Sabine Baring-Gould

“ What is now the Petit Rhône, reaching the sea at Les Saintes Maries, was then the main stream, which has long ago turned away, and now discharges its greatest body of water into the Mediterranean at Saint Louis. It has left behind it, not only the dead or stagnant Rhones, its neglected beds, but also, as already noticed, its old bars, and these are very distinctly marked at Aigues Mortes. The first chain gives us the primitive beach, which began at the lagoon of Maugio, traversed the entire Camargue, and can be traced to Fos. ”

“ It does a little sleepy trade in salt, and sees the barges for Beaucaire pass its walls, and perhaps supplies the boatmen with wine and bread. The neighbourhood is desolate. The soil is so full of salt that it is impatient of tillage, and produces only such herbs as love the sea border. ”

“ Consequently it is possible to tell approximately the epoch of a Mediæval fortification, by a look at the battlements, whether they stand back flush with the walls, and have the beam-holes, or whether they stand forward, bracketed out from the walls.
Aigues Mortes is a dead town. About a third of the area within the walls is devoted to gardens, or is waste. The population, which in the thirteenth century numbered 15,000 souls, has shrunk to a little over 3,000, a number at which it remains stationary. ”

“ A wind sprang up. The sails were spread. The captain called Peter. The men ran everywhere searching for him, could not find him, and at length were reluctantly obliged to sail without him. On reaching Provence the captain was unwilling to retain the goods of the lost man, and so gave them to the holy woman who ministered to the sick in the hospital she had built on a tiny islet off the coast. One day when Maguelone was short of salt she went to fetch some from the barrels given her by the ship's captain, and to her amazement found under the salt an incalculable treasure. ”

“ The stones of the dismantled buildings encumbered the ground till 1708, when they were all carried off for the construction of the new canal which runs along the coast through the chain of lagoons from Cette to Aigues Mortes.
"A church and its archives," says the historian of Maguelonne, "that is all that the revolution of fate has respected of one of the principal monastic centres in the south. A church in which service is no longer said, and archives that are incomplete. ”

“ She spent the night in the forest, and then took the road to Rome, and encountering a female pilgrim, exchanged clothes with her. Maguelone pursued her journey, prayed in S. Peter's Church at Rome, unnoticed by her uncle, who, with great state, passed by her kneeling there, and threw her alms. Then she went on to Genoa, where she took boat to Aigues Mortes. Hearing at this place that there was a little island off the coast suitable for a hermitage, thither she went, and with her jewels she had brought from Naples built a little church and a hospital, in which she ministered to sick people. ”

“ Towers, round and square at intervals, strengthened the walls, and formed points of vantage and of assembly for the besieged. Precisely similar fortifications were raised about the same period at Tortosa, Antioch, Ascalon, Cæsarea, &c.; but all these have been destroyed, only Aigues Mortes remains, an unique and perfect example of the systematic fortification adopted by the Crusaders everywhere.
The reader, probably, has not given a thought to the original purpose of a battlement, so common on towers and churches and castles. ”

“ Aigues Mortes is surrounded by its mediæval fortifications just as they were left by Philip the Bold, son of S. Louis. The plan of the town is almost quadrilateral, it has six gates and fifteen towers. Only one angle of the parallelogram is cut off, where stands the stately circular tower of Constance. The streets are laid out in the most precise manner, cutting each other at right angles ”