specifically to salt, retained the old name of gabelle. The other two were a tax on wine (at
first about 8 percent but later raised to 25 percent on retail sales) and a general value-
added tax on other commodities. Since the occasion was a royal ransom, these taxes
amounted to a feudal aid generalized to affect the whole population.
Collected through the 1360s as the aides pour la délivrance, these taxes remained in
force for all but two of the next fifty-seven years and after 1369 were called the “aids for
the war.” Thereafter, the term always referred to these taxes and rarely to anything else.
Royal indirect taxes being contrary to the traditions of Languedoc, the Estates of that
region arranged in 1362 to replace them with an equivalent amount paid as a lump sum
and apportioned locally.
Regular taxation came to a halt during the civil wars of the early 15th century, the
aides being canceled in 1417. For the next two decades, the Estates General occasionally
granted aides, but they were unpopular with the towns, and regional assemblies usually
changed them to another form of tax. The Estates of 1436 restored the aides and gabelle,
and this time the format was not altered and the crown continued to collect them.
Languedoc, once again, replaced them with a substitute now actually called the
equivalent. These taxes now became a permanent feature of the royal fiscal system.
John Bell Henneman, Jr.
[See also: FEUDAL AIDS]
Brown, Elizabeth A.R. Politics and Institutions in Capetian France. Aldershot: Variorum, 1991.
Henneman, John Bell. Royal Taxation in Fourteenth Century France: The Captivity and Ransom of
John II, 1356–1370. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1976.
Viard, Jules. “Les ressources extraordinaires de la royauté sous Philippe VI de Valois.” Revue des
questions historiques 44 (1888):167–218.
Vuitry, Adolphe. Études sur la régime financier de la France avant la Révolution de 1789. nouv.
ser. 2 vols. Orléans: Colas, 1873–83.
AIGUES-MORTES
. A royal port built on the Mediterranean coast in the 13th century, Aigues-Mortes was
founded because no existing major ports or towns with access to good harbors on the
Mediterranean coast of France were susceptible to decisive royal penetration before the
end of the reign of Louis VIII. Even when, in the late 1220s and 1230s, the crown made
inroads into the independence of a few of these towns after the Albigensian Crusade, it
was felt, given the legacy of hostility from the war, that a distinctly royal port would be
advantageous. The transformation of this desire into reality came about as a result of
Louis IX’s need for an embarkation point for the soldiers who accompanied him on his
first crusade (1248–54). Beginning in earnest in the mid-1240s, the king’s men laid out a
small town about 20 miles east of Montpellier, in an area facing saltwater lagoons and
stagnant pools, which together account for the name given to the settlement, Aigues-
Mortes (“Dead Waters”). Laid out on a square grid, the town was a typical foundation of
the 13th century except for the extraordinary degree of royal interest in its success. It was
heavily fortified with both impressive walls—originally in wood, in the 1270s rebuilt in
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