Béziers
is a city (and commune and sous-préfecture) in the
Hérault
département, in the Languedoc, with a population
of around 70,000. Inhabitants of Béziers are called
Biterrois (m) or Biterroise (f).
The city is located on a bluff above the River Orb, near the coast some 10 km from the Mediterranean Sea. The A9 autoroute passes through it.
Béziers is an easy drive to the nearby mountains. All around are valleys and streams, typical Languedoc villages, Romanesque churches and abandoned castles, forests and springs, caves and grottoes.
The site has been occupied since Neolithic times. The Celts founded or usurped a settlement here which became a Phoenician city. Béziers probably owes its name to the Celts. The name was adopted by the Romans when they arrived and rebuilt the city as a new colony for military veterans in 36 BC. They called it Colonia Julia Baeterrae Septimanorum, Baeterrae for short, which helps explain why inhabitants are called Biterrois.
Béziers
is sited on the original Herculean Way, later the Domitian
Way (Via Domitia), a Roman road that linked Italy with
Iberia. White wine from Béziers is known to have
been exported to Rome; A dolium discovered in excavations
near Rome is marked "I am a wine from Baeterrae and
I am five years old". Another is marked "white
wine of Baeterrae".
Stones from the Roman amphitheatre here were used to construct the city walls during the 3rd century. Béziers later became one of the seven cities of Septimania, along with Agde, Lodeve, Maguelonne, Nîmes, Toulouse and Uzès.
During the 10th to the 12th centuries Béziers was the capital of a Viscounty of Béziers. The viscounts of Béziers ruled most of the coastal plain around the city, including also the city of Agde. They also controlled the major east-west route through Languedoc, broadly following the old Roman Via Domitia, with two strategically important bridges, one over the River Hérault at Saint-Thibéry and the other over the River Orb at Béziers.
After the death of Viscount William around 990, the viscounty passed to his daughter Garsendis and her husband, Count Raymond-Roger of Carcassonne (d. c1012). It was then ruled by their son Peter-Raymond (d. c1060) and his son Roger (d. 1067), both of whom were also Counts of Carcassonne. Roger died without heirs and Béziers passed to his sister Ermengard and her husband Raymond-Bertrand Trencavel. The House of Trencavel held Béziers, Carcassonne, Albi and the Razès as vassals of the Kings of Aragon.
Béziers became a stronghold of Cathar Belief in the Languedoc, which the Catholic Church condemned as a heresy. It was against the people here that Innocent III called a formal Crusade in 1208, a holy war known as the Cathar War or the Albigensian Crusade. Béziers was the first city to be sacked during the Crusade, on July 22, 1209. In the ensuing massacre no one was spared, including those who had taken refuge in the churches. It was here at Béziers that the Abbot Arnaud Amaury, the military commander famously gave the order "Kill them all, God will know His own". The town was pillaged, and burnt. According to contemporary sources everyone was killed, just as the abbot had commanded.
Click on the following link to find out more about the
massacre
of Béziers 
Béziers was a centre of the revolt by the Duke of Montmorency en 1632, as a consequence of which the King suppressed the privileges of the province by the Edict of Béziers in October 1632. They were re-established in 1649.
The
Canal du Midi
runs through Béziers. It spans the river
River
Orb as an aqueduct called the pont-canal ('canal bridge').
You will find a statue here to Pierre-Paul Riquet a local
hero, who was born in the city. He was almost
wholly responsible for the construction of the The
Canal du Midi
- concept, design, engineering, building and financing,
any one of which would have been a remarkable achievement
in itself.
Béziers served as a military base during wars into modern times, for example the wars against the Habsbourgs It was never seriously threatened except during the wars of the Spanish Succession (1701-1714) when the British landed as Sète and advanced almost as far as Béziers.
The town prospered in the Eighteenth century mainly as a result of the wine making industry.
At the French Revolution Béziers aligned itself with the Federalists, but in 1851 it was one of the few cities to revolt against the coup d'État of the Prince-Regent Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte. In the repression following the coup d'état, troops fired on and killed Republican protesters . Others were condemned to death or transported to Guyana, including a former mayori of Béziers. In the Place de la Révolution a plaque and a monument commemorates these events.
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During the course of the Nineteenth century the population expanded from 15,000 to 50,000. Arenas were constructed and arterial roads built. A parc à l'anglaise (le Plateau des Poètes) was created and numerous châteaux were built by local vignerons in the area. Béziers saw its golden age at the beginning of the Twentieth century, though it was soon threatened by problems in the wine industry. It did not suffer too much as a result of phylloxéra as the disease arrived later than elsewhere in France after a remedy had been developed. In 1907 Béziers was the centre of a revolt by vignerons. The army was sent in to quell the revolt but the soldiers mutinied. The early twentieth century was otherwise uneventful, though Béziers was bombed by the 15th USAAF on 5th July 1944. The town declined after the second World War, a result of the fall in wine prices combined with the steady decline of traditional industries. By the Nineteen seventies the population had declined to 75,000. Today it is becoming something of a tourist centre. Today Béziers is still a principal centre of the Languedoc viticulture and winemaking. |
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