Le temps des moulines: Fer, technique et societe dans les Pyrenees centrales, XIIIe-XVIe siecles (review)

Since the publication of her excellent Les mines et les forges des Cisterciens en Champagne méridionale et en Bourgogne du Nord, XIIe-XVe siècle in 1995, Catherine Verna's studies have formed a centerpiece of French research on iron production in the Middle Ages. In a series of articles on the silver and iron industries of the central Pyrenees, she has continued to whet the appetite of everyone interested in European mining and metallurgy. And now we have a published version of her doctoral thesis of 1994, which is a quite outstanding piece of research.

Le temps des moulines deals with the iron industry in the comté of Foix and the lordship of Mirepoix. These embrace the important mines of Château-Verdun and Sem (Vicdessos) in the upper Sabarthès and the lesser workings of Arse on the Sois River and Saurat in the valley of that name, all of which are located in the central Pyrenees about the middle course of the River Ariège. It is a landscape of high valleys with well-wooded alpine pastures rising to mountainous ridges, which provided timber for numerous sawmills and wool for an important cloth industry.

Until the mid-thirteenth century there was a small-scale iron industry involving human-powered reduction and hammering of ferrous metal. Then, from the 1230s to the end of thirteenth century, hydraulic power was applied to those forges (fabricae) where the peasantry came to repair their implements. It was only in the period from 1294 to 1356, however, that waterpower began to be employed in the reduction, refining, and fabrication of metal, iron mills (foc and molinda ferrara) being established in the valleys alongside corn mills, fulling mills, and sawmills. In chapter 2 Verna describes the principal mines, and in chapter 3 she identifies the new iron mills and describes their distribution, the nature of the technology, the productive capacity of furnaces and hammer works, and the processes of diffusion. This is followed in chapter 4 by a totally original analysis of woodland management and charcoal production. With the growth of the iron industry, new policies were developed to ensure charcoal supply while protecting the wood needed by others. Finally, in chapter 5 Verna discusses the commerce in iron, highlighting the importance of household equipment and agricultural tools in what remained a regional trade encompassing Provençal-Aragonese consumers.

The first two chapters of the second part of the book examine the evolution of the industry during the "crisis" years from 1370 to 1412, the next two a phase of rationalization, and the fifth another "crisis" of the years from 1445 to 1465, when the industry began a terminal decline. Against a background of endemic warfare, a growing number of vacant hearths, and a flight of labor toward the lands of the lower Ariège from 1370 to 1412, iron production continued, but only by diversification into new products and markets. After around 1380, iron products were laded at Tarascon and, especially, Foix for transport to Toulouse, or to Andorra and Aragon, or to the Mediterranean port of Narbonne and the international market. Among the goods carried, the domestic equipment and agricultural tools of an earlier age were now supplemented with significant quantities of armaments—cargua de baillesta de acer and balesta et autre artilharia.

During the subsequent phase of industrial growth, from 1412 to 1445, this new commercial product mix and trading network was not seriously disturbed, even as the industry underwent a major rationalization. The valleys of Vicdessos and Aston, suppliers of iron to the metalworkers of Foix, continued to dominate the industry. Two new competitive centers emerged, however, one at the "Gates of Foix," which enjoyed a symbiotic relationship with the citizens of the town, and the other on the...