She fed a pig all the remaining grain and they catapulted him over the remparts into the lap of the besieging army. (This much is probably true.) The legend has it that, while the Merovingians tried to starve out the occupants, a clever woman named Dame Carcas devised a plan. Charles "The Hammer" Martel and Pepin the Short, Charlemagne's grandfather and father, ousted the Arabs from the region, but were unsuccessful in taking Carcassonne. This is the time frame for a later medieval legend more ridiculous than most. Thus, the legend of impregnability began.Įmbarrassingly for the Merovingian Franks, the Saracens were able to capture the flag in this Dark Ages game of king-of-the-hill. Clovis tried to capture the town, but was unsuccessful. By this time it was apparently called Carcasso. When the Romans beat their retreat in the 5th century, they "ceded" the town to the Visigoths, who probably had a good laugh over this since they had been occupying it for over 10 years anyway. (How does this happen? Was there some proconsul who mispronounced the name so often, they simply changed it so he could save face?) When Hannibal sneaked across their land on his way to the Alps, some of the local tribes tried to prevent him, while others let him pass.Ī little slow on the uptake, the Gallo-Roman town of Julia Carsaco was fortified on the site a century later, eventually becoming known as Carcasum by a strange consonant-switching called metathesis. The hill town may first have been called Karsac, a settlement for a Celto-Ligurian warrior tribe with the uber-cool name of the Volcae Tectosages, They had somehow found their way here from the other side of the Danube by the 6th century BC. My main interests were the double-ringed remparts and the chateau in La Cité. (Another 60 miles on the A9 would have taken us to Spain.) There are two parts to Carcassonne: the medieval Centre-Ville and the upper 5th century walled city on the hill. Here back home, we can sometimes find some very good Minervois reds.Īt Narbonne, we turned northwest toward Carcassonne. Today, the region is more pleasantly known for its sunshine and wine. After a few brief ages of glory as the birthplace of chivalry and troubadours, it was nearly ruined by the Albigensian Crusade and the Wars of Religion. (The southern language of "oc" as opposed to the northern language of "oui" - distinguished by the way they said yes.) From the Celts to the Romans, the Moors to Charlemagne, it was long a tug-of-war zone between the proto Franco-Italians and Spain. This is the Occitan world, land of the langue d'oc. Threading through the edge of the Languedoc just north of Mediterranean lagoons, we passed Nimes, where denim was invented, and Montpellier, known for its university founded in the 13th century. The road is as straight as a needle to Narbonne. I can see why they have the well-designed aires des repos (rest stops) every few kilometers. Your eyes begin to cross and you have to start slapping yourself to stay awake. When we turned onto the wide autoroute after Avignon, Phil said, "Yes! A freeway at last!" Of course, after three hours, it starts to seem more like the I-80 through the Salt Flats of Utah. After a week of minor D roads, it was nice to be able to fly again. We had over six hours of cross-country driving to do and we needed the speed. Still, she was a good halfway point for a cup of coffee on our way to the Lot. Her reputation for la resistance, nearly untarnished for 1,000 years, has succumbed over the last century to l'invasion des touristes. This third and final section of our journey follows "Impression: France - The Pleasures of Provence", which can be found here: Īlas, the walled city of Carcassonne withstood many a battle, but she ultimately lost the war. Phil, Shari and Joe moved northwest from Provence, with an interval in the Lot and Cele Valleys, before relaxing in the beautiful Dordogne.
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