Bastides are fortified new towns built in medieval Languedoc

Languedoc

Languedoc is a former province of France, now continued in the modern-day régions of Languedoc-Roussillon and Midi-Pyrénées in the south of France, and whose capital city was Toulouse, now in Midi-Pyrénées. It had an area of approximately 42,700 km² .-Geographical Extent:The traditional...

, Gascony

Gascony

Gascony is an area of southwest France that was part of the "Province of Guyenne and Gascony" prior to the French Revolution. The region is vaguely defined and the distinction between Guyenne and Gascony is unclear; sometimes they are considered to overlap, and sometimes Gascony is considered a...

 and Aquitaine

Aquitaine

Aquitaine , archaic Guyenne/Guienne , is one of the 27 regions of France, in the south-western part of metropolitan France, along the Atlantic Ocean and the Pyrenees mountain range on the border with Spain. It comprises the 5 departments of Dordogne, :Lot et Garonne, :Pyrénées-Atlantiques, Landes...

  during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, although some authorities count Mont-de-Marsan

Mont-de-Marsan

Mont-de-Marsan is a commune and capital of the Landes department in Aquitaine in southwestern France.Mont-de-Marsan airbase « Constantin Rozanoff » is a major installation of the French Air Force. The base includes CEAM , an air defense radar command reporting centre, and an air defence control...

 and Montauban

Montauban

Montauban is a commune in the Tarn-et-Garonne department in the Midi-Pyrénées region in southern France. It is the capital of the department and lies north of Toulouse....

, which was founded in 1144, as the first bastides. In an effort to colonize the wilderness especially of southwest France, almost seven hundred new towns were built between 1222 (Cordes-sur-Ciel

Cordes-sur-Ciel

Cordes-sur-Ciel is a commune in the Tarn department in southern France.The fortified town was built in 1222 by Raimon VII, the Count of Toulouse, who, though not a Cathar himself, tolerated the heresy. The village is now a popular tourist spot...

, Tarn) and 1372 (La Bastide d'Anjou, Tarn).

History

Bastides began to appear in numbers under the terms of the Treaty of Paris (1229)

Treaty of Paris (1229)

The Treaty of Paris was signed on April 12, 1229 between Raymond VII of Toulouse and Louis IX of France. Louis was still a minor and it was his mother Blanche of Castile who had been responsible for the treaty. The agreement officially ended the Albigensian Crusade in which Raymond conceded defeat...

, which permitted Raymond VII of Toulouse

Raymond VII of Toulouse

Raymond VII of Saint-Gilles was Count of Toulouse, Duke of Narbonne and Marquis of Provence from 1222 until his death. He was the son of Raymond VI of Toulouse and Joan of England...

 to build new towns in his shattered domains, though not to fortify them. When the Capetian Alphonse of Poitiers inherited, under a marriage stipulated by the treaty, this "bastide founder of unparalleled energy" consolidated his regional control in part through the founding of bastides. The bastides were also an attempt by landowners to generate revenues from tax

Tax

To tax is to impose a financial charge or other levy upon a taxpayer by a state or the functional equivalent of a state such that failure to pay is punishable by law. Taxes are also imposed by many subnational entities...

es on trade rather than tithes (taxes on production). Farmers who elected to move their families to bastides were no longer vassal

Vassal

A vassal or feudatory is a person who has entered into a mutual obligation to a lord or monarch in the context of the feudal system in medieval Europe. The obligations often included military support and mutual protection, in exchange for certain privileges, usually including the grant of land held...

s of the local lord — they became free men; thus the creation of bastides was a force in the waning of feudalism

Feudalism

Feudalism was a set of legal and military customs in medieval Europe that flourished between the 9th and 15th centuries, which, broadly defined, was a system for ordering society around relationships derived from the holding of land in exchange for service or labour.Although derived from the...

. The new inhabitants were encouraged to work the land around the bastide, which in turn attracted trade in the form of merchants and markets. The lord taxed dwellings in the bastides and all trade in the market. The legal footing on which the bastides were set was that of paréage

Paréage

In Medieval France a paréage or pariage was a feudal treaty recognising joint sovereignty over a territory by two rulers, who were on an equal footing, pari passu; compare peer. On a familial scale, paréage could also refer to the equal division of lands and the titles they brought between sons of...

with the local ruling power, based on a formal written contractual agreement between the landholder and a count of Toulouse a king of France or a king of England. The landholder might be a cartel of local lords and the abbot of a local monastery.

Responsibilities and benefits were carefully framed in a charter

Charter

A charter is the grant of authority or rights, stating that the granter formally recognizes the prerogative of the recipient to exercise the rights specified...

 that delineated the franchises ("liberties") and coutumes ("customs") of the bastide. Feudal rights were invested in the sovereign, with the local lord retaining some duties as enforcer of local justice and intermediary between the new inhabitants— required to build houses within a specified time, often a year— and the representatives of the sovereign. Residents were granted a houselot, a kitchen garden lot (casale) and a cultivable lot (arpent) on the periphery of the bastide's lands. First constructions of the hall and the church were often of carpentry: stone constructions came after the successful founding of the bastide.

Structure and location

There has been some scholarly debate about the exact definition of a bastide. They are now generally described as any town planned and built as a single unit, by a single founder. The majority of bastides have a grid layout of intersecting streets, with wide thoroughfares that divide the town plan into insulae, or blocks, through which a narrow lane often runs, and a central market square surrounded by arcades (couverts) through which the axes of thoroughfares pass, with a covered weighing and measuring area. The market square often provides the module into which the bastide is subdivided. The Roman model, the castrum with its grid plan and central forum

Forum (Roman)

A forum was a public square in a Roman municipium, or any civitas, reserved primarily for the vending of goods; i.e., a marketplace, along with the buildings used for shops and the stoas used for open stalls...

, was inescapable in a region where Roman planning precedents remained in medieval cities like Béziers

Béziers

Béziers is a town in Languedoc in southern France. It is a sub-prefecture of the Hérault department. Béziers hosts the famous Feria de Béziers, centred around bullfighting, every August. A million visitors are attracted to the five-day event...

, Narbonne

Narbonne

Narbonne is a commune in southern France in the Languedoc-Roussillon region. It lies from Paris in the Aude department, of which it is a sub-prefecture. Once a prosperous port, it is now located about from the shores of the Mediterranean Sea...

, Toulouse

Toulouse

Toulouse is a city in the Haute-Garonne department in southwestern FranceIt lies on the banks of the River Garonne, 590 km away from Paris and half-way between the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea...

, Orange

Orange, Vaucluse

Orange is a commune in the Vaucluse department in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region in southeastern France.It has a primarily agricultural economy...

 and Arles

Arles

Arles is a city and commune in the south of France, in the Bouches-du-Rhône department, of which it is a subprefecture, in the former province of Provence....

. The region of the bastides had been one of the last outposts of Late Antiquity

Late Antiquity

Late Antiquity is a periodization used by historians to describe the time of transition from Classical Antiquity to the Middle Ages, in both mainland Europe and the Mediterranean world. Precise boundaries for the period are a matter of debate, but noted historian of the period Peter Brown proposed...

 in the West. Ease of tax collection is another reason for the grid layout, taxable module by module, and the organized central area; the bastides' forms result from "the friction engendered by interaction, expedience, pragmatism, legal compromise, and profit," Adrian Randolph observed in 1995. Rarely these little ideal cities have a circular plan. Some bastides were not so geometrically planned: "The block geometry of the bastides was not a rigid framework into which a town was squeezed; it resembles more closely a net, thrown upon the site and adapting to its nuances," Randolph remarks.

Most bastides were built in the Lot-et-Garonne

Lot-et-Garonne

Lot-et-Garonne is a department in the southwest of France named after the Lot and Garonne rivers.-History:Lot-et-Garonne is one of the original 83 departments created during the French Revolution on March 4, 1790...

, Dordogne

Dordogne

Dordogne is a départment in south-west France. The départment is located in the region of Aquitaine, between the Loire valley and the High Pyrénées named after the great river Dordogne that runs through it...

, Gers

Gers

The Gers is a department in the Midi-Pyrénées region in the southwest of France named after the Gers River.Inhabitants are called les Gersois or Gersoises.-History:...

 and Haute-Garonne

Haute-Garonne

Haute-Garonne is a department in the southwest of France named after the Garonne river. Its main city is Toulouse.-History:Haute-Garonne is one of the original 83 departments created during the French Revolution on March 4, 1790. It was created from part of the former province of Languedoc.The...

 départements of France, because of the altitude and quality of the soil, and some were placed in important defensive positions. The best-known today is probably Andorra la Vella

Andorra la Vella

Andorra la Vella is the capital of the Co-principality of Andorra, and is located high in the east Pyrenees between France and Spain. It is also the name of the parish that surrounds the capital....

, but the most populated is Villeneuve-sur-Lot

Villeneuve-sur-Lot

Villeneuve-sur-Lot is a town and commune in the Lot-et-Garonne department in south-western France. The commune was formerly named Villeneuve-d'Agen....

, the "new town on the River Lot".

See also

• This heritage has an important role in the tourism in the southern regions
  Tourism in Tarn
  From the Gaillac Vineyard to the Sidobre, the Montagne Noire and the stunning Gorges du Tarn, the Tarn department, in the southwest of France, offers a great range of sights and tourist attractions.-Statistics:In 2009, there were :...
  
  .

External links

• History of the Bastide Towns
• Bastides - mediaeval planned towns Where, when and why they were built. Musée des bastides, in Monflanquin, France Site du Centre d'études des bastides