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 The
site of the counts’ palace and the commerce that their presence
generated, gave rise to what is known as the “ville des comtes.”
It includes most of the area between the belfrey tower adjoining
the city hall and the Cours Mirabeau to the south. The reign of
the counts was not all peaceful or even happy. The black plague,
the hundred years’ war, and the intrusion of armed bands
of “rouitiers”, crusaders on the loose, precluded peace
and plenty. One figure among this bellicose company stands out,
his fame surpassing that of Aix’s most distinguished citizens.
His statue stands at the east end of the Cours Mirabeau, like
a high priest gazing beyond his flock toward the baptismal font
spouting to the west.
René d’Anjou (1434 - 1480) , king of Jerusalem, king
of Naples and Sicily, duke of Lorraine, the summum bonus in
local lore, the penultimate “count” to reign in Provence
is credited with great virtue and noble character. His reputation
as poet, artist, musician, patron of the arts,of agriculture and
the courts of love, importer of the muscat grape into Provence,
does him more than justice. The sour judgement of a recent historian
refers to him as “in reality, a deplorable, wily individual
onto whom the Provençal populace projected a generous hearted
bonhomie”. |
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In 1482 Provence
was united to France, according to the proclamation as “equal to
equal,” pious words hardly borne out by subsequent history, the benefits
of “union” being a generous portion of the political and religious
conflicts that marked the sixteenth century. Noteworthy among the buildings
of this epoch is the hospital dedicated to Saint Jacques. Founded and
endowed by Jacques de la Roque. Refreshingly, in a vein more reminiscent
of the eighteenth century or even of the twentieth, de la Roque’s
deed stipulates that “shall be admitted any man who suffers, whatever
his beliefs, etiam diabolus (even the devil).” He continues in similar
truculent terms,” shall be refused admittance to the administration
of the hospital any ecclesistic, whatever rank he may hold in the church,
etiam papa. (even, the Pope.)
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The
prodigious urban development that characterised Aix in the seventeeth
and eighteenth centuries, including the Cours Mirabeau, the
“Quartier Mazarin” and the two suburbs to the southeast
and southwest of the “ville des comtes” account for much
of what one sees in Aix today. The king and his Intendants, governors,
and churchmen, at last brought order to the fierce opposition born
of centuries of Provence’s independence. Michel Mazarin, brother
to the Cardinal and archbishop of Aix, must be credited with the
most ambitious remodeling of the city since Roman times. The “faubourgs”
to the southeast and southwest of the City of the Counts, the cours
(later Cours Mirabeau), and many splendid town mansions sprinkled
among less dignified dwellings in the bourg Saint Sauveur and the
ville des comtes, testify to a prosperity and ambition whose scale
and conception transformed the social, economic, and aesthetic equilibrium
of “good king René’s city. |
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The prosperity
of the eighteenth century was followed by the long Rip van Winkle sleep
of the nineteenth. The French revolution had done its work. From “capital”
of a region Aix was demoted to the humiliating obscurity of a “sous-préfecture.”
As usual, Aix had played its political cards badly, and the new “préfet”
Delacroix, named in 1791, found it “un village froid et orgueilleux”;
he decided that the future lay with Marseille. Incidentally, the law of
the “28 plûviose” had decreed that prefects’ emoluments
must be based on the number of inhabitants in their circumscription. “Honni
soit qui mal y pense.”
The nineteenth
century passed Aix by, the railway from Paris to Marseille was routed
through Avignon, Arles, and Miramas, and once proud Aix dawdled its
daydream country market town existence into the twentieth century. Thus
was saved from the ravages of a builder such as Baron Haussman, a swath
of history and beauty that the twentieth century has not yet succeeded
in destroying. Much superb countryside has surrendered, many highways
and bypasses, new suburbs and box architecture have encroached upon
its ramparts. The march of the twentieth century continues inexorably,
with traffic clogging narrow streets, and the clamor of commerce, tourists,
students, and, yes, a few “true Aixois” who rub shoulders,
often ruefully, with a millennium as unpredictable and diffuse as the
Roman era was vigorous, single minded, and ruthless.
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