built a road between the marshes and built the Carbonnière Tower  to serve as a watchtower and protect access to the city. Louis IX then built the Constance Tower  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 completely encircle the small town. 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.

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.

Modern and contemporary periods Aigues-Mortes still retained its privileges granted by the kings. 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. 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.

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 report 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 Petite Camargue some 90 km (56 miles) north-west of Marseille. By road, Aigues-Mortes is about 33 km (21 miles) south-west of Nîmes, and 20 km (12 miles) 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 south-west through the commune to Le Grau-du-Roi. Route D62 also starts from Aigues-Mortes heading south-west 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 north-west and the north-east 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.

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 Aigues-Mortais or Aigues-Mortise; in Occitan they are aigamortencs.

Aigues-Mortes is one of 79 member communes of the Schéma de cohérence territoriale (SCoT) 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 Loi littoral  of SCoT in the South of Gard.

Economy: Agriculture • Viticulture and asparagus • Breeding of bulls and of Camargue horses. Both are raised almost wild in the surrounding marshes.

The Camargue bull is smaller than the Spanish fighting bulls, stocky, with high horns and head. It measures about 1.40 m at the withers. It is primarily intended for bullfighting which is very popular in the region.

The Camargue horse is the ultimate companion for herdsmen to move into the marshes and herd bulls. According to some discoveries of bones, it seems that the ancestors of the Camargue horse date to the Quaternary period. The Camargue horse is not very large, about 1.50 m tall. It has a huge resistance adapted to the terrain. Its colour is brown at birth, gradually turning white after a few years.

Industries • Production of salt by the operation of the saltworks of the Salins group. Probably used since ancient times, the salt of Aigues-Mortes attracted fishermen and salt workers. The Benedictine monks settled nearby in the 8th century at the Abbey of Psalmodiet to exploit this valuable commodity in the Peccais Ponds. The salt has long been one of the main resources of the city. To achieve "table salt quality", water pumped from the sea travels more than 70 km in "roubines". The concentration of sodium chloride is from 29 to more than 260 g/kg. Mechanically harvested salt is piled up in the twinkling "camelles" before being packaged. It is suitable for human consumption.

Tourism

The medieval heritage from the 13th and 14th centuries of the commune and its proximity to the sea attract many tourists and residents of France.

River The city of Aigues-Mortes is a crossroads of canals: • Canal du Rhône à Sète from the north-east and leaving westward • Canal de Bourgidou to the south-east, and joins the Petit Rhône via other channels to the limit of Gard and Bouches-du-Rhône • Le Grau-du-Roi, maintained since the Middle Ages and connecting Aigues-Mortes to the central part of Grau-du-Roi

Transport: Rail Aigues-Mortes station has rail connections to Nîmes and Le Grau-du-Roi. The railway line from Nîmes to Le Grau-du-Roi is also used for the transport of salt produced by the saltworks of the Salins Group (see link below).

Transport: Road The development of seaside tourism since the 1960s was marked by the construction of new resorts (La Grande-Motte) and the extension of existing facilities from Le Grau du Roi to Port-Camargue. To facilitate access to tourists, a coastal road network has been augmented and connected to the A9 motorway. Aigues-Mortes benefits in these ways: • to the east, the road D58 connects the city to Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer and the commune of Arles. This road winds through the rice fields and the various ponds that make up the Camargue. • to the west, the road D62 was enlarged for cars to make a quick connection to Montpellier • to the north, the road D979 directly connects the town to the motorway at Gallargues-le-Montueux

The bus 106 also connects Montpellier and Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer.