THE CASTLE RUINS, LES BAUX
THE CASTLE DOVECOT, LES BAUX
From the summit of the castle there is a magnificent view of the great plain to the south. It includes the whole extent of the Crau; and now you can see which part of it has been fertilized, with the threads of canals running through it, and which part still remains in its stony desolation. The great lagoon, called the Etang de Berre, lies a glistening sheet almost on the horizon, and you can just descry the line of the sea beyond it. To the right you see Arles and the famous abbey of Montmajour, and the Rhône rolling its turgid waters through the plain of the Camarque, to where Stes. Maries rears its fortress church on the edge of the sea, and the holy men and women from Palestine miraculously landed. It is very far away, but there is hardly so much as a hillock between you and it.
From here too can be seen the strange, blanched desolation of the valleys that creep up into the solitudes of these stony hills. They are strewn with gigantic rocks that take on all sorts of fantastic tortured shapes. Part of it is called the Val d'Enfer, and it is said that Dante, who is known to have sojourned in Arles, took from it the scenery of his Inferno. In the spring it is lightened with the delicate flush of almond blossom, and Les Baux is beautiful with the silvers and blues and purples of its surrounding country, and its own wild aspect of strength and desolation. But its appeal is to the past, and without some knowledge of its history it must present itself as an almost undecipherable riddle.
We need not linger over the importance that this natural fortress had in the time of Marius, who had camps very near to Les Baux, and perhaps on the very spot; nor the story of the Christians who were driven to take refuge here by Alaric the Visigoth. The first of the long line of the counts of Les Baux who is known to history was Leibulf, who lived at the end of the eighth century. From that time, until the year 1426, when the death of the Princess Alix at last brought it to an end, it continually increased in wealth and importance, until it vied with the rest of the royal houses in Europe. Yes; this deserted, almost forgotten city, which now contains a bare hundred of inhabitants, was the seat of princes who intermarried with the reigning families of England, France, Poland, Savoy, Nassau, Brunswick and many more. It was the centre of a principality that included seventy-nine towns and bourgs, villages, or castles. Its rulers were Princes of Orange, besides, from which our own royal house is sprung; they derived titles from Milan, Naples, Piedmont, Marseilles and elsewhere; they were kings of Arles and Vienne; Princes of Achaia, Counts of Provence, Cephalonia, Spoleto, and other places; finally emperors of Constantinople, and that this was not an empty title is shown by the fact that an embassy was sent to a reigning princess of Les Baux to treat for her rights as empress. In the twelfth century the towns owned by the prince of Les Baux included Aix, Saint-Remy, Salon, Pertvis, and the Bourg-Neuf at Arles. The possessions of "La Baussenique" already made of it a second Provence. Indeed, Raymond des Baux, who died in 1150, claimed, through his marriage with the daughter of the Count of Provence, the whole of the country, and fought for it until his death.
There was continual fighting, with Les Baux as its centre, during the Middle Ages, and sometimes its lords were on the summit of fortune, sometimes forced to give up some of their lands. They fought with the Saracen corsairs, with the counts of Barcelona and kings of Aragon, with the counts of Anjou and Poitou, the king of Naples, and many more. They went crusading with the rest, and one of them is mentioned with honour in the pages of Froissart.