Bazacle Milling Company
| Industry | Milling |
|---|---|
| Fate | Subsidary |
| Parent | Électricité de France |
The Society of Moulins du Bazacle was founded in Toulouse in the 12th century by the citizens of the city, seven centuries before the Industrial Revolution, to share operating a series of mills installed on the site of the Bazacle. The mills are used to process wheat harvested in the Toulouse plain into flour.
It is the first recorded European joint-stock company.
The first mills of Bazacle that capture the vast reserve motive force of the Garonne, are erected along the river to 1070. At the xi th century, there were already sixty. They are then referred to as mills with nave, built on boats or simple floating pontoons, replaced in 1190 by land mills. These "giants" of wood will make the richness and the pride of Toulouse. "In the xviii th century, the Bazacle mills were an example of technical modernity famous throughout Europe and appeared in the Encyclopedia of Diderot and d'Alembert," say Corinne Clément and Sonia Ruiz, in "Toulouse secret and unusual."
The mills of Bazacle were recognized by the Toulouse capitouls from 1152. A written act granted in 1177 by the owner of the site, the priory of the Daurade, signals the exploitation of these mills near Toulouse, which is then a city of 50 000 inhabitants and the capital of a cereal region. Set on wooden pavements, resting on hard marl benches, crossing obliquely the course of the river, some sixty high oak and iron mills, which supplied energy to the local millers, were divided between three fords the Garonne: the Daurade, the Château Narbonnais and the Bazacle. Widths of nearly half a kilometer and very shallow, these "carriageways" made it easier to anchor the mills on several large reinforced piles, in order to better benefit from the hydraulic energy provided by a "jump" Garonne on a height of 4 meters. The main one, the Bazacle dam, mentioned in 1177, was 400 meters long. It consisted of trunks of oak trees sunk in the bottom of the river. In 1183, shortly before the crusade of the Albigenses, the Count of Toulouseofficially authorizes the construction of this causeway linking the two banks of the river wide of a hundred meters. The first floating mills are built nearby to better exploit the current. To bring the waters of the river in the wake of the mills, industrialists of the time set up dykes which require regular maintenance work, for the river crusts generate high humidity and accidents. Their construction and repairs requiring money; their owners are then forced to unite.
Downstream of the Moulins de la Daurade , those of the Bazacle can considerably hinder them by the height of their causeway. After attempting unsuccessfully, between 1278 and 1329, to raise theirs to the detriment of the Moulins of the Castle , the bows of the Seabream will want to guard against the companies of those of the Bazacle. In 1316, they obtained an arbitration which fixed the maximum height of the roadway of the Bazacle.
After the great flood of 1346 which destroyed the Moulins du Château and probably damaged those of the Daurade , the bets of the Bazacle took advantage of damage caused on their cause by Charles le Mauvais, to obtain from the Parliament of Paris the authorization of the remake in 1356 ... much higher than before. Immediate complaint of the sea breams of Daurade whose mills can no longer function. They won their trial in 1358 but could not enforce the sentence because of a call that dragged on until 1366, when the Parliament of Paris orders that the bets of the Bazacle lower their pavement and pay 1000 livres tournois to those of the Daurade . The sum is paid in 1367 but the Mills of the Daurade are ruined for years. The floor, it does not move ... The last pariers of sea bream still try to force those Bazacle to comply with court decisions in 1380, in alliance with the pariers Castle, unhappy with the new floor built at the Bazacle after the flood of 1377-78. They obtain a new condemnation of the Bazacle, which is no more executed than the previous one because of long calls and exhaustion of the complainants. Dropped by the bets of the Castle, the bets of Daurade obtained permission in 1384 to withdraw, which they did one after the other until the extinction of the complaint in 1408.
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Wikipedia