Ancient metallurgy in the Vicdessos
Michel Begon September 2000
tributary of the Ariège, up to Tarascon River Sos once gave the village its name or Vic (from the Latin "vicus" town, village) that we call the Vic-de-Sos or Vicdessos, which itself has expanded its name to the huge circus mountains, forests and farmhouses digging deep the Andorran Pyrenees. However, this end of the world was also the source of all economy of iron, which lasted from the Middle Ages until 1929, if not even today. This is a whole unit as organic or as a field office, the economy must be considered and analyzed, rather than breaking it down between its various elements picturesque. Retrospect we can discern the existence and functioning coherent dynamics of a large vector space, oriented from south to north, mountains to the plains, including the forces of production and transportation followed according to the topographic slope gradient of activity increasing. In other words, the labor arm extracted upstream iron ore veins Highlanders ; Lowest forges Valley converted the metal ore into pig; caravans of mules, under the responsibility of fuxéen trading, routing these pigs to the Garonne, the barge finally Auterive transported to Toulouse, where mechanical industries transformed them, so as the products of labor flowing from mountains to the plains, commercial or industrial capital took them under his tutelage and financial valuations.
Contrasts seen on the spot
observe first hand what can be seen, a century after the heyday of the iron economy.
very top, the two streams of Sos and Siguer originate peaks and lakes adjacent peak Andorra and run parallel to the north, to join the Ariege, then Garonne, staying long separated by an overhang of limestone and iron-bearing, which were extensively exploited mines Rance of Lercoul of Miglos of Larnat of Larcat and Chateau-Verdun.
A thousand meters of altitude, the former mining village and carriers who are called Shem, Goulier, Olbia, Illier, Suc, or Sentenac Siguer have now lost nine-tenths of their population in urban areas and floating houses now too large for the few residents left behind. Take for example Sem, mid-slope of the mine galleries Rance village had in the late 18th century, several hundred residents, the 1998 census no longer counted as 19, but on summer Sundays lead back up to 250 guests. Transformed into second homes, most of the old buildings of miners lost under their gray stucco, the appearance of rustic habitat. Party men and women to a better destiny, it remains underground sites gigantic crystal hematite F2O3.
The peak of the Rance, the giant limestone ferruginous erect to 1586 meters under the mantle of pines and hardwoods, the sides still bears the wounds from the attack of red men. Formerly he appeared naked, deforested, striped paths that snaked its rocky slopes, streams of ocher and gray muck soiled slopes, and dozens of men, women and children climbed the miserable or down without end guiding caravans of mules with saddles and colorful headdresses charged with two baskets of iron ore, or to prop poles, or sometimes, alas, miners died from landslides. The whole mountain was perforated with galleries, random veins of hematite, 500 miners hewed the rock Picou, in the glow of oil lamps, olive or later to acetylene, where they suffered from a haunting cold, lying or kneeling in the veins, with the dust sticking to the skin and tongue stuck in the ground, carting kids to back baskets, they said the "gourbilhos "A red ore - black with sharp edges. Then everything stopped in 1929 and closed its giant green jacket on his bloody entrails.
From this work and sweat and blood no longer exist as poor remains. Gaps landslides that crushed dozens of men remain visible under the forest cover through their chaos of red rocks, where nothing grows older. The gallery Becquey, the beautiful stone carved entrance, closed iron gates, lets see a rusty wagon. Further down the entrance to the gallery of the Republic, which was the later, but the more modern and more functional collapsed under the strains that hug. Some trucks are lying idle in their old carcass. In the bush, they gather relics of the poor: an iron grate, or bits of iron mule.
Fortunately, the pious Museum Hall of Shem, which opens with kindness, brings together tools, lamps, baskets, blocks of hematite, charters, faded photos, but this that surprises, no miner's hat. The 500 miners were they too poor or too independent to protect the head by this elementary protection?
Any other view in the upper valley of the Ariege, in Château-Verdun on the Aston, the Hotel du Marquis de Gudanes, ironmaster, is still beautiful. Behind the main gate of forged irons Rance of Siguer or Chateau-Verdun, it imposes its majestic facade punctuated by bosses to conventional batteries and double cantilevered stairs, ramps also iron. Arms, above the main door - it, has a greyhound and a tower, under the crown of the marquis. This was the king's castle in the Pyrenees, we believe, designed by Gabriel as its architecture is reminiscent of Parisian hotels in the Marais, and thus this aristocracy to capitalist entrepreneurs who frequented the salon of the Marquise de Tencin, praised the Enlightenment and the Encyclopaedia protected. Private property: it does not!
These were like the two sides remain visible in the economy Smelting high Ariège: downstream of the basin, mountains, mines, ruins, misery, mid-slope in the narrow valleys, the Catalan forges, steel workshops, beautiful mansions, skilled workers, so more ease, while low, castles, lords, fortunes envied. On the geometric aspect, we will see even the antinomy of the town and village industrial or commercial capital, such as the inclusion of a local space in a vector space overall.
There is no wealth than men and women
Let us beware of any geographic determinism. This is not the iron of the Pyrenees which created the metallurgy Vicdessos, but rather the densely populated mountains that sparked the economy of iron. For iron, there were almost everywhere in the kingdom of France, deposits with bigger or richer, but the ore required to extract it, the spoof, treat and convert it into marketable pigs of available labor, which existed in number than the poor masses.
thus relativize the economic importance of iron Ariège. In the 18th century, the county of Foix was producing only 2% of iron from the kingdom of France. And in the 19th century, 60,000 tons of iron up on domestic production of several million tonnes. Catalan forges never had, by far, the scope of the ironworks and steel mills of Normandy, Châtillonais, Plateau de Langres, Le Creusot nor especially steel basin of Lorraine. Metallurgy Vicdessos was little more than a survival economy.
Iron is also the most common metals, with nickel as he composes the core of the planet, which generates the magnetic field. Uplift of mountain ranges, he made up the crust of deep lifts iron, found in certain montuosités as Canigou Elba or Erzeberg in Tyrol, but erosion River dispersed in the bulk lake sediments or "wolves." That's why countless deposits were exploited by man, from the Iron Age, first in the peneplains, even in Normandy. Until modern times, the economy remained local iron, each region operating its own surface deposits by open pit or shallow galleries, flights to forge immediate neighbors.
is, can we think, why the Roman Empire was not interested in iron ore Pyrenean harder operate than others, because of the altitude, terrain and distance. Archaeology is found no trace of ancient activity. In contrast, in the valley of Aulus including Castel Mining was updated mines, which seem antique, silver and lead, with notable relics: a table for washing ore, 87 wheels to crush rocks and metal bars or mostly silver salmon. But money was needed for coinage; used to lead the equipment listed in pipes, the iron tools were still more banal.
Moreover, the high valleys were scarcely populated Ariège, under Caesar, as itinerant pastors. Everything changed with the large population increase from the 11th, 12th and 13th centuries, who made clearings natural forests and create these high-altitude villages around dozens of Romanesque churches, where they lived on farming, forestry and polyculture terrace. However, soon, overcrowding placed these mountain people in critical position, especially after the 1320 European climate tended to cool off. To survive, it became necessary to produce exportable goods, they sold against the grain, oil and wine of the Pyrenean foothills. There was the woodworking, the paintings here in Vicdessos iron. In 1670, the land of the valley of Sos were deemed not to feed the twentieth of its inhabitants and the miners said Rance gets nothing from their fields about a month for their subsistence. The exploitation of mineral deposits of iron and refining operations were to alternative agriculture fails, but never managed to save local people from poverty, since even in the 19th century, public authorities and mining engineers liked to call them barbarians or semi-wild.
's economy seems Vicdessos iron contemporary demographic crisis of the 14th century, since mines Gudanes and Rance are reported in 1293 and the Exchange Agreement between the ore Vicdessos and charcoal Couserans is dated 1347.
Both will there be for the praise we hear tales repeated so easily and wealth Ariege iron, forgetting the men and women who did. "Gold, silver and iron their intestines are full, "wrote the poet in 1585 Gascon Sallust du Bartas. And a prefect of the Napoleonic Empire noted that "the product of the Ariege and iron men." In fact, there is not much iron in Ariège elsewhere, and rather less.
Admittedly, the whole Pyrenees contains iron-bearing veins. In Foix, it is hematite Devonian high-grade, up to 40% and even 60% without the manganese impurity, and can reduce directly with charcoal and hammering . At least fifty deposits have been be extensively exploited, but disappointing for their operators, who lost their time and investment, so it seams avéraient iron thin and scattered, so soon exhausted. Only Mount Rance provides a vertical vein 500 meters high and 700 wide, but interspersed with beds of limestone that make it unsuitable for mechanization. To start work, it took some twenty villages will suffer a work of consenting convicts, hoping to survive from day to day and to safeguard the liberties of the community Vicdessos.
known motto of the peasants Catalan 1936: "Tierra y Libertad." In Vicdessos, it was from the 14th century: the mine and freedom.
The local community of miners - farmers
The liberties community and the desire to live in countries were the engines of the perpetuation of metallurgy Ariege, which otherwise precarious conditions have caused the end much sooner.
Already the ancient historians knew that the Alps and the Pyrenees harbored independent peasant communities Crown of any economy. He remained in Andorra. Smaller basin Vicdessos formed a republic of equal rights and peasant landowners, with no other lord than the community itself. Was his unceasing resistance to encroachments or grabbing by the lords of the lower valleys, which were often as the master blacksmiths. Hence the ardent republicanism, which is the mark of the high political Ariege.
The survival of communities Pyrenean long imposed respect for community use or egalitarian mineral wealth, we custom found throughout the Pyrenees, until Béarn and the Basque country. For the Ariege, we can mention the saline Comrade, the slate of Miglos or iron mines Lercoul, joint ownership of Siguer valleys. The historical case of minors Rance is just the best documented, best known or most characteristic, which was and still is much written in red or pink or those who would want to see the archetype of communism, the workers' cooperative or national workshop.
It is less a relic of the primitive commune as a typed form of the village community, which was the common law of the medieval economy from the 11th or 12th centuries. At the time when nobles and bishops gave willingly or forcibly charters of autonomy and openness to cities, towns or rural parishes, after the François Guizot historians named the "communal revolution," the County of Foix conceded the broadest freedoms to the University (Universitas) of the People of the Valley of Sos to the exploitation of iron deposits.
The famous definition Francois Guizot is general or, at least, national:
"No doubt the third estate in 1789 was not, politically speaking, the descendant and heir of Commons of the XIIth century. (...) This nation undoubtedly descended in large part at least, these municipalities who revolted in the XIIth century, somewhat obscurely, albeit with much courage, for the sole purpose of avoiding, in some corners of the territory in the dark tyranny of a few nobles. "(Francois Guizot, History of Civilization in Europe - Hachette 1985 Page 173).
By a charter of 1272, the Count of Foix Roger-Bernard III recognized the rights and freedoms of the people of Sos, grouped in an autonomous community, owners of the territory administered by consuls. Then arranged a charter of 1293 operating conditions and marketing shackles of Rance, giving all residents the right to operate unlimited free deposits and selling without paying duty on ore, within the local community:
"We concede to all present or future inhabitants of that valley (the SOS) that they can pass and sell the iron addition to ports conditions to contribute to our Gabelier salt tax.
we want to concede and we hold that or any officer or Bayle can not put any ban on the aforementioned people, both present the future in the existing iron ore mines in the interior of the valley and its limits and borders.
We concede to the inhabitants of that valley they can sell to another inhabitant of the same valley we Sos goods without paying vassals. "
This charter confirmed the rights of prior members of the community, by not subjecting them to taxes of counts, the salt tax, and export beyond its limits, ie in the basin of Salat or downstream Niaux. It confirmed the status of collective ownership of the community on the iron mines, which lasted status, changing legal forms, until 1931. But this system of collective ownership is hardly a rare or even unique case, since many municipalities still retain their collective ownership of forests, particularly in the Jura or both Holy Cross Volvestre.
the reign Louis XIV, we reinterpreted the charter under the legal doctrine of the century. King was appointed as the lord of the land Vicdessos and consuls exercised directly on behalf of civil justice or criminal. All the mountains of the valley were the common good of the people under their privileges. There was neither castle nor oven. Forges and mills in the valley belonged to individuals, without paying any royalty to the king. Lawyers justify this state of law, become more outstanding at the time, by the need to set up on the people to operate and grow this place "uninhabitable and covered with rocks," so that "the Spaniards did not come to invade France on this side" (Survey of counting from 1670 to 1674).
Co-owned subsidiary of the inhabitants of the upper valley of Vicdessos, including common current Vicdessos Auzat, Saleix, Suc-et-Sentenac, Orus, Goulier, Olbia, and Sem-Illier Lamarade, mining Rance were long exploited so individualistic, if not anarchic. No plan or funding organization, not a mining engineer, no technical means, excluding the peaks and baskets, each hole dug his own or his family, removed the ore and sold in markets de Cabre or Pre-de-Vic, or even leaving galleries, representatives of blacksmiths. The only division of labor existed between "Peyrieras" slaughterers ore, and "gourbatiers, carrying the wicker hood called" gourbilho "based on the kidneys by a cushion called" gorp. " Adult men were "Peyrieras" young "gourbatiers, women led the mules outside. Luckily, altitude and geology of the limestone mountain of Rance moisture conservation galleries of the mines, while elsewhere the pumping of groundwater was the key issue and required heavy investment, including "heat pumps".
Anarchy operation caused an under-productivity and a risk of collapse even more sensitive than the miners were always tempted to nibble on piles of support left in place. In the last years of the 14th century, the collapse of the yard Nagot buries almost all minors Goulier. Despite the authority of four aldermen appointed by the sheriff of the count of Foix and responsible for distributing batches of size teams, landslides punctuated the end of the story Rance. In 1786, Baron de la Perouse Picot could write:
"Miners Valley Vicdessos are rude peasants who seek wealth and randomly pluck carelessly as unconscious. "
How to take such remarks? The aristocratic attitude under the Ancien Regime was to despise the peasants considered puny, barbaric and illiterate. It is true that farmers, malnourished, do not grow to the size of their masters, far from medical care, kept a frail health, kept out of good manners, showed themselves hardy, finally out of school, remain illiterate. But these flaws were not defects. The great-grandchildren of miners Rance nowadays are teachers, managers or entrepreneurs.
co-owned mining group excluded aliens, "outliers" and engendered a strong inbreeding. The 500 or 800 miners wore only a small number of surnames: Augé, Beard, Dandine, Seguela, Sabardu, and the custom was to separate people by a nickname: Slippers, Tirou, etc..
This mining community - farmers still expressed his fierce resistance against the economic domination of the iron-masters, against the encroachments of capital and cons of modern technology, these three things are linked in their minds. Ironmasters fixed the prices of the ore. In 1729 there was a miners' strike, to have the right to store the ore and put pressure on prices. These blacksmiths, called "Coulier, did advance the necessary capital in the forms of remuneration in kind of essential commodities and sales with covenant of redemption, sort of usurious loans to acquire Heritage Property minors in debt. This was indeed the moral outrage that in 1722, the bishop sent in Pamiers Vicdessos three brothers of the Christian Doctrine to preach to "Coulier" honesty and moderation, indeed in vain. Worse, perhaps, when at the 19th century mining engineers claimed to streamline operations through the creation of ramps that lessened the pain and peril, people asked unanimous displacement.
community through history by safeguarding its integrity under successive avatars of law. From the late 18th century, miners had formed for mutual aid to the injured, infirm, widows and orphans. At the time of the Great Fear of 1789, the miners burned the castle Miglos and demanded the freedom to set their own prices of the ore. In 1805, the First Consul appointed the prefect of Ariege guardian mine Rance, by replacing former consul of the valley, which was a kind of nationalization before the letter. Now it was the prefect who controlled the mine and set prices, thanks to the diligence of a chief engineer of mines.
But the empire was badly felt. One month after the defeat of Soult in Toulouse, April 10, 1814, a general strike raised the minors, May 6 to 18, against the charges levied by the state minerals. Then a prefectural December 1817, decreasing by a penny the price of the ore feed, caused a new insurgent uprising in January 1818 which justified the sending of Shem a detachment of the army. La Guerre des Demoiselles prompted even minors, August 22, 1830, the general revolt, so that in 1833 a Royal Order nationalized mines, under the principle that the basement of France belongs to the state alone, but said the eight common Vicdessos "dealers of Mines Rance" . With social evolution, the Third Republic took the law of 15 February 1893 and the Decree of 24 April 1893 to build the mine company, impose a board and turn the minor employees.
However, the real power was so low down in the valley of the Ariege, as the forges Catalans were transferring gradually from upstream to downstream. Then the steel industry of northern France took possession of it, when the Company's metallurgical Ariège Tarascon to finance and direct investments mechanical mining, and especially that the corporation Commentry - Fourchambault - Decazeville exert control . Without social level, the mine was closed Rance is from 1929 - 1930, then in law in 1931. Exploitable recognized in 1878, the deposits of Lorraine minette, under the leadership of the Wendel family, while sufficient for national needs. The mining community-Vicdessos peasants dislocated by exile.
The last minor Rance died in 1999, far from the Ariege, at the age of 92.
sovereignty financial ironmasters and big capital
Under the Old Regime, the nobility could not depart without exercising any industrial or commercial activity, except for the fire arts, steel and glass. This placed the exception of metallurgical Vicdessos economy since the Middle Ages, politically, legally and financially under the control of iron-masters, noble The majority, who inhabited the castles and mansions of Sos or valleys of Ariege, or even lived in Toulouse.
The mining community - farmers only had the raw material deposits, whose extraction remained a parochial work, while the transportation of ore, the forge iron and marketing of pigs involved infrastructure at least regional in scope, only the solidarity of ironmasters could assume a distance. They formed a fraternity or a consortium of privileged families, whose hold on the space and the time far exceeded that of the minor veins of hematite and debased even to the rank of sub-space, if not shrift.
Indeed, the production of iron made by reduction and hammering in the Catalan forges, lying to the edge of the river water, with heavy equipment such as dam, intake canal, paddle wheel , covered workshop, hydraulic machine, blower, furnace, hammer or hammer forging and through teams of skilled, well trained and highly paid. The implementation of such factories required liquid capital, a prime location on the river and a multi-year amortization. In the early 19th century, on 77 Catalan forges in the French Pyrenees, 41 were in the current department of Ariège, most close to the Rance. By themselves, the forest areas of the Marquis de Gudanes had grade 6.
From these ancient Catalan forges, he remains active at least one museum, the Forges de Pyrene, near Tarascon-sur-Ariege. It still reduce the blacksmith iron oxide, by purging of oxygen, under the blows of the sudden and brutal martinet, gigantic wooden hammer, driven by an intermittent waterfall.
Especially, the management of metallurgy assumed control of regional transportation that, in the mountainous terrain, could be summed up in caravans of mules and their guides, before the opening of roads and railways in the 19th century . The transportation of iron ore was originally controlled by the community Vicdessos. Women and children of miners ensured the delivery of hematite of drifts up places selling local. A village dedicated as Suc-et-Sentenac, where a third of the population consisted of mule, was in charge transport the ore to the valley near the neck by Aulus Suc or Saleix. Indeed, the exchange agreement of 1347 between the consuls and the Vicomte de Vicdessos Couserans organized barter between the minerals of Rance and charcoal couserans, so ironmasters Massat and should receive Ercé by mules and the raw material that ironmasters of Sos, which was already cleared the valley, should obtain by return cargo charcoal Forest Couserans needed to reduce iron oxide. When the export of refined iron was made to Toulouse, traders clung to the Rose City the support of all the carriers in the region, through traders of Foix, to impose their monopoly on transportation. The stakes were high, since there was more to win on the ferry on the mine or forge themselves. Thus quintal of iron ore was worth, in the 18th century, 12 sub on the floor of the mine, but it cost 11 in order to be sent to Tarascon forges, 26 cents for transportation to those Orlu, 36 under until Mirepoix and those of no less than 38 cents to those of Mas d'Azil. All ironmaster and "King of the Pyrenees" he was the Marquis de Gudanes himself had to undergo the monopoly of trading routing Toulouse, only broke the paved road along the Ariege, the National Highway 20 today.
Finally, the long-term credit overlooks everything. Must be designed less as a capital sum of money as a volume control over space and time. Minors bartered in kind against their ore commodity or material; ironmasters exchanged in nature of the ore and charcoal in the proportion immutable set by the Agreement of 1347, 6 parts of eight ore cons of coal, and these materials now barter economy of iron in the local neighborhood. But the capitalists Toulouse managed to overcome this local system by dipping in finance. It did not stop unless the State Council in 1781 to allow blacksmiths to violate the customary rules of barter in kind and source of ore "with money". On the regional market, the supremacy of capital held in its ability to advance in wages and massive investments through bank overdrafts and thus control the future long term on any one country. Economic power is thus made by the financial strength. In this geometry operators where the most comprehensive subsumes most local miners were obvious styling by blacksmiths, but they were in the hands of carriers, which themselves were under the cut banks. In short, the field office was moving irresistibly from the mountains to the plains of rural to urban and village communities to the bourgeoisie.
The means to resist such an attraction? The king's favor without a doubt! The mining community gave it Vicdessos therefore royal protection against the greed of blacksmiths. Caught between his own children, on the one hand, and the capital of Toulouse, on the other hand, the Marquis de Gudanes borrowed large sums in 1761 the royal treasury, because the closure of its ironworks would have thrown hundreds of unemployed workers . Twenty years later, her debt was still running. Paris claimed him as the he argued storms that devastated its timber and mine galleries dug pits which crumbled in front of his castle by the king's letter of 8 September 1782, to get a new deadline. Royal bankruptcy in 1789 wiped out everything. This financing procedure, now called the Ministry of Finance "the loan not refundable "is the essence of the" Colbert. "
However, Colbert could delay the influence of capital, without power late evade it. The creation in 1867 - 1868 the blast furnaces of Tarascon-sur-Ariege by Metallurgical Society of the Ariege (ADM) converted mine Rance dependence, not only revived a decade mines Lescoul and Chateau-Verdun, suppressed especially the Catalan forges and blacksmiths. In 1896, ADM received and funded, against opposition from the miners, construction of a cable carrier to carry the ore the gallery of the new Republic until Cabre village in the valley of Sos. One can still see the rusty remains on site.
*
Everyone knows the result and the end. Families ironmasters Schneider and Wendel contrôlèrent entire French steel industry, before making themselves bankrupt in 1978, the benefit of the State, which had to nationalize everything within USINOR - SACILOR. French production of iron ore in 1960 after reaching its maximum of 63 million tonnes, is now zero. The Vicdessos must now convert service activities, eg walking holidays, or go to the forest that person is no longer operating.
Bibliography
Ariégeois History: the Spirit and the intellectual and moral force in the Ariege and Pyrenees Central - MH Duclos - Paris Didier et Compagnie 1882
Human life in the Pyrenees Ariege - Michael Knight - Editions Genin - Librairie de Medicis 1956
Rance, a national workshop in the Haute Ariege - Robert Reulle - Lacour Publisher 1998
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