Barcelonnette (; , also ; obsolete ) is a commune of France and a subprefecture in the department of Alpes-de-Haute-Provence, in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region. It is located in the southern French Alps, at the crossroads between Provence, Piedmont and the Dauphiné, and is the largest town in the Ubaye Valley. The town's inhabitants are known as Barcelonnettes.
Toponymy Barcelonnette was founded and named in 1231, by Ramon Berenguer IV, Count of Provence.Albert Dauzat and Charles Rostaing, Dictionnaire étymologique des noms de lieux en France, Éd. Larousse, 1968, pp. 1693–1694. While the town's name is generally seen as a diminutive form of Barcelona in Catalonia, Albert Dauzat and Charles Rostaing point out an earlier attestation of the name Barcilona in Barcelonnette in around 1200, and suggest that it is derived instead from two earlier stems signifying a mountain, *bar and *cin (the latter of which is also seen in the name of Mont Cenis).Charles Rostaing, Essai sur la toponymie de la Provence depuis les origines jusqu'aux invasions barbares, Laffite Reprints, Marseille, 1973 (1st edition 1950), p 91Ernest Nègre, Toponymie générale de la France : étymologie de 35 000 noms de lieux, Genève : Librairie Droz, 1990. Collection Publications romanes et françaises, volume CVCIII. Volume III : Formations dialectales (suite); formations françaises § 30208 § 30208
In the Vivaro-Alpine dialect of Occitan, the town is known as Barcilona de Provença or more rarely Barciloneta according to the classical norm; under the Mistralian norm it is called Barcilouna de Prouvença or Barcilouneto. In Valéian (the dialect of Occitan spoken in the Ubaye Valley), it is called Barcilouna de Prouvença or Barcilounéta.François Arnaud, Gabriel Maurin, Le langage de la vallée de Barcelonnette, Paris : Champion, 1920 – Re-edited in 1973, Marseille: Laffitte ReprintsJean-Rémy Fortoul, Ubaye, la mémoire de mon pays : les gens, les bêtes, les choses, le temps, Barcelonnette: Sabença de la Valeia/Mane: Alpes de Lumière, 1995. ; Barcino Nova is the town's Latin name meaning "new Barcelona"; Barcino was the Roman name for Barcelona in Catalonia from its foundation by Emperor Augustus in 10 BC,Chapter 2: Colonia Julia Augusta Faventia Paterna Barcino, Romans at Mons Taber, Town Hall of Barcelona and the name was changed to Barcelona only during the Middle Ages.
The inhabitants of the town are called Barcelonnettes, or Vilandroises in Valéian.
History
Origins The Barcelonnette region was populated by Ligures from the 1st millennium BC onwards, and the arrival of the Celts several centuries later led to the formation of a mixed Celto-Ligurian people, the Vesubians. Polybius described the Vesubians as belligerent but nonetheless civilised and mercantile, and Julius Caesar praised their bravery.Vallis Montium : Histoire de la vallée de Barcelonnette, p.12 and p.15Recherche sur la géographie ancienne et les antiquités du département des Basses-Alpes, p. 30, le col de la Magdeleine étant l'ancien nom du col de Larche, Colle della Maddalena in Italian.Dictionnaire historique et topographique de la Provence ancienne et moderne, page 115 The work History of the Gauls also places the Vesubians in the Ubaye Valley.Histoire des Gaules, et des conquêtes des Gaulois depuis leur origine jusqu'à la fondation de la Monarchie française, 1754
Following the Roman conquest of Provence, Barcelonnette was included in a small province with modern Embrun as its capital and governed by Albanus Bassalus. This was integrated soon afterwards into Gallia Narbonensis.Vallis Montium : Histoire de la vallée de Barcelonnette, p.16 In 36 AD, Emperor Tiberius transferred Barcelonnette to the province of the Cottian Alps. The town was known as Rigomagensium under the Roman Empire and was the capital of a civitas (a provincial subdivision),Raymond Collier, La Haute-Provence monumentale et artistique, Digne, Imprimerie Louis Jean, 1986, p. 15 though no Roman money has yet been found in the canton of Barcelonnette.Raymond Collier, La Haute-Provence monumentale et artistique, p. 37
Medieval town The town of Barcelonnette was founded in 1231 by Ramon Berenguer IV, Count of Provence. According to Charles Rostaing, this act of formal "foundation", according certain privileges to the town, was a means of regenerating the destroyed town of Barcilona. The town was afforded a consulat (giving it the power to administer and defend itself) in 1240.Under the direction of Édouard Baratier, Georges Duby, and Ernest Hildesheimer, Atlas historique. Provence, Comtat Venaissin, principauté d'Orange, comté de Nice, principauté de Monaco, Librairie Armand Colin, Paris, 1969, p. 163
Control of the area in the Middle Ages swung between the Counts of Savoy and of Provence. In 1388, after Count Louis II of Provence had left to conquer Naples, the Count of Savoy Amadeus VIII took control of Barcelonnette; however, it returned to Provençal control in 1390, with the d'Audiffret family as its lords. On the death of Louis II in 1417 it reverted to Savoy, and, although Count René again retook the area for Provence in 1471, it had returned to Savoyard dominance by the start of the 16th century, by which point the County of Provence had become united with the Kingdom of France due to the death of Count Charles V in 1481.Google Books: Aristide Mathieu Guilbert, Histoire des Villes de France. First book, pp. 674-676, Paris, 1844
Ancien Régime During Charles V's invasion of Provence in 1536, Francis I of France sent the Count of Fürstenberg's 6000 Landsknechte to ravage the area in a scorched earth policy. Barcelonnette and the Ubaye Valley remained under French sovereignty until the second Treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis on 3 April 1559.
In 1588 the troops of François, Duke of Lesdiguières entered the town and set fire to the church and convent during their campaign against the Duke of Savoy. In 1600, after the Treaty of Vervins, conflict returned between Henry IV of France and Savoy, and Lesdiguières retook Barcelonnette until the conclusion of the Treaty of Lyon on 17 January the following year. In 1628, during the War of the Mantuan Succession, Barcelonnette and the other towns of the Ubaye Valley were pillaged and burned by Jacques du Blé d'Uxelles and his troops, as they passed through towards Italy to the Duke of Mantua's aid. The town was retaken by the Duke of Savoy in 1630; and in 1691 it was captured by the troops of the Marquis de Vins during the War of the League of Augsburg.
Between 1614 and 1713, Barcelonnette was the seat of one of the four prefectures under the jurisdiction of the Senate of Nice. At this time, the community of Barcelonnette successfully purchased the seigneurie of the town as it was put to auction by the Duke of Savoy; it thereby gained its own justicial powers.Jean Nicolas, La Rébellion française : mouvements populaires et conscience sociale, 1661–1789, Paris: Gallimard, 2008. Collection Folio, , p. 311 In 1646, a college was founded in Barcelonnette.Prefecture of Alpes-de-Haute-Provence, "Histoire de l'Arrondissement de Barcelonnette ", Préfecture des Alpes de Haute-Provence, accessed 23 June 2012
A "significant" part of the town's inhabitants had, by the 16th century, converted to Protestantism, and were repressed during the French Wars of Religion.Gabriel Audisio and Jean Jalla, Les protestants de la vallée de Barcelonnette, expanded and updated edition from the brochure Les Vaudois à Barcelonnette
The viguerie of Barcelonnette (also comprising Saint-Martin and Entraunes) was reattached to France in 1713 as part of a territorial exchange with the Duchy of Savoy during the Treaties of Utrecht. The town remained the site of a viguerie until the French Revolution.La Révolution dans les Basses-Alpes, Annales de Haute-Provence, bulletin de la société scientifique et littéraire des Alpes-de-Haute-Provence, no 307, 1st term 1989, 108th year, p 107 A decree of the council of state on 25 December 1714 reunited Barcelonnete with the general government of Provence.
Revolution Barcelonnette was one of few settlements in Haute-Provence to acquire a Masonic Lodge before the Revolution, in fact having two: the lodge of Saint-Jean-d'Écosse des amis réunis, affiliated with the Saint-Jean-d'Écosse lodge in Marseille; the lodge of Saint-Jean, affiliated with the Saint-Jean-de-Jérusalem d'Avignon lodge founded in 1749.Robert-Henri Bautier, "Les loges maçonniques (seconde moitié du XVIIIe siècle)", maps 120 and 121 and commentary in Baratier, Duby & Hildesheimer, Atlas historiquePatrice Alphand, "Les Sociétés populaires", La Révolution dans les Basses-Alpes, Annales de Haute-Provence, bulletin de la société scientifique et littéraire des Alpes-de-Haute-Provence, no 307, 1st term 1989, 108th year, p. 292
In March 1789, riots took place as a result of a crisis in wheat production.La Révolution dans les Basses-Alpes, Annales de Haute-Provence, bulletin de la société scientifique et littéraire des Alpes-de-Haute-Provence, no 307, 1st term 1989, 108th year, p. 11 In July, the Great Fear of aristocratic reprisal against the ongoing French Revolution struck France, arriving in the Barcelonnette area on 31 July 1789 (when the news of the storming of the Bastille first reached the town) before spreading towards Digne.Michel Vovelle, "Les troubles de Provence en 1789", map 154 and commentary, in Baratier, Duby & Hildesheimer, Atlas historique
This agitation continued in the Ubaye Valley; a new revolt broke out on 14 June,Annales de Haute-Provence, p. 15 and famine was declared in April 1792. The patriotic society of the commune was one of the first 21 created in Alpes-de-Haute-Provence, in spring 1792, by the envoys of the departmental administration.Alphand, "Les Sociétés populaires", pp. 296–301 Around a third of the male population attended at the club.Alphand, "Les Sociétés populaires", p. 320 Another episode of political violence occurred in August 1792.
Barcelonnette was the seat of the District of Barcelonnette from 1790 to 1800.
Modern history
In December 1851, the town was home to a movement of republican resistance towards Napoleon III's coup. Though only a minority of the population, the movement rebelled on Sunday 7 December, the day after the news of the coup arrived. Town officials and gendarmes were disarmed and placed in the maison d'arrêt. A committee of public health was created on 8 December; on 9 December the inhabitants of Jausiers and its surroundings formed a colony under the direction of general councillor Brès, and Mayor Signoret of Saint-Paul-sur-Ubaye. This was stopped, however, on 10 December before it could reach Barcelonnette, as the priest of the subprefecture had intervened. On 11 December, several officials escaped and found refuge in L'Argentière in Piedmont. The arrival of troops on 16 December put a final end to the republican resistance without bloodshed, and 57 insurgents were tried; 38 were condemned to deportation (though several were pardoned in April).
Between 1850 and 1950, Barcelonnette was the source of a wave of emigration to Mexico. Among these emigrants was Jean Baptiste Ebrard, founder of the Liverpool department store chain in Mexico. On the edges of Barcelonnette and Jausiers there are several houses and villas of colonial style (known as maisons mexicaines), constructed by emigrants to Mexico who returned to France between 1870 and 1930. One of these maisons is Villa Costebelle. A plaque in the town commemorates the deaths of ten Mexican citizens who returned to Barcelonnette to fight in the First World War.