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- The Quiz!
- We're talking a little, a lot... passionately !
May 1: red in the north, black in the south... Pierre and Colette Soulages... The song of the partisans... Woodwork... Azalais the Trobaritz... The Battle of Camerone... The 7 lights on our coast... The Provencal House... May Day... - Vagabondages...
- Passadoc library.
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Claude Boyer
1and May: red in the north, black in the south
Offering flowers in May dates back to ancient times.
It is spring, in ancient Rome flowers are offered. At the Celts too, their party is called Beltaine.
But offering mugue dates back to the Renaissance.
King Charles IX (1550-1574) offered mugue from 1561, he was only 11 years old but ascended to the throne a year earlier! He makes the ladies of the court enjoy it. We are far from the symbol of International Labour Day!
The French Revolution goes through there, the Feast of Labour appears the... April 26th! It's actually a Republican day.
Exist the reference to Catherine de Medici and her son Charles IX! Red eglantin replaces the mugue.
Click! The rest is on this page.
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Philippe Natalini
Pierre and Colette Soulages
... They married almost 80 years ago in Sète on October 24, 1942 (Chêne wedding).
They had met a few months earlier at the École des Beaux-Arts in Montpellier.
– We loved the same things. We got married at midnight at Saint-Louis de Sète Church where we were both dressed in black.
– Why at midnight?
– I don't remember very well. It was a very simple marriage, as a family.
(extract from an article of The News of 4/12/2018)
Pierre Soulages was born on 24 December 1919 in Rodez, 102 years old. Colette Llaurens was born on 14 March 1921 in Sète and celebrated her centenary last year. When they were married, they moved to Grabels until the end of the war.
Refractory to the STO, he obtained false papers and became registrator in the vineyard of the Mass de la Valsière in Grabels. He then met the writer Joseph Delteil, who believed in him, from the first moments. The latter will tell him:
– You paint with black and white, you take the painting by the horns, i.e. by magic. (source: Wikipedia).
In March 1946, they moved to Paris and then returned to Sète in the early 1960s.
The Soulages Museum, inaugurated in 2014, is in Rodez. His work is also visible at the Fabre Museum in Montpellier, thanks to an important donation from them.
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The song of the partisans...
Who wrote The Song of the Fans became, during the Second World War, the hymn and almost « Marseillaise » Resistance to Nazi oppression?
Friend, do you hear the black flight of crows?uOur plains?
Do you hear the deaf cries of the country that we chain?
It is, after a martial drum beat, that these two verses start the famous song. The music was written by Anna Marly in 1943, a Russian artist refugee in London. Voluntaryly sober, inspired by popular Russian air, it could be whistled; It was important because in occupied France people could hear by listening to the English BBC despite the intense radio interference put in place by the Germans.
It is also the voice of Anna Marly that we hear on the original recording of the song.
It is on three leaves torn from a school notebook, in blue ink, that the writers Joseph Kessel and his nephew Maurice Druon in the bar of an English hotel, wrote these words of hope and combat, repeated both in the maquis and by the unfortunate imprisoned in Nazi prisons. Three leaves became in 2006 one « historical monument » as part of the national heritage. A song later picked up by many artists.
Youtube Videoe
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Alain Cathala
Woodwork...
To 19e When the only energy to find some heat came from the wood burned in the chimneys, the question of supply was crucial. We must imagine that in the narrow streets of Montpellier, the distribution of wood and fagots became a source of major conflicts between neighbours.
For this reason, the various municipalities were obliged to make orders to ensure the best possible distribution and to allow peaceful coexistence between the suppliers and the inhabitants of the city centre. Here is an excerpt from Montpellier City Code, published in 1836:
Firewood
1. All drivers of cars loaded with wood to burn and other fuels intended for the supply of the city will be required, upon arrival, to park in the Place de la Saunerie, until the sale, and they are expressly forbidden to travel inside the city with their carts, if not to go to the buyer's home, that they will be required to designate under the requisition of any police officer or administrative officer. It is understood that if before entering the market, the timber was sold, it could be taken directly to the buyer's home, unless required to designate it
2. It is expressly forbidden for carters, drivers of cars carrying wood to burn, as well as sawmills, to place wood on the public road, in order to intercept the communication: only half of the street can be taken for the temporary storage of wood and sawing.
Legs
1. From 1and February 1822, the carts loaded for the service of the ovens of the bakery, will stop at the gates of the city, on the places or vacancies that precede them. The carters will unload all the fagots which, by the way they are usually placed, exceed the hubs of the carts. They will be careful to arrange the fagots they leave on the places and vacancies, so that the public road is not embarrassed.
2. When this first operation is carried out, they will drive with their cart, in front of the door of the suppliers and bakers, some of the fagots intended for them, observing that this quantity cannot exceed the hubs of the cart and is not in the case of inconvenience to the inhabitants, nor to hinder the highway, and for their part, the supplyers and bakers will cause the said fagots to be removed, at the very moment, and will place them in their houses, without being permitted to place them on the public highway.
3. Immediately after the carters have made this first journey, they will return to the gates of the city to take the other fagots, and carry them to their destination, and for this purpose will make as many trips as it will be necessary, always in accordance with the conditions prescribed by the preceding article, and so that the free movement of the streets, even the narrowest ones, is not intercepted.
4. If the supplies and bakers are housed in streets where they could not be unloaded without too much hindrance to the public road, the carters will stop on the squares or on the widest nearby streets, and the supplyers and bakers will be obliged to have the fagots for them removed at their expense.
5. Persons who are housed in narrow streets, and who are therefore more likely than others to suffer any contraventions that may be made to this Order, are invited to make them known to the Town Hall, so that they can have offenders punished.
6. The owners of carts carrying fagots are civilly liable for the convictions and damage to their agents.
7. A copy of the present will be sent to the Mayors of the communes of Fabrègues, Saint-Gély, les Matelles, Montferrier, Vailhauquès, Murles, Combaillaux, Saint-Vincent-de-Barbeyrargues, Montarnaud and Castries, so that they can inform the individuals who supply the fagots intended for the consumption of the city.
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Azalais the Trobaritz
Azalais de Porcairagues is considered the first troubadouress whose name is known to us. His life remains mostly a mystery; the little information that has come to us holds in a few lines vida, a prose text telling the life of a trobairitz or a troubadour. The vida d-Azalais relates:
Azalais de Porcarages so f de l'encontrada de Monpeslher, gentiles domna et ensenhada. And enamèt d'En Gui Guerrejat, qu'era fraire d'En Guilhem de Mopeslher. E domna so sabia trobar, and fez de him mantas bonas cansos.
(Azalais de Porcairagues, a noble and cultivated lady, came from the Montpellier region. She was in love with Gui Guerrejat, Guillaume de Montpellier's brother. She knew how to compose and wrote many beautiful songs for him).
History remembers the name of twenty-three Trobairitz, or troubadouresses, which write, compose and interpret. They are considered the first Western women to write secular music. From the nobility, they also sing about love, the great epics, sometimes political subjects.
Text by Jean Pascal Girou
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The Battle of Camerone
The Legion's mission was to ensure the movement and safety of convoys over 120 km. Colonel Jeanningros, who was in command, learned on 29 April 1863 that a large convoy of 3 million in cash, siege equipment and ammunition was en route to Puebla. Captain Danjou*His adjutant-major decided to send a company to meet the convoy. The 3e Foreign Regiment Company was designated, but she had no officers available. Captain Danjou took command of it himself and the second lieutenants Maudet, the flag holder, and Vilain, the payer, voluntarily joined him.
On April 30, at 1 a.m., the 3e Company, with three officers and sixty-two men, set about. She had travelled about 20 kilometres, when, at 7 a.m., she stopped at Palo Verde to make coffee.
At this moment, the enemy reveals itself and the fight begins immediately. Captain Danjou formed the square and, while retreating, defeated several cavalry charges, inflicting severe losses on the enemy. Arriving at Camerone's inn, a large building with a courtyard surrounded by a three-metre-high wall, he decided to cut off from it to fix the enemy and thus delay as much as possible the moment when the enemy could attack the convoy.
While his men hastily organized the defence of this inn, a Mexican officer, claiming the great superiority of the number, ordered Captain Danjou to surrender. He said: ‘We have cartridges and we will not surrenderThen, raising his hand, he swore to defend himself until death, and made his men take the same oath. It was 10:00. Until 6 o'clock in the evening, these sixty men, who had not eaten or drank since the day before, despite the extreme heat, hunger, thirst, resisted two thousand Mexicans: eight hundred horsemen, a thousand two hundred infantrymen.
At noon, Captain Danjou was killed with a bullet in the chest. At 2 o'clock, Second Lieutenant Vilain fell, hit with a bullet in the forehead. At that time, the Mexican colonel managed to set fire to the inn. Despite the heat and smoke that come to increase their suffering, the legionaries hold on, but many of them are struck. At 5 a.m., around Lieutenant Maudet, there were only twelve men in a position to fight. Then the Mexican colonel gathers his men and tells them of what shame they will cover up if they fail to bring down this handful of braves (a legionary who understands Spanish translated as he speaks). The Mexicans will give the general assault by the breaches that they managed to open, but before that, Colonel Milan again sends a warning to Lieutenant Maudet: he rejects it with contempt. Final assault is given. Soon, there were only five men around Maudet: Corporal Maine, the Legionnaires Catteau, Wenzel, Constantin, Leonhart. Each person still keeps a cartridge; They have the bayonet with the cannon, and, refugees in a corner of the court, their backs to the wall, they face; At a signal, they unload their rifles at close range on the enemy and rush on him by bayonet. Second Lieutenant Maudet and two legionnaires fell, beaten to death. Maine and his two comrades will be massacred when a Mexican officer rushes at them and saves them; He shouts to them:
– Surrender!
– We will surrender if you promise to raise and treat our wounded and if you leave our weapons.
Their bayonets remain threatening.
– We don't refuse men like you! Answer the officer.
The sixty men of Captain Danjou held until the end of their oath; For eleven hours, they resisted 2,000 enemies, killed 300 of them and injured as much. By their sacrifice they saved the convoy and fulfilled the mission entrusted to them.
The Emperor Napoleon III decided that Camerone's name would be inscribed on the flag of the Foreign Regiment and that, moreover, the names of Danjou, Vilain and Maudet would be engraved in golden letters on the walls of the Invalides in Paris.
In addition, a monument was erected in 1882 on the location of the battle. Since then, when Mexican troops pass the monument, they present weapons.
*Jean Danjou was born on 15 April 1828 in Chalabre (Aude)
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The same subject – The Battle of Camerone – has also been treated
by Philippe Natalini
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Hervé Grauby
The lighthouses of the coast: the seven lights of our coast
They are the light that reassures and guides the sailors lost in their dark night. More than one hundred years ago, for most of them, aesthetics, built at the entrance of ports of character (Sète, Port-la-Nouvelle, Port-Vendres) or in places offering breathtaking views and conducive to beautiful walks (Cap Cerberus, Cap Bear, Cap Leucate, L-Espiguette), they deserved to be highlighted in their turn.
Click! The Moong clear gulfs...
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Giselle Penat-Lorde
The Provencal House
In the Var, country houses are not referred to as mas, but as bastides, households, and other « Ustau ». The housing of a peasant, despite the rapid evolution of habits after the last war, has changed little, at least externally. The progress has entered the kitchen but many bastides have remained as in the past century, others are in the state of « case » (abandoned) which is found in the valleys and which often remains only part of the walls covered with ivy. On the front grows an old fig tree or mulberry antiques, sometimes two or three cypresses a little funeral but typical of the Provencal landscape (the number of three was sign of hospitalit(e)
Source: Blog « Passion-Provence » Nadine de Trans
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Jeanne Monin
May Day...
The happiness of the First May, it's a bit like the wish of the New Year of the First January: we're not sure that that « march »But it can't hurt!
Here and there:
Originally from Japan, the muguette arrived in France in the Middle Ages. This « valley lilies » has the reputation of bringing happiness: The more bells on the mugue strand, the more luck smiles at its beneficiary. The most superstitious will even say that only the muguet strands that possess thirteen flowers truly bring happiness!
In the Drôme, on the side of Saint-Paul-Trois-Châteaux, it is said that « Catherine de Medici would have come in 1560 with her son Charles IX » then ten years old. A forced visit because « the queen mother and her son had to go to Avignon but they were denied access to the city »against a background of tension between Catholics and Protestants. The owner of the establishment at the time [the private hotel], the knight Louis de Girard de Maison Forte, honoured to welcome a royal character « offers a bit of muguet to Catherine de Medici. She brought him back to the court and Charles IX decided to establish this tradition, to offer the ladies a bit of muguet on May 1st. ».
Similar story: According to tradition « offer mugue on May 1st » from XVIe century. In the Renaissance, Charles IX was said to have launched this fashion after having received from the knight Louis de Girard, a bit during a first May.
We must wait until 1941 for the First May to be holiday*. Philippe Pétain says today Day of work and social harmony with hope of the join the workers in the government of Vichy. Not won!
* The day became a holiday, unemployed and paid in 1947.
However, we must not forget that « in 1886, more precisely in the state of New York, each 1and May there was a general upheaval of the working class due to the renewal of employment contracts for a period of one year« . And 1and May 1886, thousands of workers march across the country for this one claim. In Chicago, some 40,000 workers are on strike. On May 3, a confrontation between strike breakers and strikers unfortunately killed 4 people. A meeting is organized the next day. At the end of the demonstration, a bomb bursts.
Three years later, he « It is stated that a large international event will be organised on a fixed date, so that, in all countries and in all cities, on the agreed day, the workers warn the public authorities to legally reduce the working day to eight hours. »
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Gilles Barattini
The night falls on Moustiers Sainte-Marie
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Parc de la Camargue
Evening quietness on the pond of Vaccines…
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Alain Cathala
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Priory Saint-Michel de Grandmont
Exceptional site in Languagedoc.
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Hotel de Solas.
... to Montpellier.
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