Le Grau du Roi

In my previous post I mentioned Le Grau du Roi which is a small little town on the mediterrannee shore, at the edge of the Camargue region. Camargue is the land of the French Cowboys, called guardians. they ride white horses, which are a special breed from this area and raise taureaux (Toros). I thought I could share with my readers some pictures of the area, since France is such a magnificent country as well as some French history...

So here I go...

At the entrance of the town are the arenas, where happens some sport, toro's games or concert events

It was Christmass time, and of course being on the mediterrannean shore south of France, the climat is very mild and winters are warm. Per consequent there is no snow, but they still find some solutions to display some snow men LOL...

Le Grau du Roi is a fishermen village, with a small harbour in the central canal, as you will see below:

old but typical fisherman boat

a more modern fishing boat bellow the light house

the canal with some Venise's spirits...

looking toward the sea

at sunset the fishing boats are coming back loaded with their catch of the day

a Citroen 2cv station wagon... a favorite of William

Talking about William... He love france and enjoying it even if the ocean wind is a bit more cooler than in st Martin

Me with Timia, my mom's german shepard on the beach of L'espiguette

going out of Le Grau du Roi, just on the pond some Flamingo taking the sun

typical country side of Camargue

a mile away from Le grau du Roi, toward the city of Aigues Morte, are located the "Salins du Midi" which is the largest sea salt industry in the world. The mount you see in the pictures are not mountains or dunes.. but pile of sea salt ! Huge....

Just outside the salt "factory" is the vineyard of Listel, which proce a wonderful Rose wine, dry and fruity. The grapes have the particularity to grow in sand ( beach sand...)

A mile away from Listel and the Salins du Midi is the medieval city of Aigues Mortes. It is a fortified walled city, built in the 12th century for the purpose of being the departure and returning harbour for the Crusades.

So here is a little bit of French history...:

The 1,650 metres of city walls were built in two phases: the first during the reign of Philippe III the Bold and the second during the reign of Philippe IV the Fair, who had the enclosure completed between 1289 and 1300. The Constance Tower here below, completed in 1248, is all that remains of the castle built in Louis IX's reign. It was almost certainly the gatehouse tower, designed to be impregnable with its six-metre-thick walls. A spiral staircase leads to the different levels of the tower.

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.

St Louis, or Louis IX of France, king of France and crusader, rebuilt the port in the 13th century as France's only Mediterranean port at that time. It was the embarkation point of the Seventh Crusade (1248) and the Eighth Crusade (1270). The town is actually several miles inland and the port, as such, would have been in nearby lagoons and estuaries, linked to Aigues-Mortes.

At the age of 15, Louis brought an end to the Albigensian Crusade in 1229 after signing an agreement with Count Raymond VII of Toulouse that cleared his father of wrong-doing. Raymond VI had been suspected of murdering a preacher on a mission to convert the Cathars.
Louis's piety and kindness towards the poor was much celebrated. He went on crusade twice, in his mid-30s in 1248 (Seventh Crusade) and then again in his mid-50s in 1270 (Eighth Crusade). Both crusades were complete disasters; after initial success in his first attempt, Louis's army of 15,000 men was met by overwhelming resistance from the Egyptian army and people.
He had begun with the rapid capture of the port of Damietta in June 1249, an attack which did cause some disruption in the Muslim Ayyubid empire, especially as the current sultan was on his deathbed. But the march from Damietta towards Cairo through the Nile River Delta went slowly. During this time, the Ayyubid sultan died, and a sudden power shift took place, as the sultan's slave wife Shajar al-Durr set events in motion which were to make her Queen, and eventually place the Egyptians' slave army of the Mamluks in power. On April 13, 1250 Louis lost his army at the Battle of al Mansurah and was captured by the Egyptians. His release was eventually negotiated, in return for a ransom of 400,000 livres tournois (at the time France's annual revenue was only about 250,000 livres tournois, so it was necessary to obtain a loan from the Templars), and the surrender of the city of Damietta.
Following his release from Egyptian captivity, Louis spent four years in the crusader Kingdoms of Acre, Caesarea, and Jaffe. Louis used his wealth to assist the crusaders in rebuilding their defenses and conducting diplomacy with the Islamic powers of Syria and Egypt. Upon his departure from the Middle East, Louis left a significant garrison in the city of Acre for its defense against Islamic attacks. The historic presence of this French garrison in the Middle East was later used as a justification for the French Mandate following the end of the First World War.

Louis IX took very seriously his mission as "lieutenant of God on Earth," with which he had been invested when he was crowned in Rheims. Thus, in order to fulfill his duty, he conducted two crusades, and even though they were unsuccessful, they contributed to his prestige. Contemporaries would not have understood if the king of France did not lead a crusade to the Holy Land. In order to finance his first crusade Louis ordered the expulsion of all Jews engaged in usury. This action enabled Louis to confiscate the property of expelled Jews for use in his crusade. However, he did not eliminate the debts incurred by Christians. One-third of the debt was forgiven, but the other two-thirds was to be remitted to the royal treasury. Louis also ordered, at the urging of Pope Gregory IX, the burning of some 12,000 copies of the Talmud in Paris in 1243. Such legislation against the Talmud, not uncommon in the history of Christendom, was due to medieval courts' concerns that its production and circulation might weaken the faith of Christian individuals and threaten the Christian basis of society, the protection of which was the duty of any Christian monarch
In addition to Louis's legislation against Jews and usury, he expanded the scope of the Inquisition in France. The area most affected by this expansion was southern France where the Cathar heresy had been strongest. The rate of these confiscations reached its highest levels in the years prior to his first crusade, and slowed upon his return to France in 1254.
In all these deeds, Louis IX tried to fulfill the duty of France, which was seen as "the eldest daughter of the Church" (la fille aînée de l'Église), a tradition of protector of the Church going back to the Franks and Charlemagne, who had been crowned by the Pope in Rome in 800. Indeed, the official Latin title of the kings of France was Rex Francorum, i.e. "king of the Franks," and the kings of France were also known by the title "most Christian king" (Rex Christianissimus). The relationship between France and the papacy was at its peak in the 12th and 13th centuries, and most of the crusades were actually called by the popes from French soil. Eventually, in 1309, Pope Clement V even left Rome and relocated to the French city of Avignon, beginning the era known as the Avignon Papacy (or, more disparagingly, the "Babylonian captivity").

Pope Boniface VIII proclaimed the canonization of Louis in 1297; he is one of the few royals in French history to have been declared a saint.
Louis IX is often considered the model of the ideal Christian monarch. Because of the aura of holiness attached to his memory, many Kings of France were called Louis, especially in the Bourbon dynasty, who directly descended from one of his younger sons.

His reliques still remain untoughed in the Church of Aigues Mortes... By respect to his Saintety, the little chest was never opened and we still ignore what it contains

I hope this blog didn't bored you too much, but it is the best way I found to work out my "hangover" from Christmass eve diner at my sister house last night...

In some of my next blogs, I may post more about France, its country side, culture and history. More to come are the City of Montpellier, few miles away from le Grau du Roi, as well as the beach of L'espiguette, the Cevennes region where my family house is located, and of course a lot of other area of France.

Merry Christmass.