A contested union
In December 1481 Charles V of Anjou, the last independent count of Provence, dies. Louis XI immediately charges Palamède de Forbin with taking possession of the country in his name. On the 29th and 30th of December, Forbin convenes the Estates at Aix through the seneschal Pierre de la Jaille, to notify them of the designation of the King of France as heir of Charles III. On 1 January 1482, Forbin replaces this same seneschal with his own son-in-law, Raymond de Glandevès, locking down the provincial apparatus even before the Estates vote.
The vote comes two weeks later. On 15 January 1482, under Forbin's impetus, the Estates adopt a charter of fifty three chapters that historians have since called the Provençal Constitution. Its first article already recognises the King of France as Count of Provence. Four years later, in August and then October 1486, the Estates ask Charles VIII for the definitive and perpetual union of the county with the crown, obtain satisfaction by letters patent, and see this union solemnly established at Aix on 9 April 1487.
Two dates have long disputed the title of the true attachment. Historical tradition has favoured 1486 to 1487, more solemn, more often cited. Busquet contests this vigorously. For him, the decisive act is already accomplished on 15 January 1482 : the Estates fix by their vote the precise conditions of Provençal autonomy, whereas the declaration of 1486 to 1487 merely reformulates the essential point in more ceremonious and less precise terms. He writes : "The declaration of October 1486, April 1487 has enchanted later historians even more than the Provençals of the time. Very wrongly have they delighted in dating the Union of Provence with France to 1486, when on 15 January 1482 the Estates had already ratified it, fixing by their vote the conditions of autonomy, far more precise than the formulas of 1486.". All three sources agree on the calendar itself. Their disagreement bears on which of these three moments, 1482, 1486 or 1487, constitutes the true attachment, and the question remains open.
The aftermath of the Union is not settled at a stroke. In 1489, the court of France institutes a governor of Provence above the seneschal, thereby doubling local authority. The overlap turns to crisis : in 1493, a civil war breaks out in Marseille between governor and seneschal, and closes only through the merger of the two offices in favour of Philippe de Hochberg. A few years later, Louis XII undertakes a major judicial reform. The reform opens in 1501 and concludes in 1502, when the edict of Lyon creates the Parlement of Provence at Aix, placed under the presidency of officers foreign to the country despite Provençal resistance.
The imperial invasions
The sixteenth century brings Provence two invasions from the east. In 1524, imperial troops, led by the constable of Bourbon who had defected to the enemy, take Toulon and then Aix and lay siege to Marseille. Honoré de Puget is executed on the order of François I. The following year, in 1525, the king himself is defeated and captured at Pavia. Provence briefly recovers a moment of splendour in 1533, when the marriage of the future Henri II and Catherine de Médicis is celebrated at Marseille in the presence of Pope Clement VII.
The second invasion, in 1536, is of an altogether different scale : Charles V leads it in person, crosses the Var, and has himself proclaimed king of Arles at Aix during the campaign, before finally being halted before Marseille and Arles. This difference in command between the two invasions is no scholarly detail : Busquet confirms that 1524 unfolds without the presence of the emperor, whereas 1536 unfolds with him.
The edict of Joinville and Villers-Cotterêts
In 1535, the edict of Joinville closes the episode opened by the invasions and fixes for a long time the administrative framework of the province. It creates six sénéchaussées, at Aix, Arles, Draguignan, Digne, Forcalquier and Marseille. Busquet holds it to be the founding act of the modern Provençal status : "The edict of Joinville was capital in the history of Provence. [...] It truly marked, in this country, the beginning of the era of the French monarchy.".
Four years later, in August 1539, the ordinance of Villers-Cotterêts (a royal edict requiring that judicial acts be drafted in the vernacular rather than in Latin) requires that judicial acts be drafted in French and no longer in Latin. It is declared applicable to Provence on 17 October following. This ordinance has long been read as a measure directed against local speech. Busquet dismisses this reading and clarifies its real effect : "But the truth is that it did not at all aim at the eviction of local idioms, but rather that of Latin. It nonetheless had the effect of rapidly eliminating Provençal from the written language, where its use was progressing.". Two claims stand in this sentence, and both matter. The target aimed at by royal power was the Latin of official acts, not Provençal. But the effect produced was the rapid disappearance of Provençal as a written language, at a precise moment when its use there was advancing. This is the corpus's only indication of a movement of expansion of written Provençal before 1539, and it deserves to be retained as such : a language on the rise, cut short by a law that did not target it.
The language of this period
Provence is the last of the lands of oc to pass to French in writing, and it does so even before the edict of Villers-Cotterêts: according to Blanchet, this shift happens "at the end of the fifteenth, start of the sixteenth century, before 1539". The ordinance of August 1539 therefore introduces nothing new on this point: it confirms and accelerates a movement already under way. This movement fits into a series of earlier royal texts. As early as 1490, the edict of Moulins of Charles VIII opens the process of replacing Latin with modern idioms in the courts, a process that Blanchet says required four successive royal edicts, so strong was the resistance of Latin, "symbol of an entire monopoly of power held by the elites". In the meantime, the creation of the Parlement of Aix, in 1501 to 1503, substituted for the Estates of Provence, also contributes to the expansion of French before 1539: this Parlement delivers its rulings in French.
The edict of Is-sur-Tille of 1536, issued by François I following the edict of Joinville of 1533, illustrates the margin still left at that date to Provençal in official writing. It prescribes that criminal trials and inquiries in Provence henceforth be conducted "in French or at the very least in the vernacular of the said country", a phrase Blanchet translates without hesitation: "That is to say in Provençal". Provençal thus remains, until this date, a legitimate language of recourse for justice, in the absence of French.
After 1539, Provençal does not disappear from official writing at a stroke. Blanchet notes that official texts in this language continue to be drafted until the end of the sixteenth century: on 13 June 1543, the municipal council of Saint-Tropez rules in Provençal on a decision concerning the defence of the town against the Spanish galleys, and at Toulon, the municipal preconizationes, written in Latin in 1394, are translated into Provençal by D. Balthazarem for the municipal council in 1557. This persistence has its limits: Provençal disappears from official writing in the middle of the seventeenth century, as the manuscripts attest.
From this institutional evolution arises, from the sixteenth century, a diglossia that Blanchet describes as stable until 1789. French, which spreads little beyond the well off circles, the administrations and the intellectuals, inherits the social functions once held by Latin and becomes the mark of the upper classes and of writing. Provençal, meanwhile, remains the sole language known and used by the vast majority of the population, in all circumstances. According to Blanchet, this diglossia stems from conflictual relations between social classes over control of power, knowledge of French and of writing having become a condition of access to that power. He expressly rules out the competing reading, which would see in it a rivalry of an ethnic and nationalist kind between the French and the Provençals.
Blanchet devotes to this sixteenth century rupture a head on disagreement with Lafont, a champion of a unifying reading of the languages of oc. Where Lafont places a fracture between a former state of the language that had become incomprehensible and a modern state perceived through a foreign notation, Blanchet places it elsewhere: between an idiom once written by a dominant class, that of the clerics, and an idiom now oral, that of a dominated and illiterate class. He sees in it, against Lafont's reading, a nascent assertion of the cultural identity of a class that refuses the model of the dominant classes.
Blanchet also dismantles the received idea that sixteenth century Provençal writers wrote "in the French manner". He judges it "entirely false": their writing systems remain native to more than 80 percent, and to more than 90 percent for some, notably Tronc. What these systems have in common with French comes down to a limited learned and etymologising element; their most distinctive trait remains their phonogrammic flexibility. Blanchet coins on this point the notion of "écriture de parole" (writing of speech): a spelling adapted to orality, with no norm imposed from above, at a time when Provençal becomes an essentially oral language, proper to the illiterate classes.
The literary and scholarly life of the period leaves dated traces. The Chansons du Carrateyron, published anonymously at Aix in 1530, offer an example of popular expression in Provençal. The first printing press in Provence is set up at Orange only in 1573, a delay that partly explains the weakness of French language printed output in the province during the sixteenth century. In 1575, Jean de Nostredame, brother of Nostradamus, publishes in French his work Vies des plus célèbres et anciens poètes provençaux, in which he claims that the troubadours were specifically Provençal. On the side of popular theatre, the Judeo-Comtadin play La Reine Esther, published in 1774 by two rabbis, illustrates the vitality of a particular idiom, Judeo-Comtadin, Provençal-Hebraic, carried by the Jews of the Comtat. Finally, Provençal becomes, in the eighteenth century, an object of scholarly attention: the first dictionaries of the Provençal language date from this period, that of Pellas in 1723, that of Puget in 1747, that of Achard in 1785, followed by his Dictionnaire de la Provence et du Comtat Venaissin in 1787, which asserts, alongside Papon's Voyage littéraire en Provence (1780), the grandeur of the cultural and linguistic heritage of the Provençals.
One fact contradicts the image of a language driven out of writing. Casaulx introduces printing to Marseille in 1595, a city until then dependent on Avignon and Aix, and the first Marseille press prints the Obros et rimos provençalos of Bellaud de la Bellaudière. Fifty-six years after Villers-Cotterêts, the first book to come off the city's presses is a book in Provençal, and Bellaud remains the only author writing in Provençal that the historical corpus names for the whole period.
Casaulx, dictator of Marseille
The Wars of Religion, which cross Provence from 1561 to 1598, produce in Marseille an episode apart : fifteen years during which the city escapes all authority, royal or Leaguer. In October 1591, taking advantage of the disorder between the two rival Parlements of Aix and the ambitions of the Duke of Savoy, Charles de Casaulx seizes power in Marseille. He will not let it go until his death.
Casaulx governs as an absolute master. He takes the fort of Notre-Dame de la Garde, thereby locking down the city from above and below, and conducts a tyrannical administration dictated by the demands of permanent siege. But his power is not only military : in 1593, he founds the Hôtel-Dieu, and in 1595, he equips Marseille with its first printing press, the city having until then had its texts printed at Avignon or Aix. This first Marseille press produces the Obros et rimos provençalos of Bellaud de la Bellaudière, and this choice says enough about what the dictator wished to leave behind. Meanwhile, the rest of Provence shifts into Henri IV's camp : on 5 January 1594, the Leaguer Parlement of Aix, alone and not yet reunited with the royalist Parlement withdrawn to Manosque, recognises the new king. The merger of the two Parlements takes place only in June of the same year, when the royalist Parlement returns to Aix.
Casaulx himself does not rally. Anxious to see Henri IV's reconquest close in on Marseille, he negotiates in secret with Spain through Charles Doria, then sends at the end of 1595 a secret embassy to Philip II. The president Étienne Bernard, secret envoy of the King of France, tries in vain to change his mind in early January 1596. A plot then forms around Pierre Libertat, a close associate of Casaulx bought over by the Duke of Guise. On 10 February, Guise fixes the action for the 17th.
On 17 February 1596, at the Porte Réale of Marseille, Libertat pretends to help Casaulx, then strikes him. Busquet gives the account in its full brutality : "Libertat steps forward and, twice over, runs his sword through his body. Barthélemy Libertat, brother of the assassin, finishes off the fallen dictator with pike thrusts. Not one of the guards of the escort had taken a step to defend the first consul : betrayal surrounded him on every side.". The royal troops enter the city at once, and the president Étienne Bernard walks the streets acclaiming the king. The Marseille dictatorship ends with its founder.
The century of rebellions and the entry of Louis XIV
The seventeenth century in Provence does not pacify the province, it shifts its fault lines. In 1630, the edict of the Élus substitutes royal agents for the Estates in the levying of taxes. The response from Aix breaks out on 19 September 1630, the day known as the Cascaveù, led by the president de Coriolis, who drives out the consul Forbin and the intendant Dreux d'Aubray. A little more than twenty years later, the Provençal Fronde polarises Aix between Sabreurs and Canivets, while the war of the Semestre, born of the edict of Fontainebleau of October 1647, duplicates the offices of parlementaires.
Louis XIV closes this period in his own manner. On 2 March 1660, he enters Marseille himself through a breach in the ramparts, a gesture meant as a lesson. On the following 5 and 7 March, letters patent reorganise the municipal government of Marseille : the office of viguier is granted for life, then, by new letters of 7 March 1662, made hereditary, in favour of Fortia de Piles. Marseille thus loses the last remnant of its communal autonomy.
The plague of 1720
In 1713, the Peace of Utrecht revives the Levant trade at Marseille. Seven years later, this trade brings catastrophe. On 25 May 1720, the ship the Grand Saint-Antoine arrives before Marseille, carrying the plague. The captain, Chataud, had nonetheless reported the sanitary state of the ship, and the quarantine imposed on it was eased without justification. A judgment of the Admiralty delivered in 1723 sheds light on the reason for this leniency : one of the échevins then in office, J. B. Estelle, together with his associates, owned this cargo, valued at a hundred thousand écus. Busquet notes that the trace of this collusion was afterwards disguised : "his deposition was immediately subjected to a calculated softening and then to a disguise, still visible on the registers of the Health board, under its date".
The disease then spreads with lightning speed, from Marseille across all of western Provence. The bodies pile up on the esplanade of la Tourette, for want of hands and time to bury them. The clearing of the esplanade takes place only on 16 September 1720, led by the chevalier Roze with convicts supplied by the bailli of Langeron, under the watch of the échevins, among them the same Estelle. Facing the epidemic, the Bishop of Marseille, Monseigneur de Belsunce, chooses personal exposure : he celebrates mass in the open air, barefoot, on 1 November 1720, then leads on 31 December a general thanksgiving procession, as the epidemic finally recedes.
The epidemic then reaches the outskirts of Marseille, then other towns of Provence, sparing only La Ciotat, which owes its escape to its isolation. The Parlement of Aix withdraws to Saint-Rémy and then to Frigolet. Arles suffers in 1721 a deadly resurgence of the epidemic. The quarantines at Marseille are lifted only in November of the same year, and the epidemic, in total, dies out in May 1722, after having carried off close to 40,000 dead.
Towards the Revolution
The rest of the century sees Provence crossed by European conflicts, Marseille and Toulon serving as naval bases during the Seven Years' War, then by the stirrings of enlightened despotism under Louis XV and Louis XVI. On 12 January 1775, the crowd at Aix acclaims the Messieurs of the Parlement, reinstated after being recalled by Louis XVI. At the end of 1787, the king convenes the provincial assemblies in their former form, third estate, clergy and nobility. The reform movement accelerates in 1788 and 1789, aggravated by the frost on the olive trees that strikes the province that winter.
On 30 January 1789, Mirabeau delivers at Aix a speech calling on the Provençal nation to assert its rights. The following spring mixes electoral enthusiasm with anger at the high cost of living, then, at the end of March, an outbreak of riots crosses the whole province around the voting assemblies. On 19 August 1789, bloody popular unrest shakes Marseille, before the rebels are released at Mirabeau's call.
The Provençal story of the Ancien Régime closes on one last division. On 22 December 1789, the National Assembly decrees the division of the kingdom into departments. Provence is at once contested : the quarrel pits the partisans of Sinéty against those of Bouche over the line of division, and it is Aix that prevails, becoming the chief town of the new department. Three centuries after the Provençal Constitution of 1482, the province ceases to exist as an administrative entity, and gives way to an entirely new division.
Chronology
Sources of this page
- Maurice Agulhon and Noël Coulet, Histoire de la Provence, Que sais-je? collection.
- Raoul Busquet, Histoire de Provence.
- Philippe Blanchet, Le provençal, essai de description sociolinguistique et différentielle, Peeters, 1992.
- Wikipedia, article "Histoire de la Provence" and related articles.