For most people who visit the Canal du Midi, it’s a tranquil waterway; ideal for a boating holiday or to walk beside.
For Gérard Crevon, it is the focus of a more-than-15-year labour of love that resulted in a book about the engineer behind it, Pierre-Paul Riquet – L'audace et la ténacité: La construction du canal du Midi et du port de Sète.
The 81-year-old former telecoms engineer says the Canal du Midi has always been part of his life: he crossed it every morning on his way to school in his home town of Toulouse.
However, it was a walk in the local Montagne Noire (Black Mountains) in June 2003 that really sparked his interest.
Gerard CrevonGerard Crevon
Mr Crevon noticed the network of gullies and feeder channels, some of which emptied into rivers, others which fed the local Saint-Ferréol dam. As someone who was naturally inclined toward all things technical, they intrigued him.
“I began to study [the canal] and its origins. When you start to get interested in something, when you pull a thread, you have to unroll the whole ball,” he said.
In particular, he started looking more deeply into the life of Pierre-Paul Riquet, who had been responsible for the collection and administration of the gabelle (salt tax) in Languedoc.
Having constantly surveyed the region for his work, Riquet knew the area well and came up with a workable solution to a question that had thwarted plans for a canal linking the Atlantic to the Mediterranean for centuries: how to supply it with water.
Riquet’s system, which is still in operation today, carries water from the streams and rivers in the Montagne Noire to the Seuil de Naurouze, the highest point of the canal, from where it then flows to the Mediterranean on one side, and the Atlantic on the other.
“In my opinion, the ingenious system of gullies in the Montagne Noire that Riquet designed was his first stroke of genius,” Mr Crevon said.
Although 53 at the time and comfortably wealthy, Riquet submitted a proposal for the Canal du Midi, a 240km artificial waterway, to King Louis XIV’s finance minister, Jean-Baptiste Colbert, in 1662. After constructing a trial channel to counter any doubts, his plans were given the official go-ahead and construction started in 1667.
Mr Crevon pored over several books about the subject, but found some of them were riddled with inaccuracies, and was unable to put up with this.
“I didn't want to leave it at that. I wanted to know exactly what was going on, what the truth was by doing some research. I had the benefit of the archives in Toulouse, and they contained a fabulous mass of documents,” he said.
Pierre-Paul RiquetPierre-Paul Riquet
While digging into that treasure trove of material, Mr Crevon taught himself to read 17th-Century scripts, which was not always easy.
“There are people who write very nicely, very well, and when you know the system well, it's easy to read. But you also come across people who write like pigs and you have to make an effort, so sometimes you can make mistakes.”
Although passionate about the engineering of the Canal du Midi, Mr Crevon also gained new insights into Riquet as a person.
“When you read his letters, you get a sense of a man who was quite outgoing, quite jovial, who liked to joke around,” Mr Crevon said. “I got attached to him. I began to admire this man for his tenacity, for his determination to see things through.”
Riquet would need this resolve, as Mr Crevon’s book reveals. With work progressing on the canal, inevitably tensions arose with Colbert. He refused to pay for most of the additional work Riquet had deemed essential – resulting in the latter being forced to resign.
The canal is considered a feat of engineeringGerard Crevon
“Riquet no longer had at his disposal the money he'd been using for day-to-day operations,” Mr Crevon said. “I explain at the end of the book that when his hands were tied in terms of finances, that's when the difficulties got worse.”
When Riquet died in October 1680, he was four million livres in debt but Colbert would only reimburse half that sum. Riquet’s two sons, who took over the business, were two million livres in debt from start and had to sell shares worth almost half the canal’s value. It took them 40 years to buy them all back.
“When I became aware of all this, I was quite sad. But I admired the way Riquet never threw in the towel,” Mr Crevon said. “He wanted to go all the way, even though in the end he had to slow down the work and wait until he had all the money available. That's why it dragged on so long in the end.”
The Canal du Midi was eventually finished in 1694 and paved the way for the Industrial Revolution. Much of Riquet’s original engineering work is still intact, including the layout, water supply system and many of the structures. The canal was added to Unesco’s list of World Heritage Sites in 1996.
Today Mr Crevon looks at the engineering feat in a whole new light.
“It’s part of my familiar landscape, but when I discovered all the work it required, the means that were deployed to make this work, my admiration grew.”
