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Updated: May 17, 2025
The fifth and sixth that the province should be free from capitation tax for ten years, and that the Protestants should hold Montpellier, Cette, Perpignan, and Aiguesmortes, as cautionary towns were refused. The seventh that those inhabitants of the Cevennes whose houses had been burnt during the civil war should pay no imposts for seven years was granted.
Sixteen Huguenot women were confined there in 1686, and the whole of them died within five months. When the prisoners died off, the place was at once filled again. The castle of Aiguesmortes was thus used as a prison for nearly a hundred years.
One of the worst of these was the Tour de Constance in the town of Aiguesmortes, which is to this day remembered with horror as the principal dungeon of the Huguenot women. The town of Aiguesmortes is situated in the department of Gard, close to the Mediterranean, whose waters wash into the salt marshes and lagunes by which it is surrounded.
He was condemned to be a galley-slave for life by the parliament of Grenoble, for having given shelter to a pastor. Achard had also been confined at the galleys for thirty years. It is not known when the last Huguenot women were liberated from the Tour de Constance, at Aiguesmortes. It would probably be about the time when the last Huguenots were liberated from the galleys.
After about a month's imprisonment in the citadel, he was removed to Aiguesmortes, under the charge of several mounted archers and foot soldiers. He was accompanied by fourteen Protestant ladies and gentlemen, on their way to perpetual imprisonment, to the galleys, or to banishment.
An affecting picture has been left by an officer who visited the prison at the release of the last prisoners. Arriving at Aiguesmortes, at the gate of the Tour de Constance, we found at the entrance the principal keeper, who conducted us by dark steps through a great gate, which opened with an ominous noise, and over which was inscribed a motto from Dante 'Lasciate ogni speranza voi che'ntrate.
The canal of Craponne, that conveys the charged waters of the Durance over the Crau of Arles, is effecting artificially over that portion of the rubbly desert, the work that was done by Nature herself in past ages over the whole region from Cette to Aiguesmortes. Now let us examine very shortly the stages through which every mountain-born river runs.
De Péchels gives the following account of his journey from Montpellier to Aiguesmortes: "Mounted on asses, harnessed in the meanest manner, without stirrups, and with wretched ropes for halters, we entered Aiguesmortes, and were there locked up in the Tower of Constance, with thirty other male prisoners and twenty women and girls, who had also been brought hither, tied two and two.
Aiguesmortes was the principal fortified dungeon in the south of France, used for the imprisonment of Huguenots who refused to be converted. It is situated close to the Mediterranean, and is surrounded by lagunes and salt marshes. It is a most unhealthy place; and imprisonment at Aiguesmortes was considered a slower but not a less certain death than hanging.
Felix, where he met Roland and the other leaders, and arranged with them for the descent of a body of Huguenot soldiers on the coast. In the month of September, 1703, the English fleet was descried in the Gulf of Lyons, off Aiguesmortes, making signals, which, however, were not answered.
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