A Book of the Riviera

by S. Baring-Gould

Their first appearance on the Provençal coast was in 730, when they sacked Nice and other towns, and the inhabitants fled to the mountains to save their lives.

They harassed the littoral incessantly, not in large forces at a time, attempting a conquest, but arriving in a few vessels, unexpectedly, to pillage, murder, and carry away captives. As soon as ever the forces of the Counts arrived, they escaped to their ships and fled, to recommence their devastations at another point.

In 846 the Saracens carried ruin and desolation over the whole plain of Aix, and made themselves masters of all vantage points along the coast. The population sunk in despair, no longer offered effective resistance, and the nobles, quarrelling among themselves, invoked the aid of the infidels against their neighbours of whom they were jealous. About this time it happened that a Moorish pirate was wrecked in the bay of S. Tropez. He soon saw the strategic value of the chain of granite and schist mountains, and returning to Africa collected a large band, crossed the sea, and took possession of the whole mountainous block. At this time, moreover, Mussulman Spain was a prey to a bloody schism. The dynasty of the Abassides was succeeded by that of the Ommiades, and the vicissitudes of parties continually augmented the number of those who were conquered and proscribed. These, flying from Spain, sought refuge in this corner of Provence, which by such means was converted into a little Mussulman realm. On every height was built a rebath, a fort that the Christians called a fraxinet, whence a sharp watch was kept over the sea, and should a merchant vessel be descried, at once a flotilla of pirate boats started out of the harbour of S. Tropez, and fell on the unfortunate merchantmen.

Thus established here, masters also of the Balearic Isles, of Sardinia and Sicily, as well as of the African coast, they completely paralysed the trade of the Mediterranean, and exposed the inhabitants of the seaboard, that was Christian, to daily peril of being carried off to be sold in the slave markets of Tunis and Morocco.

In Spain, the Mussulman conquerors had developed a high state of civilization. They had become architects of great skill. They cultivated science and literature.

In Provence they were not constructive. They did nothing for civilization, everything to waste, set back, and to destroy. They have left behind them in the country not a trace, save a few names, of their strongholds. The condition of affairs had became intolerable. The Moors of the Grand Fraxinet, their principal fortress in the Montagnes des Maures, started on a pillaging expedition, crossed Lower Provence, and entered the Alps. As they turned north they met with great resistance. They ascended the river Roja, they pushed over the Col de Tende, and descended into the plains of Lombardy. They took the monastery of S. Dalmas de Pedene, and although most of the monks had fled, they caught and killed forty of them, and either massacred or took prisoners all the peasants about.

Another pillaging excursion crossed the great S. Bernard to attack the monastery of S. Maurice, where the Archbishop of Embrun, and some of the Provençal prelates had stored the treasures of their churches. A third party from the Fraxinet, aided by a fleet from Africa, had taken Genoa, and put all the inhabitants to the edge of the sword.

Hugh, Count of Provence and King of Italy, was appealed to for aid. Having no naval force to oppose to that of the Moors, he solicited help from the Emperor of the East, and a fleet from Constantinople entered the Gulf of S. Tropez, and burnt that of the Saracens. Hugh, in the meantime, invaded the mountains and reached the Fraxinet.

But whilst thus engaged, he heard that Berengarius, Marquess of Ivrea, had taken advantage of his absence to fall on his possessions in Italy. Hugh thereupon dismissed the Greek fleet, and made an alliance with the Saracens, to whom he committed the passages of the Alps.