Septimania

thumb|300px|right|Map of Septimania in 537

Septimania is a historical region in modern-day Southern France. It referred to the western part of the Roman province of Gallia Narbonensis that passed to the control of the Visigoths in 462 CE, when Septimania was ceded to their king, Theodoric II. There is archaeological evidence that some enclaves of Visigothic population remained in Frankish Gaul, near the Septimanian border, after 507. It passed briefly to the Emirate of Córdoba, which had been expanding from the south during the same century, before its subsequent conquest by the Christian Franks in 759, The Gallo-Roman aristocrat and bishop Sidonius Apollinaris refers to Septimania as "theirs" during the reign of Avitus (455–456), but Sidonius is probably considering Visigothic settlement in and around Toulouse. The Visigoths were then holding the area around Toulouse against the legal claims of the Empire, though they had more than once offered to exchange it for the Auvergne. met with the opposition of the Catholic Franks in Gaul. The Franks allied with the Armorici, whose land was under constant threat from the Goths south of the Loire, and in 507 Clovis I, the Frankish king, invaded the Visigothic Kingdom, whose capital lay in Toulouse, with the consent of the leading men of the tribe. Clovis defeated the Goths in the battle of Vouillé (507) and the child-king Amalaric was carried for safety into Hispania, while Gesalec was elected to replace him and rule from Narbonne.

Clovis, his son Theuderic I, and his Burgundian allies proceeded to conquer most of the Visigothic territories in Gaul, including the Rouergue (507) and Toulouse (508). The attempt to take Carcassonne, a fortified site guarding the coast of Septimania, was defeated by the Ostrogoths (508) and Septimania thereafter remained in Visigothic hands, though the Burgundians managed to hold Narbonne for a time and drive Gesalec into exile. Border warfare between Gallo-Roman magnates, including Catholic bishops, had existed with the Visigoths during the last centuries of the Western Roman Empire, and it continued under the Franks.

The Ostrogothic king Theodoric the Great reconquered Narbonne from the Burgundians and retained it as the provincial capital. Theudis was appointed regent at Narbonne by Theodoric while Amalaric was still a minor in Hispania. In 509, Theodoric the Great created the first Germanic kingdom of Septimania, retaining its traditional capital at Narbonne. He appointed as his regent an Ostrogothic nobleman named Theudis. When Theodoric died in 526, Amalaric was elected king in his own right and he immediately made his capital in Narbonne. He ceded Provence, which had at some point passed back into Visigothic control, to the Ostrogothic king Athalaric. The Frankish king of Paris, Childebert I, invaded Septimania in 531 and chased Amalaric to Barcelona in response to pleas from his sister, Chrotilda, that her husband, Amalaric, had been mistreating her. The Franks did not try to hold the province, and, under Amalaric's successor, the centre of gravity of the kingdom crossed the Pyrénées and Theudis made his capital in Barcelona.

Gothic province of Gaul

thumb|upright=1.35|[[Barbarian kingdoms in Southwestern Europe during the Early Middle Ages: Theudebert and his half-brother Childebert I invaded Hispania as far as Zaragoza (534–538). Eventually, the Visigoths regained the territory they had lost in Theudebert's invasion.

The province of Gaul held a unique place in the Visigothic Kingdom, as it was the only province outside of Hispania, north of the Pyrénées, and bordering a strong foreign nation, in this case the Franks. The kings after Alaric II favoured Narbonne as a capital, but twice (611 and 531) were defeated and forced back to Barcelona by the Franks, before Theudis moved the capital there permanently. Under Theodoric Septimania had been safe from Frankish assault, but was raided by Childebert I twice (531 and 541). When Liuva I succeeded to the throne in 568, Septimania was a dangerous frontier province and Hispania was wracked by revolts. Liuva granted Hispania to his son Leovigild and took Septimania to himself. Alternatively, the invasion may have occurred in response to Hermenegild's death. Reccared meanwhile took Beaucaire (Ugernum) on the Rhône near Tarascon and Cabaret (a fort called "Ram's Head"), both of which lay in Guntram's kingdom.

It is clear that the Franks, throughout the 6th century, had coveted Septimania, but were unable to take it and the invasion of 589 was the last attempt. In the 7th century, Gallia often had its own governors or duces (dukes), who were typically Visigoths. Most public offices were also held by Goths, far out of proportion to their part of the population.

Culture of Gothic Septimania

The native population of Gallia was referred to by Visigothic and Iberian writers as the "Gauls", and there is a well-attested hatred between the Goths and the Gauls, which was atypical for the Visigothic Kingdom as a whole. that the Gothic inhabitants and Visigothic rulers continued to preserve and uphold long into their inclusion within the Frankish Kingdom and the Carolingian Empire (8th century onwards). The traditional Roman practice of not working Thursdays in honour of Jupiter was still prevalent.

The council set down penance to be done for not working on Thursday save for church festivals and commanded the practice of Martin of Braga, rest from rural work on Sundays, to be adopted.

Different theories exist concerning the nature of the frontier between Visigothic Septimania and Frankish Gaul. On the one hand, cultural exchange is generally reputed to have been minimal, but the level of trading activity has been disputed. There have been few to no objects of Neustrian, Austrasian, or Burgundian provenance discovered in Septimania. However, a series of Germanic sarcophagi of a unique regional style, variously labelled Visigothic, Aquitainian, or southwestern Gallic, are prevalent on both sides of the Septimanian border. These sarcophagi are made of locally quarried marble from Saint-Béat and are of varied design, but with generally flat relief which distinguishes them from ancient Roman sarcophagi.

A unique style of orange pottery was common in the 4th and 5th centuries in southern Gaul, but the later (6th century) examples culled from Septimania are more orange than their cousins from Aquitaine and Provence and are not found commonly outside of Septimania, a strong indicator that there was little commerce over the frontier or at its ports. In fact, Septimania helped to isolate both Aquitaine and Iberia from the rest of the Mediterranean world.

Coinage of the Visigothic Kingdom in Hispania did not circulate in Gaul outside of Septimania, and Frankish coinage did not circulate in the Visigothic Kingdom, including Septimania. If there had been a significant amount of commerce over the frontier, the monies paid had to have been melted down immediately and re-minted as foreign coins have not been preserved across the frontier.

Frankish conquest of Septimania

thumb|250px|left|Military campaigns and geopolitical situation in [[France in the Middle Ages|southern Gaul (740)]]

The region of Septimania, in southern Gaul, was the last unconquered province of the Visigothic Kingdom. In the aftermath of their resounding victory against the relieving Arab-Berber Muslim forces, In the 12th and 13th centuries, the community went through a series of ups and downs before settling into extended decline. that reversed many liberal policies,

German Chancelllor Adolf Hitler ordered Case Anton to occupy Corsica and then the rest of the unoccupied southern zone in immediate reaction to the landing of the Allied forces in North Africa on 8 November 1942. Following the conclusion of the operation on 12 November, Vichy's remaining military forces were disbanded. Vichy continued to exercise its remaining jurisdiction over almost all of metropolitan France, with the residual power devolved into the hands of Laval, until the gradual collapse of the regime following the Allied invasion of France in June 1944. On 7 September 1944, in the aftermath of the Allied victory, the remnants of the Vichy government cabinet fled to Nazi Germany and established a puppet government in exile in the so-called Sigmaringen enclave. That rump government finally fell when the city was taken by the Free French Army in April 1945.

Part of the residual legitimacy of the Vichy Regime resulted from the continued ambivalence of the United States and other Allied powers. For instance, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt continued to cultivate bilateral relations with the Vichy Regime and promoted French General Henri Giraud as a preferable alternative to Charles de Gaulle, despite the poor performance of Vichy military forces in North Africa. French Admiral François Darlan had landed in Algiers the day before Operation Torch; the city hosted the headquarters of the Vichy French 19th Army Corps, which controlled Vichy military units in North Africa. Darlan was neutralised within 15 hours by a 400-strong French resistance force. Both Roosevelt and Winston Churchill accepted Darlan, rather than de Gaulle, as the French leader in North Africa. De Gaulle had not even been informed of the landing in North Africa. The United States also resented the Free French Army taking control of Saint Pierre and Miquelon on 24 December 1941, because, U.S. Secretary of State Cordell Hull believed, it interfered with a U.S.–Vichy agreement to maintain the status quo with respect to French territorial possessions in the Western Hemisphere.

Following the Allied invasion of France via Normandy and Provence (Operation Overlord and Operation Dragoon, respectively) and the departure of the Vichy leaders, the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union finally recognized the Provisional Government of the French Republic (GPRF) headed by de Gaulle as the legitimate government of France on 23 October 1944. Before that, the first return of parliamentary democracy to metropolitan France since 1940 had occurred with the declaration of the Free Republic of Vercors on 3 July 1944, at the behest of Free France, but that act of resistance was quashed by an overwhelming German attack by the end of July. The new republic of France was founded on 27 October 1946.

French Republic

In modern-day France, Septimania or Gothia was comprised within the former administrative region of Languedoc-Roussillon, along with the departments of Aude, Gard, Hérault, and Pyrénées-Orientales, which roughly correspond to the historical region of medieval Septimania, as well as the geographically completely different department of Lozère, which belongs to the Massif Central. On 1 January 2016, it joined with the region of Midi-Pyrénées to become Occitania.

After his election to the Regional Council in 2004, Georges Frêche, a member of the French Socialist Party (PS), campaigned for the renaming of Languedoc-Roussillon to Septimania, and the Regional Assembly began to use the region's medieval name more frequently.

Eventually, the inhabitants of the Languedoc-Roussillon and Pyrénées-Orientales organized a mass protest against Frêche's campaign, with more than 5000 people gathered in Perpignan on 8 October 2005. He served as President of the Regional Council of Languedoc-Roussillon from 2004 until his death in 2010; prior to that, he had been mayor of Montpellier for 27 years.

Gothic province of Gaul

Culture of Gothic Septimania

Frankish conquest of Septimania

French Republic

See also

Notes

References

Bibliography