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About This File
NHP Beziers By blade2k5 & Papab2000
Map Details and Information
The town is located on a small bluff above the river Orb, about 10 km (6.2 mi) from the Mediterranean Sea. At Béziers the Canal du Midi spans the river Orb as an aqueduct called the Pont-canal de l'Orb. claimed to be the first of its kind.
The site has been occupied since Neolithic times, before the influx of Celts. Roman Betarra was on the road that linked Provence with Iberia. The Romans refounded the city as a new colonia for veterans in 36/35 BC and called it Colonia Julia Baeterrae Septimanorum. Stones from the Roman amphitheatre were used to construct the city wall during the 3rd century.
White wine was exported to Rome; two dolia discovered in an excavation near Rome are marked, one "I am a wine from Baeterrae and I am five years old," the other simply "white wine of Baeterrae". She was occupied by Moors between 720 and 752.
During the 10th through 12th centuries Béziers was the centre of a Viscountship of Béziers. The viscounts ruled most of the coastal plain around the city, including also the city of Agde. They also controlled the major east-west route through Languedoc, roughly following the old Roman Via Domitia, with the two key bridges over the Orb at Béziers and over the Hérault at Saint-Thibéry.
After the death of viscount William around 990, the viscounty passed to his daughter Garsendis and her husband, count Raimond-Roger of Carcassonne (d. ~1012). It was then ruled by their son Peter-Raimond (d. ~1060) and his son Roger (d. 1067), both of whom were also counts of Carcassonne.
Roger died without children and Béziers passed to his sister Ermengard and her husband Raimond-Bertrand Trencavel. The Trencavels were to rule for the next 142 years, until the Albigensian Crusade - a formal 'Crusade' (holy war) authorised by Pope Innocent III.
Béziers was a Languedoc stronghold of Catharism, which the Catholic Church condemned as heretical and which Catholic forces extirpated in the Albigensian Crusade. Béziers was the first city to be sacked, on July 22, 1209. Béziers' Catholics were given the opportunity to leave before the Crusaders besieged the city. However, they refused and fought with the Cathars. In a sortie outside the walls, their combined force was defeated, and pursued back into town. In the bloody massacre which followed, no one was spared, not even those who took refuge in the churches. The commander of the crusade was the Papal Legate Arnaud-Amaury (or Arnald Amalaricus, Abbot of Citeaux). When asked by a Crusader how to tell Catholics from Cathars once they had taken the city, the abbot supposedly replied, "Kill them all, God will know His own" - "Neca eos omnes. Deus suos agnoscet". (This phrase can only be found in one source, Caesarius of Heisterbach along with a story of some Cathars who desecrated a copy of the Old Testament and threw it from the town's walls.)
The invaders fired the cathedral of Saint Nazaire, which collapsed on those who had taken refuge inside. The town was pillaged and burnt. None were left alive. (A plaque opposite the cathedral records the 'Day of Butchery' perpetrated by the 'northern barons'.) A few parts of the Romanesque cathedral St-Nazaire survived, and repairs started in 1215. The restoration, along with that of the rest of the city, continued until the 15th century.
In the repression following Louis Napoléon's coup d'état in 1851, troops fired on and killed Republican protestors in Béziers. Others were condemned to death or transported to Guiana, including a former mayor who died at sea attempting to escape from there. In the Place de la Révolution a plaque and a monument by Jean Antoine Injalbert commemorates these events. (Injalbert also designed the Fontaine du Titan in Béziers' Plâteau des Poètes park and the Molière monument in nearby Pézenas.)
Local traditions had St. Aphrodisius arrive at Béziers mounted on a camel. Hence the custom of leading a mechanical camel in the procession at Béziers on the feast of the saint. The camel was burned during the Wars of Religion and again during the French Revolution. The custom was revived in 1803 only to be discontinued during the Revolution of 1830, when it was considered a symbol of feudalism and religious fanaticism. Today, it continues to run through the city's streets during local holidays. The current head dates from the eighteenth century. In the 1970s, it was proposed that the camel be remade to give it a real camel's appearance. However, the townspeople protested and the camel retained its traditional appearance.
The first historically known bishop is Paulinus mentioned in 418; St. Guiraud was Bishop of Béziers from 1121 to 1123.
Map Specifics
Map Type: Real World
Region map size: Map is configured for 49 large city tiles and is 7x7 in size.
config.bmp size: included with zip file
Dependencies: Either SC4 Mapper or SC4 Terraformer for importing.
Maps were created by taking international DEM data and converting the data through a series of processes to a 16bit grayscale png.
Installing the Map
To install SC4M map file:
1. If you don't already have SC4Mapper, download it here and follow the install instructions.
2. Unzip this file.
3. Run SC4Mapper, click on 'create region'
4. Choose SC4M
5. Browse to the unzipped folder and point the map file .SC4M
6. Click on 'Save Region' and name it, and Quit SC4Mapper
7. Run SC4 and load the new region. The colors of the region in SC4 will be the same colors as SC4Mapper until you enter and save each city tile. But you have the choice to do it as you go and not right away.
SC4Terraformer
1. Create a new region folder in your Plugins\Region
2. Copy my config.bmp into the folder and overwrite the old one. (make changes to config.bmp file now if you want)
3. Open the new region you just created with SC4 Terraformer
4. Click on Import Image in the Global Tools Menu and browse for my SC4M file.
5. When file is imported click File - Save (the region is now saved to SC4
6. The colors of the region in SC4 will be the same colors as SC4TF until you enter and save each city tile. But you have the choice to do it as you go and not right away.
Start opening tiles!
Any comments and feedback welcomed. Thanks for looking and enjoy.
Credits
blade2k5 - Original map creation, scaling, importing. SC4TF modification.
papab2000 - Original map creation, scaling, importing. SC4TF modification.
Check out more maps by blade2k5 and NHP
