What's in a name...
Sue Hicks looks into history through Street names.
Pierre-Paul Riquet = the Canal du Midi. Since Roman times, there had been talk of a waterway to link the Atlantic and Mediterranean coasts to avoid having to go round the Iberian peninsula, a month long journey which was slow, expensive and dangerously open to attacks by pirates, and into the treacherous Bay of Biscay. Even Leonardo de Vinci had been asked by King Francis 1st for his ideas. But it was not until the 17th century that a man with the right combination of vision, ambition, skill and money to master-mind such a project was able to harness new and old technologies to build the 240 kilometre canal. This “beautiful open-air museum of engineering master-pieces” goes from Sète on the Mediterranean via Béziers, Carcassonne and the geological gap between the Pyrenees and the Montagne Noire known as the Seuil de Naurouze into the heart of Toulouse. From there the river Garonne, which was eventually made fully navigable, runs to Bordeaux and the sea.
Pierre-Paul Riquet was born in Béziers in 1604 or 1609 where his wealthy father was a notaire and Crown prosecutor of allegedly questionable reputation. As a youth, Pierre-Paul was only interested in mathematics and science. He soon gained opportunities for enrichment when he was appointed as a tax gatherer, including for the lucrative salt tax, the gabelle. This involved supervising the transport and storage of salt as well as the tax gathering. As salt was essential for preserving food and a minimum purchase per household was set down in law, tax collectors could make a good profit on the difference between what they charged and what was due to the crown.
Riquet, his wife and five children lived at Revel and later bought the Chateau du Bonrepos near Verfeil to the north east of Toulouse in 1651. One of the main technical problems of how to link Toulouse with the Mediterranean was how to ensure a sufficient water supply for the summit. While exploring the Black Mountains, Riquet romantically “found” or more prosaically was “shown” by a local man, the watershed, the seuil de Narouze where water went in two directions. The self-taught engineer drew up plans for huge artificial lakes to supply the proposed canal, obtained local support, and in 1662 formally wrote to Louis X1V’s new Finance Minister Colbert “on the subject of a canal which could be built in this province of Languedoc to ensure communication between the two seas”. Colbert and his master the King were keen to identify “grand projets” and to establish better communications throughout the country and until the advent of railways, the key to national prosperity was thought by many to lie with canals and
canalized rivers. Colbert ordered a feasibility study by a commission which included the leading military engineer Chevalier de Clerville and on 14 October 1666 Riquet was appointed engineer by royal edict.
In the following fourteen years, up to 10,000 men and women were employed in the cutting of the canal, constructing dams, reservoirs and aqueducts, building bridges, installing locks including a flight of 7
and overcoming the perils of vaulting the first navigation tunnel in the world at Malpas. In order to overcome the difficulty of farm workers downing tools to go back to their farm tasks, Riquet introduced monthly salaries.
Women played an important role as those who came from the former Roman bath colonies in the Pyrenees added their knowledge of classical hydraulic methods to the stock of available techniques. Cypresses and plane trees were planted, which served both to provide shade and to
prevent evaporation, as well as millions of irises to protect and beautify the banks. The huge cost of construction depleted Riquet’s personal fortune including it is said not being able to pay his daughters
dowries. The seemingly insurmountable technical problems caused his sponsors, including Louis XIV, to lose interest. Colbert became suspicious that Riquet was embezzling money. Sceptics, envious usurpers who tried to claim some of the credit and bad payers added to Riquet’s difficulties. In order to
complete work, he had to organise the financing of the project and for himself and heirs he obtained a monopoly over certain tolls for 10 years and the canal became his fief with attendant rights. Whatever combination of motivations - scientific curiosity, personal ambition to leave his mark, financial and professional considerations - his tenacity, daring, enthusiasm, obstinacy and imagination were publicly recognised when he was ennobled by the Sun King.
Pierre-Paul Riquet died exhausted, leaving enormous debts, in 1680, just months before the completion of the Canal du Midi and the official opening on 15 May 1681. He inspired generations of engineers and perhaps some of the politicians considering infrastructure projects to this very day.
Sue Hicks decided to learn some French history through street names when staying in a Place Gambetta and wondering who s/he was. Having worked in probation, child protection and adoption in the UK, retiring to sit in the sun was not enough. Sue started a monthly bi-lingual reading group in the Pezenas library which celebrates its 10th anniversary this year, helped with an after school homework club and joined the team of Blablablah in organising distribution throughout the Hérault. Persuading a teacher of French to run a weekly history course was inadvertently great preparation for writing ‘What's in a Name’.
About The Writer
Paris was in uproar. France had declared war on her ever more powerful neighbour on 19 July 1870. Six weeks later, news of the French defeat at the battle of Sedan reached Paris. Emperor Louis Napoleon had written “As I cannot die at the head of my army, I lay down my sword at the feet of your majesty” and then surrendered personally to Kaiser Wilhelm 1 of Prussia. Thousands of Frenchmen had died or been taken prisoner along with their Emperor.
Paris was in uproar. France had declared war on her ever more powerful neighbour on 19 July 1870. Six weeks later, news of the French defeat at the battle of Sedan reached Paris. Emperor Louis Napoleon had written “As I cannot die at the head of my army, I lay down my sword at the feet of your majesty” and then surrendered personally to Kaiser Wilhelm 1 of Prussia. Thousands of Frenchmen had died or been taken prisoner along with their Emperor.
On Sunday 4 September some weary members of the Corps Legislatif resumed the debate which had begun in the early hours while others judged it prudent to slip away quietly. Before they had finished their deliberations and agreed a plan of action, a huge crowd, whipped up by various factions, gathered outside and threatened to overwhelm them with cries of “Live Free or Die” Troops had surrounded the building but took no action. The 32 year old republican Leon Gambetta, already well-known as a gifted orator, “leapt to the rostrum” and seizing the moment declared that Louis Napoleon, nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte, and his dynasty were overthrown. Fearing danger and disorder, the crowd were invited to go the Hotel de Ville and streams of citizens were lead noisily along both banks of the Seine. The Third Republic was declared that afternoon. There was some uncertainty among the leaders as to the basis for this declaration so it was decided that the provisional government, led by General Trochu, should be formed by the elected deputies of Paris until elections could be held.
Meanwhile, the Empress Eugenie who was acting as Regent in the absence of her husband at the war was persuaded by a deputation of parliamentarians to stand down. She fled overnight to the home of a Doctor Evans, an American society dentist, who helped her to reach the channel coast and persuaded an English captain to take aboard the Empress who was posing as a lunatic from an asylum on her way to visit relatives. Eugenie was Spanish by birth but had attended a school in Bristol (in a building now named Eugenie House) and soon settled in Chislehurst where she was joined some months later by her husband, who had also lived in England previously. Louis Napoleon died in 1873 but Eugenie lived on until 1920 and the couple are buried with their son (who died in 1879 in South Africa while serving in the British Army) in Farnborough.
Back in Paris on 4 September 1870, telegrams were sent out to the provinces announcing the Third Republic. A telegram was sent to Victor Hugo, in exile since the coup d’etat of Louis Napoleon in 1851, with the agreed message “Bring the children immediately” and he left for Paris the following day. Throughout France, citizens tore down plaster busts and insignia of Napoleon III and celebrated wildly. The Second Empire had ended and the Third Republic had been born without a drop of blood being spilt. The Franco-Prussian War ended in 1871 with a total French surrender, a huge reparations bill and the ceding of territory including Alsace-Lorraine.
Most street signs do not give a year for the date 4 Septembre. It is unlikely that they commemorate 4 September 1346, the day when the English began the Siege of Calais during the Hundred Years’ War. Eleven harrowing months later, 6 rich burghers with nooses around their necks and carrying the keys to the city surrendered to the English fearing ransom or execution. Edward 111, possibly at the urging of this pregnant wife but also perhaps fearing reprisals at a later date and seeking ransoms, spared their lives. This event is commemorated by Auguste Rodin’s statute The Burghers of Calais which stands in front of Calais town hall. A copy was purchased by the British government in 1911 and stands in the Victoria Tower Garden adjacent to the Houses of Parliament in London.
Street signs for 4 septembre marking the foundation of the Third Republic can be found throughout France and have not been super ceded by commemorations of the founding of the two later republics.