La Cité des Chariots.
The City of the Chariots.
Louis FEDIE
(1880)
With thanks to Jean Fourié & Laurent (Octonovo) & Société des Arts et Sciences de Carcassonne
(I)
Some historical documents, amongst which the most ancient relate back to the last years of the VIIth century and among which figures an act passed during the Cartulaire of Capcir, make mention of a territory or rather to a diocese situated in the Septimanie, and which was called the
Rhedesium or Pagus Rhedensis. This diocese did have a capital. What was the true name of this capital? What was its true geographical location? At what era can we place its creation?
On the first point, the answer is simple. The two prelates who in 798 A.D. were sent by Charlemagne in the Septimanie as Judge-Commissioners, make mention of the city of Rhedae, which they linked in the same time-scale as was placed Narbonne and Carcassonne. But
this enunciation of Rhedae, thus classified as ranking as missi dominici in the range of cities of
importance, requires no further comment. It relates well as one of the principal towns of the Septimanie, which could only be the capital of the diocese to which it had given its name. BESSE, one of the historians, to whom one would choose to refer, has been credited with the belief that, during the course of the VIthcentury the Bishops of Carcassonne, hounded from their seat of office by the Arians, established their provisional residence at Rhedae. Therein lays the overwhelming proof attesting to, during an epoch prior to the VIIth century, not only the existence, but again to the importance of a city that was the capital of Rhedesium.
It remains for us to discover what the geographical location of this city was, and to research its creation. No historian has given any indication as to the origin, the importance and the historic rôle of the town of Rhedae. Its creation is so steeped in mystery that it seems to have discouraged both the chroniclers and the archaeologists.
To no one has been attributed the honour of inventing a fable or a legendary tale to explain its beginnings. This popular aura, which bears the imprint of the extraordinary, that surrounds the birth of certain cities of the Narbonne region of Gaul, and notably of Carcassonne, renders this information completely absent. One would say that it is born in a single event, and that it was only discovered several centuries after its foundation. We find the explanation of this historical phenomenon in this fact that the creation of the capital of Rhedesium is later than the Roman occupation, and prior to the social constitution, which began to take shape in the Narbonne region, immediately following the conquest by the Visigoths. This is the factor, which explains the error of certain commentaries of which one group represents Rhedae to us a fortified town of Gaulish origin, equally as much as others attribute its origin to a Roman colony.
The same error is produced by certain historians when the subject relates to determining the exact emplacement of the city of Rhedae. One faction maintains that it was situated in the country of Chercorb or Kercobz; while the others have placed it at Rennes-les-Bains. Finally the opinion has been offered that there have existed two cities of this name in the Narbonne Region of Gaul.
We are going to endeavour to bring some light into these shadows.
None of the Latin authors who comprise the historians of the Roman conquest in the Narbonne region of Gaul, have made any mention neither of Rhedae nor of Rhedesium, that is to say of a diocese bearing this name. In the chronicles of EUSÈBE there figures a certain passage where the author is given to mention an outlying settlement bearing the name of Atax,
which appears to have been the cradle of the town of Limoux. DU MÈGE, in his commentaries, expounds, in a somewhat dubious form, an opinion to which we cannot ascribe. According to him, certain centres of the population situated in the Aude valley could have a Gallo-Hellenistic origin, in the sense that at the end of their creative period of Greek commerce extending along the shores of the Mediterranean, some colonies in the which were situated certain indigenous
elements intermingled with the foreign elements, who had their origins in this part of the Narbonne region. We cannot enter into this discussion here on the opinion offered by DU MÈGE, an opinion that we are far from supporting. We, ourselves, firmly maintain that we do not find Rhedae amongst the localities, which, according to him, were of Hellenistic origin.
The foundations of Rhedae, is it due to a certain section of the Volkes Tectosages who were living on the banks of the Aude and which have been called Atacins, deriving their name from the river Atax? This we do not think to be true. This population was clearly spawned in an inhospitable soil, in a country covered by vast forests of oak and of pine, would not have abandoned the valley floors so beneficial to the development of a culture, which offered them excellent shelter, and which would assure them a easy method of obtaining an existence, thanks to the fruits of hunting and fishing. They would not have deserted this territory upon which communication was easy and where one could escape from the forays of detachments of armed
Romans, thanks to the grottos and the caverns with which the land was covered. The Atacins therefore did not have any advantage in establishing a fortified settlement, village or town, on a raised plateau that would offer neither ease of existence nor security.
We will proceed to demonstrate that the city of Rhedae had not been founded by an indigenous population, the tribe of Atacins; no longer do they owe their creation to Gallo-Roman colony, and finally that the tribe is not of Gallo-Hellenistic origin. This town has been
constructed by foreigners, by invaders and by conquerors. These conquerors did not come from the regions of the north; too many obstacles would have halted them in their march and they would not have the same ability to surmount these obstacles to come to occupy an abandoned corner of the land. Everything proves to the contrary, that they did come from the South, that is to say from the Iberian regions. And in as much as the city of Rhedae existed outside of the invasion of the Saracens, it could only have been established by those who had
preceded them on their journey of invasion of the Gauls, that is to say by the Visigoths. We are then bound to uphold that Rhedae was, in its origin, a Visigothic fortified settlement.
We are going to supply several new arguments in support of this assertion.
Authors are not in agreement on the signature of the name that this city bore in earlier times. Theodolphus, one of Charlemagne’s missi dominici, wrote it as ‘Rhedae’. In many of the maps of the middle ages one finds ‘Redae’, then ‘Redde,’ and again ‘Reddas’, and finally ‘Reha’ or ‘Rheda’. We have no hesitation in adopting the version of the learned Bishop of Orleans; because the poem in which he relates concerning his mission in the Septimanie equates to the
name that we use to this day in official reports. In the second place, the word Rhedae has a significance that the other variants do not possess. The Romans, of whom the modern peoples are in these respect imitators, enriched their language by appropriating certain terms, which were provided by the nations with whom they were associated. Thus, after the Latin authors, the word Rhedae signified chariots de voyage (travelling chariots). And by adopting this translation, we shall extract from it the conclusion that the word Rhedae carries with it its own significance in explaining clearly the origin of the city with which this name is associated. Rhedae – the chariots de voyage – that is to say an encampment, the rolling caravans, spaced at regular intervals, fixed residences on a chosen spot, and forming a fortress of wood, of leather and of animal skins, surrounded by defensive positions. This is the city at its debut. This is an immense beehive of which each inhabitant has carried with him, his own honeycomb. In his records of the Merovignian era, Augustin THIERRY tells us that the chariots of the Visigoths were drawn by oxen. They were equipped with four main wheels set very wide apart, being able to traverse all highways. These were truly houses on wheels made of wood, of leather and hide. The great historian averred that to cross rivers as well as to travel up or down stream, the Visigoths made use of floats made of leathern bags containing sticks or rushes, and which one
could carry these floatation devices on men’s backs.
What is the location that had been chosen for the establishment of this fortress? It is the extremity of a vast plain, which stretches to the North and wherein lie the two passes which enable the massif of the Corbières to maintain communication with the Pyrenees.
From a strategic point of view the emplacement of a well-defended camp, destined to become a great centre of population, could not have been better chosen. Almost unassailable on three sides, this camp could be readily defended from the side of the raised ground touching the
immense plain called the plain of Lauzet, in which a large army would be able to manoeuvre. The Visigoths had learnt well at the school of the Romans, their enemies, the skills of encampment, and in this we are able to discover the proof in the disposition of the camp of Rhedae. We are going to try to demonstrate how the Visigoths were led to establish their first encampment in the place, to which they gave the name of Rhedae.
II
After having crossed the Summum Pyreneum by the Cluse pass, today known as le Pertus, which Hannibal had crossed, and which Pompey had declared one of his trophies, the Visigoths set out in 404A.D. from the village of Collioure,Caucoliberis, and achieved the conquest of Roussillon, of this territory, which several centuries previously had formed an independent territory under the name of Pays des Sardons.
Once they became the masters of Roussillon, they were able to penetrate into the Narbonne region of Gaul by two routes.
The one situated along the coastline led directly to Narbonne. The other which climbed towards the West, following the course of the Gly, crossed in its entire length the basin enclosed between the last mountain range of the Corbières and the first foothills of the Pyrenees, and butted up against the mountainous region where the mountainous region begins in this day, along with the forest of Fanges, in the formation of the Départment of the Aude.
The first of these routes strongly defended by the military establishments of the Romans would offer a serious resistance and could only be overcome by a well disciplined, organised army, launching a direct attack on Narbonne. In as much as they would need to concentrate their best troops at this point, the Visigoths were tempted to penetrate on another side into Gaul by their well disciplined forces. These troupes were not formed into an army, but were better described as a homogenous crowd, more or less armed, travelling with their tents, their chariots and their domestic animals. This human army stretched throughout the Corbière mountains,
which, from the peak of Leucate, stretching to the pêche de Bugarach, and came to extend to the upper extremity of the Roussillon basin. Having arrived there they divided themselves into two columns of which the one followed the valley of the Boulzanne which goes towards Axat, and follows the South side of the Forest of Fanges, whilst the other crossed the hill of Saint-Louis, and following the valley of Arese, of which it is often a question in the ancient maps whether it
should be shown under the name of the valles arida, being directed towards the North, had traversed this folded stretch of land where was later established the villages of Saint-Louis and of Saint-Just, and abutted against an immense plain where was established the encampment which was to become the city of Rhedae…
The itinerary that we are about to trace, in order to highlight one of the more interesting episodes during the Visigoth’s invasion of the region of Narbonne, is the result of meticulous investigations. The historical studies and the general statistical works have had, since the
beginning of this century, a team of experts equally as fervent as conscientious within the Départment of the Pyrénées-Orientales. One portion of this research and the Départment, comprising of le Capcir, the Sornia region of the Corbières, the Pays de Latour and the County of Fenoiuillèdes, was included in the diocese of Alet. As it has fallen to our lot to be the occupiers of Rhedesium, of which the Diocese had occupied, very much later on, together with almost the entirety of the incidental documentation, we were duty-bound to research all these documents, which bore reference to this part of the Province of Languedoc. It is thus that we have been lead to consult to good effect the works of ancient geography and archaeology that were related to the Départment of the Pyrénées-Orientales. The precise limits drawn by the administrative
demarcations were, of necessity, effaced when research related to important historical facts, relating back to a country now somewhat splintered, but of which the unification is increasing over a period of less than a century. Consequently, we have of necessity embraced in this overall work, the historical study of all the lands of Rhedae, without our becoming too preoccupied by the departmental boundaries that have been established in the present day upon a portion of this land.
From another point of view, we have considered that the domain of history grows day in and day out. It is not measured, at this day, by leafing through the pages of chronicles that tell of nations that have disappeared many ages past. One is no longer content to pass through the
crucible of comprehension legends and traditions in order to extract from them simply a portion of their history. One exhumes from the soil vestiges of times gone by; one studies ancient ruins, the skeletons of castles and fortresses of which the existence has become lost in the night of time. The mind seeks to plumb the depths of the mysteries that surround the creation of these monuments almost entirely destroyed, but the hand of God seems to have preserved them so
that they may recount to us, not through legends, but as the story of the centuries.
Such are the elements, which we have thus employed in order to reconstruct the past of Rhedesium. The itinerary that the Visigoth invasion followed is marked by vestiges of fortresses, which seem to serve as marker posts destined to mark out the passage of this conquering nation. The creation of these fortresses in the land of Rhedesium explains, in
its turn, the establishment of the castle strongholds; sentinels charged with guarding the route, which led from Rhedae into Iberia.
We dedicate in the continuation of this discourse, a study particular to each one of the citadels, which have all played an important rôle in history. It rests with us to single these out in this first part of our work, which relates exclusively to the creation of the capital of Rhedesium.
………………….
(1880)
With thanks to Jean Fourié & Laurent (Octonovo) & Société des Arts et Sciences de Carcassonne
(I)
Some historical documents, amongst which the most ancient relate back to the last years of the VIIth century and among which figures an act passed during the Cartulaire of Capcir, make mention of a territory or rather to a diocese situated in the Septimanie, and which was called the
Rhedesium or Pagus Rhedensis. This diocese did have a capital. What was the true name of this capital? What was its true geographical location? At what era can we place its creation?
On the first point, the answer is simple. The two prelates who in 798 A.D. were sent by Charlemagne in the Septimanie as Judge-Commissioners, make mention of the city of Rhedae, which they linked in the same time-scale as was placed Narbonne and Carcassonne. But
this enunciation of Rhedae, thus classified as ranking as missi dominici in the range of cities of
importance, requires no further comment. It relates well as one of the principal towns of the Septimanie, which could only be the capital of the diocese to which it had given its name. BESSE, one of the historians, to whom one would choose to refer, has been credited with the belief that, during the course of the VIthcentury the Bishops of Carcassonne, hounded from their seat of office by the Arians, established their provisional residence at Rhedae. Therein lays the overwhelming proof attesting to, during an epoch prior to the VIIth century, not only the existence, but again to the importance of a city that was the capital of Rhedesium.
It remains for us to discover what the geographical location of this city was, and to research its creation. No historian has given any indication as to the origin, the importance and the historic rôle of the town of Rhedae. Its creation is so steeped in mystery that it seems to have discouraged both the chroniclers and the archaeologists.
To no one has been attributed the honour of inventing a fable or a legendary tale to explain its beginnings. This popular aura, which bears the imprint of the extraordinary, that surrounds the birth of certain cities of the Narbonne region of Gaul, and notably of Carcassonne, renders this information completely absent. One would say that it is born in a single event, and that it was only discovered several centuries after its foundation. We find the explanation of this historical phenomenon in this fact that the creation of the capital of Rhedesium is later than the Roman occupation, and prior to the social constitution, which began to take shape in the Narbonne region, immediately following the conquest by the Visigoths. This is the factor, which explains the error of certain commentaries of which one group represents Rhedae to us a fortified town of Gaulish origin, equally as much as others attribute its origin to a Roman colony.
The same error is produced by certain historians when the subject relates to determining the exact emplacement of the city of Rhedae. One faction maintains that it was situated in the country of Chercorb or Kercobz; while the others have placed it at Rennes-les-Bains. Finally the opinion has been offered that there have existed two cities of this name in the Narbonne Region of Gaul.
We are going to endeavour to bring some light into these shadows.
None of the Latin authors who comprise the historians of the Roman conquest in the Narbonne region of Gaul, have made any mention neither of Rhedae nor of Rhedesium, that is to say of a diocese bearing this name. In the chronicles of EUSÈBE there figures a certain passage where the author is given to mention an outlying settlement bearing the name of Atax,
which appears to have been the cradle of the town of Limoux. DU MÈGE, in his commentaries, expounds, in a somewhat dubious form, an opinion to which we cannot ascribe. According to him, certain centres of the population situated in the Aude valley could have a Gallo-Hellenistic origin, in the sense that at the end of their creative period of Greek commerce extending along the shores of the Mediterranean, some colonies in the which were situated certain indigenous
elements intermingled with the foreign elements, who had their origins in this part of the Narbonne region. We cannot enter into this discussion here on the opinion offered by DU MÈGE, an opinion that we are far from supporting. We, ourselves, firmly maintain that we do not find Rhedae amongst the localities, which, according to him, were of Hellenistic origin.
The foundations of Rhedae, is it due to a certain section of the Volkes Tectosages who were living on the banks of the Aude and which have been called Atacins, deriving their name from the river Atax? This we do not think to be true. This population was clearly spawned in an inhospitable soil, in a country covered by vast forests of oak and of pine, would not have abandoned the valley floors so beneficial to the development of a culture, which offered them excellent shelter, and which would assure them a easy method of obtaining an existence, thanks to the fruits of hunting and fishing. They would not have deserted this territory upon which communication was easy and where one could escape from the forays of detachments of armed
Romans, thanks to the grottos and the caverns with which the land was covered. The Atacins therefore did not have any advantage in establishing a fortified settlement, village or town, on a raised plateau that would offer neither ease of existence nor security.
We will proceed to demonstrate that the city of Rhedae had not been founded by an indigenous population, the tribe of Atacins; no longer do they owe their creation to Gallo-Roman colony, and finally that the tribe is not of Gallo-Hellenistic origin. This town has been
constructed by foreigners, by invaders and by conquerors. These conquerors did not come from the regions of the north; too many obstacles would have halted them in their march and they would not have the same ability to surmount these obstacles to come to occupy an abandoned corner of the land. Everything proves to the contrary, that they did come from the South, that is to say from the Iberian regions. And in as much as the city of Rhedae existed outside of the invasion of the Saracens, it could only have been established by those who had
preceded them on their journey of invasion of the Gauls, that is to say by the Visigoths. We are then bound to uphold that Rhedae was, in its origin, a Visigothic fortified settlement.
We are going to supply several new arguments in support of this assertion.
Authors are not in agreement on the signature of the name that this city bore in earlier times. Theodolphus, one of Charlemagne’s missi dominici, wrote it as ‘Rhedae’. In many of the maps of the middle ages one finds ‘Redae’, then ‘Redde,’ and again ‘Reddas’, and finally ‘Reha’ or ‘Rheda’. We have no hesitation in adopting the version of the learned Bishop of Orleans; because the poem in which he relates concerning his mission in the Septimanie equates to the
name that we use to this day in official reports. In the second place, the word Rhedae has a significance that the other variants do not possess. The Romans, of whom the modern peoples are in these respect imitators, enriched their language by appropriating certain terms, which were provided by the nations with whom they were associated. Thus, after the Latin authors, the word Rhedae signified chariots de voyage (travelling chariots). And by adopting this translation, we shall extract from it the conclusion that the word Rhedae carries with it its own significance in explaining clearly the origin of the city with which this name is associated. Rhedae – the chariots de voyage – that is to say an encampment, the rolling caravans, spaced at regular intervals, fixed residences on a chosen spot, and forming a fortress of wood, of leather and of animal skins, surrounded by defensive positions. This is the city at its debut. This is an immense beehive of which each inhabitant has carried with him, his own honeycomb. In his records of the Merovignian era, Augustin THIERRY tells us that the chariots of the Visigoths were drawn by oxen. They were equipped with four main wheels set very wide apart, being able to traverse all highways. These were truly houses on wheels made of wood, of leather and hide. The great historian averred that to cross rivers as well as to travel up or down stream, the Visigoths made use of floats made of leathern bags containing sticks or rushes, and which one
could carry these floatation devices on men’s backs.
What is the location that had been chosen for the establishment of this fortress? It is the extremity of a vast plain, which stretches to the North and wherein lie the two passes which enable the massif of the Corbières to maintain communication with the Pyrenees.
From a strategic point of view the emplacement of a well-defended camp, destined to become a great centre of population, could not have been better chosen. Almost unassailable on three sides, this camp could be readily defended from the side of the raised ground touching the
immense plain called the plain of Lauzet, in which a large army would be able to manoeuvre. The Visigoths had learnt well at the school of the Romans, their enemies, the skills of encampment, and in this we are able to discover the proof in the disposition of the camp of Rhedae. We are going to try to demonstrate how the Visigoths were led to establish their first encampment in the place, to which they gave the name of Rhedae.
II
After having crossed the Summum Pyreneum by the Cluse pass, today known as le Pertus, which Hannibal had crossed, and which Pompey had declared one of his trophies, the Visigoths set out in 404A.D. from the village of Collioure,Caucoliberis, and achieved the conquest of Roussillon, of this territory, which several centuries previously had formed an independent territory under the name of Pays des Sardons.
Once they became the masters of Roussillon, they were able to penetrate into the Narbonne region of Gaul by two routes.
The one situated along the coastline led directly to Narbonne. The other which climbed towards the West, following the course of the Gly, crossed in its entire length the basin enclosed between the last mountain range of the Corbières and the first foothills of the Pyrenees, and butted up against the mountainous region where the mountainous region begins in this day, along with the forest of Fanges, in the formation of the Départment of the Aude.
The first of these routes strongly defended by the military establishments of the Romans would offer a serious resistance and could only be overcome by a well disciplined, organised army, launching a direct attack on Narbonne. In as much as they would need to concentrate their best troops at this point, the Visigoths were tempted to penetrate on another side into Gaul by their well disciplined forces. These troupes were not formed into an army, but were better described as a homogenous crowd, more or less armed, travelling with their tents, their chariots and their domestic animals. This human army stretched throughout the Corbière mountains,
which, from the peak of Leucate, stretching to the pêche de Bugarach, and came to extend to the upper extremity of the Roussillon basin. Having arrived there they divided themselves into two columns of which the one followed the valley of the Boulzanne which goes towards Axat, and follows the South side of the Forest of Fanges, whilst the other crossed the hill of Saint-Louis, and following the valley of Arese, of which it is often a question in the ancient maps whether it
should be shown under the name of the valles arida, being directed towards the North, had traversed this folded stretch of land where was later established the villages of Saint-Louis and of Saint-Just, and abutted against an immense plain where was established the encampment which was to become the city of Rhedae…
The itinerary that we are about to trace, in order to highlight one of the more interesting episodes during the Visigoth’s invasion of the region of Narbonne, is the result of meticulous investigations. The historical studies and the general statistical works have had, since the
beginning of this century, a team of experts equally as fervent as conscientious within the Départment of the Pyrénées-Orientales. One portion of this research and the Départment, comprising of le Capcir, the Sornia region of the Corbières, the Pays de Latour and the County of Fenoiuillèdes, was included in the diocese of Alet. As it has fallen to our lot to be the occupiers of Rhedesium, of which the Diocese had occupied, very much later on, together with almost the entirety of the incidental documentation, we were duty-bound to research all these documents, which bore reference to this part of the Province of Languedoc. It is thus that we have been lead to consult to good effect the works of ancient geography and archaeology that were related to the Départment of the Pyrénées-Orientales. The precise limits drawn by the administrative
demarcations were, of necessity, effaced when research related to important historical facts, relating back to a country now somewhat splintered, but of which the unification is increasing over a period of less than a century. Consequently, we have of necessity embraced in this overall work, the historical study of all the lands of Rhedae, without our becoming too preoccupied by the departmental boundaries that have been established in the present day upon a portion of this land.
From another point of view, we have considered that the domain of history grows day in and day out. It is not measured, at this day, by leafing through the pages of chronicles that tell of nations that have disappeared many ages past. One is no longer content to pass through the
crucible of comprehension legends and traditions in order to extract from them simply a portion of their history. One exhumes from the soil vestiges of times gone by; one studies ancient ruins, the skeletons of castles and fortresses of which the existence has become lost in the night of time. The mind seeks to plumb the depths of the mysteries that surround the creation of these monuments almost entirely destroyed, but the hand of God seems to have preserved them so
that they may recount to us, not through legends, but as the story of the centuries.
Such are the elements, which we have thus employed in order to reconstruct the past of Rhedesium. The itinerary that the Visigoth invasion followed is marked by vestiges of fortresses, which seem to serve as marker posts destined to mark out the passage of this conquering nation. The creation of these fortresses in the land of Rhedesium explains, in
its turn, the establishment of the castle strongholds; sentinels charged with guarding the route, which led from Rhedae into Iberia.
We dedicate in the continuation of this discourse, a study particular to each one of the citadels, which have all played an important rôle in history. It rests with us to single these out in this first part of our work, which relates exclusively to the creation of the capital of Rhedesium.
………………….
