But that is not all: the wash of the sea, its current settling west, and carrying with it the mud of the Rhone is gradually, but surely building up a fifth bar or bank, which will in time close the gulf from the point of Espignette to the bathing-place of Palavas, when the Gulf of Aigues Mortes will be converted into a second Etang de Berre.
[Illustration: Map of THE COAST OF PROVENCE & LANGUENDOC showing Old
Lagoons & Deserted River Mouths]
Aigues Mortes is surrounded by its mediæval fortifications just as they were left by Philip the Bold, son of S. Louis. The plan of the town is almost quadrilateral, it has six gates and fifteen towers. Only one angle of the parallelogram is cut off, where stands the stately circular tower of Constance. The streets are laid out in the most precise manner, cutting each other at right angles; there are four churches, of which the principal is Notre Dame des Sablons. The others were all formerly attached to monasteries or convents.
[Illustration: Original use of battlements.—(From Viollet-le-Duc.)]
The plan of the fortification is precisely that adopted by the Crusaders wherever they built defences, in Syria, in Cyprus, in Palestine. The walls are crenellated, usually without machicolations, pierced with long slots, and with square holes through which beams were thrust, supporting wooden balconies which commanded the bases of the walls, and enabled the besieged to protect themselves against the efforts made by the assailants to sap the bases of the ramparts, or to escalade the walls. Towers, round and square at intervals, strengthened the walls, and formed points of vantage and of assembly for the besieged. Precisely similar fortifications were raised about the same period at Tortosa, Antioch, Ascalon, Cæsarea, &c.; but all these have been destroyed, only Aigues Mortes remains, an unique and perfect example of the systematic fortification adopted by the Crusaders everywhere.
The reader, probably, has not given a thought to the original purpose of a battlement, so common on towers and churches and castles. I therefore venture to show what it was originally. It was a wall broken through with doorways into the wooden gallery that overhung, and through which the assailants could be kept from approaching too near to the base of the walls. But, after a time, these wooden galleries were found to be inconvenient. Means were taken by the besiegers to set them on fire. Consequently they were abandoned, and their places were taken by projecting galleries of stone, supported, not on wooden beams, but on stone corbels, and it is this second stage in fortification which is called machicolation. The battlements were retained, but were no longer roofed over. Consequently it is possible to tell approximately the epoch of a Mediæval fortification, by a look at the battlements, whether they stand back flush with the walls, and have the beam-holes, or whether they stand forward, bracketed out from the walls.
[Illustration: Second stage of battlements.]
Aigues Mortes is a dead town. About a third of the area within the walls is devoted to gardens, or is waste. The population, which in the thirteenth century numbered 15,000 souls, has shrunk to a little over 3,000, a number at which it remains stationary. It does a little sleepy trade in salt, and sees the barges for Beaucaire pass its walls, and perhaps supplies the boatmen with wine and bread. The neighbourhood is desolate. The soil is so full of salt that it is impatient of tillage, and produces only such herbs as love the sea border. But its lagoons are alive with wild fowl, rose-coloured flamingoes, white gulls, and green metallic-throated ducks.
And now for Maguelonne. I said that Aigues Mortes was a dead town, but Maguelonne was the ghost of one. The best way to reach this latter very singular spot is to take the train from Montpellier to Villeneuve de Maguelonne, and walk thence to the border of the Etang. There one is pretty sure to find fishermen—they catch little else than eels—who will row one across to the narrow strip of land that intervenes between the lagoon and the sea. The littoral chain here is not of sand and gravel only, for a mass of volcanic tufa rises to the surface, and originally formed an islet in the sea, then, when the process began of forming a littoral belt with a lagoon behind it, the sands clung to this islet and spread out from it to left and right.
On this volcanic islet stood first a Greek and then a Roman city, but of its history nothing is known till the sixth century, when it was attacked from the sea by Wamba, King of the Visigoths. It had been an episcopal city for a century before. After the Visigoths came the Saracens, who gave the place their name, and the harbour of Maguelonne was called Port Sarasin. In 737, Charles Martel, in order to clear the pirates completely out of their stronghold, destroyed the city to its last foundation, with the sole exception of the old church of S. Peter. The bishop took up his abode on the mainland at Villeneuve, and the seat of the bishopric was moved to Castelnau near Montpellier. For three centuries the islet was abandoned and left a heap of ruins. But it was restored in the eleventh century. The walls were again set up, and flanked with towers, and a causeway consisting of a chain of wooden bridges was carried across the lagoon to Villeneuve. The entrance to the port was closed lest it should invite Saracen pirates, and another opened under the walls of the town which could be rendered impassable by a chain at the first sign of danger. The newly-built town speedily showed vigour, became populous, and the harbour was filled with the merchandise of the Mediterranean. Two popes visited the city, Gelasius II. in 1118, and Alexander III. in 1162. In addition to the Cathedral of S. Peter, other churches were raised, dedicated to S. Augustine and S. Pancras. A castle with keep was erected.