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Bordeaux, squatting in
the depths of the Gironde, could be London, Carthage, Rotterdam or
New-York, could have been Occitan but is only Bordeaux, capital on paper,
capital of provincial paper, former satellite of London, and today of
>Paris….a port that only discovered America at the moment of the slave
trade” , said Yves Rouquette in “Occitanie”
Is it true that Bordeaux, a mercantile city lost its port anyway, is grand
and terribly shabby and monotonous? A hallucinatory city of long flat vistas
in a million nuances of white. Nearly all its monuments, its squares, its
uniform quayside, its proto-Haussmanian boulevards—the very features that
made it to one of the most beautiful cities of France, according to
Stendhal. The bordelaise screamed about every one –because they had to pay
for them, a terrible imposition, though the money was rolling in, thanks to
the slave trade. These days, at least, the architecture helps the city earn
a few Euros as a film set.
Bordeaux has played the part Paris, London, Seville and even Boston in
costume dramas. And let’s not forget Victor Hugo’s opinion about Bordeaux:
“Add Antwerp to Versailles and you have Bordeaux”.
Bordeaux is gothic, and 18th century, splenetic, nostalgic and funky, a
stone necropolis that has always to the north for tutelage while it made a
living of its port.
Today the city seems uncertain, divorced from the Garonne by a furious
funnel of traffic.
Bordeaux is France’s 8th city in population (220,000) and a sea as well a
river port. The quays of the city lie in a half moon pattern along the
Gironde. It is of course the wine industry and transport that makes most of
Bordeaux income today. Let’s start with the very beginning: the ancient
Greek, Strabo was the first to mention the Gironde estuary in 3th century
B.C.. Later, this small Gallic village grew into a bustling Roman city
“Burdigala”, occupied, along the centuries by the Goths, the Arabs and the
Normans.
In the 7th century, the Merovingian king DAGOBERT made Bordeaux the capital
of the duchy of Aquitaine. In the 12th century, Eleanor inherited the Duchy
and gave Bordeaux first to France (1137), then to Anjou and England.
Bordeaux blossomed under the English and grew so much that the walls had to
be rebuilt twice. But the French didn’t take this situation for granted and
Edward the third, opening the Pandora box, triggered the 100-years war by
claiming the French throne, himself being an Englishmen. The French finally
took Bordeaux in June 1451 “Male Tornade” (Rotten day), 10,000 Bordelais
were massacred. The final conquest by the French in 1453 was so unpopular
that the Bordelais rebelled off and on until the end of the 17th century.
By the beginning of the French revolution, Bordeaux had a lot of contacts
with the new United States and the influence of Montesquieu and the
Philosophes to make the local Girondin party a moderate force at the
Convention in Paris. They clashed with the Jacobin fanatics who believed in
a centralized dictatorship. In 1793, suspected of fomenting an insurrection,
22 Girondins were arrested by Robespierre and died on the guillotine.
Only after WWII Bordeaux regained her ancient, commercial dynamics.
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