Interior of the Carreau des Halles, the covered market of the city of Bayonne, Pay basque region, France
Some background information:
Bayonne is a city and commune and in the department of Pyrénées-Atlantiques, in the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region of southwestern France. It has more than 51,000 residents and is located at the confluence of the Nive and Adour rivers in the northern part of the cultural region of the Basque Country. Bayonne is also situated in the southern part of the historic province of Gascony, where the Aquitaine basin joins the beginning of the Pre-Pyrenees. Together with the nearby towns of Anglet, Biarritz and Saint-Jean-de-Luz, as well as several smaller communes, Bayonne forms an urban area with about 289,000 inhabitants.
In the 1st century AD, during the Roman occupation, Bayonne already seems to have been of some importance since the Romans surrounded the city with a wall to keep out the Tarbelli, Aquitani and proto-Basques. In addition, a Roman castrum was exacavated that dates from the 4th century. This Roman settlement was strategic as it allowed the monitoring of the trans-Pyrenean roads and of local people rebellious to the Roman power, like the tribes mentioned before. After the Romans had left the city at the end of the 4th century, the Basques, who had always been present, began to dominate the former Novempopulania province between the Garonne, the Ocean and the Pyrénées.
When the province of Labourd was created in 1023, Bayonne was its capital and the viscount resided there. In 1056, Raymond II the Younger, Bishop of Bazas, had the mission to build the Church of Bayonne. A Romanesque cathedral, the rear of which can still be seen today, was constructed under the authority of Raymond III of Martres, Bishop of Bayonne from 1122 to 1125. In the same period of time the first wooden bridge across the Adour River was built, extending the Mayou bridge over the River Nive, which inaugurated the heyday of Bayonne. From 1120, new districts were created under population pressure and defence works were modified to protect these new districts.
In 1130, the King of Aragon Alfonso the Battler besieged the city without success. In 1152, Bayonne came under English rule when Eleanor of Aquitaine married Henry II of England. This alliance gave Bayonne many commercial privileges. The Bayonnaises became carriers of Bordeaux wines and other south-western products like resin, ham, and woad to England. But Bayonne also became an important military base. In 1177 King Richard separated the Viscounty of Labourd whose capital then became Ustaritz. In 1215, Bayonne was emancipated from feudal powers and obtained the award of a municipal charter. Bayonnaise industry at that time was dominated by shipbuilding, with oak, beech and chestnut from the Pyrenees, as well as pine from Landes being overabundant. There was also maritime activity in providing crews for whaling, commercial marine or the English Royal Navy.
In 1451, Jean de Dunois – a former companion at arms of Joan of Arc – captured the city and annexed it to the Crown "without making too many victims". In the following years the city continued to be fortified by the kings of France to protect it from danger from the Spanish border. In 1462, King Louis XI authorized the holding of two annual fairs. At that time the Spanish Inquisition raged in the Iberian Peninsula, Spanish and Portuguese Jews fled Spain and also Portugal. They settled in Southern France, including Saint-Esprit, a northern district of Bayonne, located along the northern bank of the Adour River. These Iberian expatriates brought with them chocolate and the recipe for its preparation.
However, the golden age of the city ended at the end of the 15th century with the loss of trade with England and the silting of the port of Bayonne. At the beginning of the 16th century the province of Labourd suffered the emergence of the plague. In 1518, the plague was present in Bayonne to the point that in 1519 the city council moved to the district of Brindos in Anglet. In 1523, Marshal Odet of Foix, Viscount of Lautrec, resisted the Spaniards under Philibert of Chalon in the service of Charles V and lifted the siege of Bayonne. In 1565, a meeting between Catherine de Medici and the envoy of Philip II, Duke of Alba, took place, which is known as the Interview of Bayonne.
At the end of the 16th century, the course of the Adour River was rearranged by creating an estuary to maintain the river bed. The river then discharged in the right place to the ocean. As a consequence, the port of Bayonne reattained a greater level of activity and fishing for cod and whale ensured the wealth of both fishermen and shipowners.
During the sporadic conflicts that troubled the French countryside from the middle of th 17th century, Bayonne peasants were short of powder and projectiles. They attached the long hunting knives in the barrels of their muskets and that way they fashioned makeshift spears later called bayonets. In the same century, Sébastien Le Prestre de Vauban, the famous French military engineer, was charged by Louis XIV to fortify the city. He added a citadel built on a hill overlooking the district of San Espirit.
Activity in Bayonne peaked in the 18th century. The Chamber of Commerce was founded in 1726. Trade with Spain, the Netherlands, the Antilles and Newfoundland, as well as several construction sites maintained a high level of activity in the port. In 1808, the act of abdication of the Spanish king Charles IV in favour of Napoleon was signed under the "friendly pressure" of the Emperor at the Château of Marracq . In the process the Bayonne Statute was initialised as the first Spanish constitution.
In the 19th century, the city’s trade suffered greatly, severely sanctioned by the conflict with Spain, its historic trading partner in the region. The Siege of Bayonne marked the end of the city’s second heyday with the surrender of the Napoleonic troops of Marshal Jean-de-Dieu Soult, which were defeated by the coalition led by Wellington in 1814.
In 1854 the railway arrived from Paris bringing many tourists eager to enjoy the beaches of Biarritz, while nearby Bayonne turned to the steel industry instead. Even the port took on an industrial look but its slow decline seemed inexorable. In 1856, the Treaty of Bayonne was concluded. It overcame the disputes between France and Spain by fixing the Franco-Spanish border in the area extending from the mouth of the Bidassoa to the border between Navarre and Aragon.
At the beginning of the 20th century, the city built three light railway lines to connect to Biarritz. During World War II, Bayonne was occupied by the 3rd SS Panzer Division "Totenkopf" from June 1940 to August 1944. On 5th April 1942 the Allies made a landing attempt in Bayonne but after a barge penetrated the Adour with great difficulty, the operation was cancelled. On 21st August 1944, after blowing up twenty ships in the port, German troops withdrew.
Today, Bayonne has developed important activities related to tourism due to its proximity to the ocean and the foothills of the Pyrenees as well as its historic heritage. Furthermore, Bayonne is known for its fine chocolates, produced in the town for 500 years, and Bayonne ham, a cured ham seasoned with peppers from nearby Espelette. It is also said that Bayonne is the birthplace of mayonnaise, supposedly a corruption of the word Bayonnaise, the French adjective describing the city's people and products.
