Decline of the Roman ways

After did the cruel invasions, the Roman ways remain important axes of communication? The question is put, and the controversy lasts for a long time, between holding of the perenniality of the Roman ways and those, on the contrary, of their fast decline. But makes the question of it is badly posed, since many Roman ways exist still nowadays. The true question is to know the importance of the circulation which continued to borrow them.

It is the political unification brought by Rome which allowed the creation of this interurban network long distance, especially strategic and administrative. When it disappeared, there was no reason which there remains, and the water way had to then take again the first place for the rare exchanges, as it was undoubtedly the case before the conquest of César.

The Roman roadway system, much more still than our modern ways with the watertight facings, had a constant need for maintenance, carried out liking or of force. When this one disappeared, the majority of these roadways quickly ceased being suitable for motor vehicles no matter what one could say of their consistency. Even when they were out of concrete or true pavement, still it had been necessary that the ditches and the water run-off are continuously maintained, without speaking about the aqueducts and the bridges. The only works which resisted well are those founded on the rock. On the large rivers, more traces, sometimes even if one finds still piles of foundation during work in their bed. The majority of these bridges were out of wood, like those built by César on the Saone or the Rhine, or of the bridges of boats as in Arles.

The Brunehaut roadways

With the Roman ways, one must evoke with the passage the Brunehaut roadways which point out to us the name of the famous queen of Austrasie, at the end of the VI° century, which is right roads that one meets in the north of France.

Among the surprising achievements, the men of the Middle Ages did not see of it stranger than the so old roads, so right that no human being did not seem to have been able to only conclude them. One needed a supernatural intervention for it. It is the devil, told one, unless it is not Wotan, ensured one in Germanic country; the English, pagan, saw there the miraculous hand of the holy empress Helene.

The devil or Brunehaut, it is all one, ensures us Jean d' Outremeuse, in 1398: “in year 526, started to make the Brunehaut queen grinds wonder by nécromancie, and made stone a very paved roadway of the kingdom, of Austrasie to the kingdom of France and Neustrie, as far as Aquitaine and in Burgundy… And all that was done in one night, and made it make by the malignant spirits, as Virgile made in its time. This roadway is always useful, we name it fitted Brunehaut”.

If one carries on a chart the roads - very many which bear since the Middle Ages the name of Brunehaut, it appears that all these roadways are in country of Romance language and oldest mentions meet in Artois and Picardy. However the Brunehaut queen reigned forever on these provinces and it is however there that its popularity seems best established.

It is necessary in makes go back to the chanson de geste Huon of Bordeaux made up towards the end of to find that Brunehaut was according to the poet… the mother of Jules César, the manufacturer of the Roman ways. There was only one step to cross between the Roman ways and the Brunehaut roadways.

In any case one can only dream when one considers extraordinary road star always quite visible around Bavay (where one placed rightly the statue of Brunehaut) and also gigantic alignments, in dotted line, of the Brunehaut roadways, Thérouanne to Arras then in Saint-Quentin, Laon, Rheims…, of the surroundings of Boulogne-sur-Mer towards Saint-Just-in-Roadway, and of Courtrai to Saint-Quentin, Soissons, Provins and Direction… All this corresponds well to the fact that the Roman ways were particularly well preserved in the North-East of France at the time Carolingian until the invasions Normans.

Ways of pilgrimages

In 819,823 and 830 Louis the Piles (778 - 840) orders the re-establishment of relay for his envoys and the repair or the rebuilding of the bridges built at the time of his father. But no effective organization is envisaged and the traffic is carried out with beasts of burden or oxcarts.

The pilgrimages towards Saint-Martin-of-Turns (), the Saint-Gilles-on-the-Rhone (), Saint-Jacques-with-Compostelle () and the access to the universities () must be done with foot by paths with fords or vats.

They thus are not true roads, but primarily paths for large hikers pilgrims, energy of sanctuary in sanctuary or lodging of stage in lodging of stage, both being generally associated. The base of our knowledge in this field is the Guide of the pilgrim of Saint-Jacques-of-Compostelle, published for the first time in 1139, and probably the work of Aimery Picaud of Parthenay-the-Old man. It describes the four main roads of the pilgrimage, at the beginning of Saint-Gilles, of Puy, Vézelay and Turns, with much more precision for the route of Turns by Poitiers and Bordeaux, the only one which it undoubtedly practiced itself.

The development of the urban infrastructures

With the invasions ceased, the climate is softer, there is a demographic expansion, clearings and a division of the labor reappears. Ancient cities reappear and of news are created. These cities must be in relation to the surrounding countryside. Thus the modern attachment of the horse (in file and with collar of shoulder, known in China in IIe century) and its fitting (invented in IXe century) are used. Because of existence of rich person meadows, crossings and selections, horses stronger and more resistant appear (races percheronne and boulonnaise), the load of the carts can increase.

The cities comprise more or less maintained streets: in 1186, Philippe II Auguste (1165 - 1223) orders to the Provost to make pave the principal streets of Paris (the remaining Roman flagstones, for a long time, were disappeared under a thick layer from mud). One knows the famous anecdote reported by the Chronicles of Saint-Denis: “One day that the king went by his palate… it accouda to one of the windows to take the air. However it happened that precisely carts which passed on the ways stirred up and touillèrent so much mud and the rubbish with which the way was full that a hardly bearable stink left there, went up to the window where the king was accoudé. When it felt this dreadful odor, it left the window, the failing heart. ” This adventure would have determined Philippe Auguste to give the order to the middle-class men of Paris “to pave all the thick and robust sandstone streets”. But the city was not paved in one day. That took some ninety years.

Cities generally have also some bridges of wood and sometimes out of stones (for example in Albi about 1035; in London the Tower protects a bridge which is out of stones starting from XIIe century; in Avignon, built of 1177 to 1188; in Pont-Saint-Esprit, built of 1265 to 1309; in Cahors in 1308; in Céret in 1339). Financial means the necessary ones for the construction of these bridges are provided by a foundation. Their maintenance is ensured by " works of the pont" who draw their incomes from tolls. As for the connections at long distances, to replace the roads, channels, like Naviglio Large in the Milanese with, are dug. To the galères génoises and Venetian go to Bruges and London, which involves the decline of the Champagne fairs.

First road maps

The use of the word atlas to indicate a collection of geographical maps dates from the edition of the work of Mercator about 1585. In fact one can make leave only the end of the era of the modern geographers. Before some samples of former charts start to reveal ways.

It is perhaps the Carte of Peutinger, edition modern of an old chart (as the geographies of Ptolémée which appeared at the same time) which gave the idea of these routes charted for the pilgrims or the travellers. This need was particularly felt before 1500, to the approach of the holy year, and gave place to the famous chart of the ways of Rome of Erhard Etzlaub, published in Nuremberg in 1492. One distinguishes there clearly into dotted all the routes to gain Rome starting from Germany of North and Denmark, in particular by Saint-Gothard, but by noting that no passage was advised by the Large-Saint-Bernard.

If Erzlaub can thus be regarded as the pioneer of the road maps, it immediately had a follower in the person of Martin Waldseemüller, of Saint-Dié, who took part in the edition of modernized charts of Ptolémée, and which published in Strasbourg in 1520 a chart route of Europe whose France occupies the center normally. Like the preceding one, it is represented North in bottom, but it is easy to recognize there, and there to find the axis fundamental from Paris to Orleans via Montlhéry and Etampes, from which then the roads diverge towards Lyon and Bordeaux by avoiding the Massif Central. In the South also one will distinguish the Languedocien axis, forking in his turn towards Roussillon and Catalonia and other side towards Aquitaine by a way which follows, to Spain, Piedmont Pyrénéen.

A little later is published the oldest chart Savoy, works of Gilles Boileau de Bouillon, gone back to 1556 and published in Antwerp. It recovers largely also the Franche-Comté like ground of Empire, to Alsace.

It is finally advisable to quote the chart of France of Oronce Finé, mathematician of the king, professor at the Collège de France, published in Paris in 1525 and which one knows today only two tests including those of 1553 preserved at the National library. One in general regards it as the oldest chart of France produced in France by a French, although others prefer to reserve this quality with the chart of Jean Jolivet published in 1570 and certainly much better. One is unaware of how they were established, in particular that of Oronce Finé which made various loans with charts of Europe already published with their errors, which gives him a curious aspect. It also multiplied the taupinières for the figuration of the relief, excess into which Jolivet will not fall. Neither one, nor the other were reproduced the roads on their charts, but only the bridges on the rivers and the principal rivers. It is to say the preeminence which was a long time that of the bridges compared to the roadways, more especially as the rivers were themselves the principal “ways which go and which carry where one wants to go”.

Random links:

Turano Lodigiano | Medef inna Babylon | Helene Desputeaux | Sociology of the universities | County of Costilla