1907: The Southern Revolt

During the first years of the 20th century, wine production in the South of France reached and even exceeded 50 % of the national production. The vine culture, omnipresent in the South, supplanted any other perspective of economic development in the fields of agriculture and industry.

At the same time, exceptional wine harvests between 1900 and 1907 led to an overproduction which got worse with the competition of other areas of production: the collapse of the price of wine followed. The fall of the selling price caused the cutting of the agricultural workers’ wages in half; strikes grew.

On March 11, 1907, after their meeting with the members of the parliamentary committee which was leading an inquiry on the wine crisis, 87 wine growers from Argeliers led by Marcellin Albert started singing “la Vigneronne” in Narbonne, which would shortly became the main hymn of the Beggars’s Revolt.*

The movement got unified on a common claim: if the price of wine fell like this, it was because of the fraud, the artificial making of table wine with sugar, glucoses and their substitutes.*

In 1907, Marcellin Albert undertook every Sunday a tour of the villages of the land: he harangued crowds in Argeliers, Sallèles d’Aude, Bize-Minervois, Ouveillan, Coursan, Capestang, Lézignan-Corbières... Committees defending the production of wine grew in number.

87 angry wine-growers joined Marcellin Albert on March 11th, 1907, in Argeliers. They were 300 in Sallèles d’Aude on March 24th, 600 in Bize-Minervois on March 31st, 15,000 in Capestang on April 21st, 100,000 in Narbonne on May, 5th. The movement kept on growing: in Béziers, Perpignan, Carcassonne, Nîmes...

In Montpellier, they were 600,000. Some mayors resigned, some townhalls were closed: 618 municipalities in Hérault, Aude and Pyrénées Orientales. Narbonne Mayor Ernest Ferroul commended civic disobedience. The tax strike became firmly established.

Marcellin Albert was received in Paris by Georges Clémanceau.

“We are the cleaned out and ruined owners, unemployed workers or nearly, traders in a real mess or at bay. We are those who starve to death. We are those who have wine to sell and who can’t always find a way to give it away; we are those who have workers and who cannot employ them; we are those who have goods but who lack buyers. We are those who starve to death**.

On March 10th, 2007, Senator Roland Courteau, Deputy Jacques Bascou, the president of the council of Aude, Marcel Rainaud, and local councillors unveiled the memorial.