Seyne (French pronunciation: [sɛn]; Vivaro-Alpine: Sèina) is a commune in Alpes-de-Haute-Provence, a department of the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region in south-east France. It is roughly 30 km north of Digne.
The village's official name is listed under the INSEE Official Geographic Code as "Seyne". However it is known locally as "Seyne-les-Alpes", not to be confused with La Seyne-sur-Mer which is the second largest city in the Var.
The residents are traditionally referred to as "Seynois". In more recent years locals have been known to also go by "Seynard" (male) and "Seynarde" (female).[3]
The Alpes-de-Haute-Provence tourism board listed Seyne-les-Alpes as one of their "villages and towns of character", an award given to places around the region with remarkable architecture and less than 2000 inhabitants.[4]
The village sits at an altitude of 1,260 metres (4,130 ft).[5] The Seyne Valley, known for its rich soil, is nicknamed the Swiss Provençal.[6]
The only river to run through the village is the Blanche, a tributary of the Durance.[7]
The local area is made up of 2,800 hectares (6,900 acres) of woodland and forests.[3]
Seyne is situated on the D900 road, between the neighbouring communes of Le Vernet and Selonnet. The road runs from Digne in the south, all the way to the Maddalena Pass on the Italian-French border. The nearest SNCF railway station is the Gare de Digne.
The name of the village, as it appeared for the first time in 1147 (in Sedena), is thought to refer to the Gallic tribe of the Adanates, or to be built on the root *Sed-, for rock, according to Charles Rostaing.[9] According to Bénédicte and Jean-Jacques Fénie, the name comes from a Pre-Celtic root oronym (mountain toponym), *Sed-.[10] The municipality is named Sanha in the Vivaro-Alpine dialect and Provençal dialect of the classical norm, and Sagno in the Mistralian norm.
Before the Roman conquest, Seyne was the capital of the Adanates.[11] It held the status of civitas under the Roman Empire.
The first counts appeared in the area with the advent of c.950 of Boson, son of Rothbald. His grand-daughter later married the count of Toulose, the beginning of lengthy ties between the two cities.[12] Seyne appeared in charters in 1146 ('in Sedena')[13]
Ramon Berenguer IV of Barcelona forced the submission of Provençal barons who had revolted in the Baussenque Wars. After taking control of Arles, he summoned the lords of Haute-Provence to Seyne to renew their fealty.[14] The Counts of Provence endowed the consulate as early as 1223[15] (1220 according to legal historian André Gouron),[16] which served as a model to other consulates.[15] Around the 1220s, a large tower was built to defend the city, which was then called Seyne-la-Grande-Tour. A regional council took place in 1267.[14] The Saint-Jacques Hospital was founded in 1293, followed at the end of the 15th century by the Hôtel-Dieu.[17]
The death of Joanna I of Naples opened a succession crisis at the head of the Comté de Provence. The towns of the Union of Aix (1382-1387) supported Charles, Duke of Durazzo against Louis I, Duke of Anjou. The community supported the Durazzo side until 18 September 1385, then changed camp and joined the Angevins through the patient negotiations of Marie de Blois, Louis I's widow and regent of their son Louis II.[18] The surrender of Seyne involved the communities of Couloubrous and Beauvillars.[19]
The fair held in Seyne in the late Middle Ages benefitted from its crossroads location, and continued until the end of the Ancien Regime.[20][21] Seyne was a baillie which subsequently became a seneschal headquarters: It included the communities of Auzet, Barles, La Bréole, Montclar, Pontis, Selonnet, Saint-Martin-lès-Seyne, Saint-Vincent, Ubaye, Verdaches, Le Vernet.[22]
The community of Beauvillars, which had 88 feus at the enumeration of 1316,[15] depended administratively upon Seyne.[23] In the 15th century, the inhabitants of Beauvillars, who had wanted to secede, were massacred, the survivors were deported, and the name of Beauvillars was erased from the archives.[5]
The community of Couloubrous (Colobrosium, cited in the 13th century), was also attached to 15th century Seyne.[24] There were 19 feus in 1316,[15] and it also had a consulate.[25]
In the middle of the 16th century, Protestantism took root in Seyne. Through the Edict of Amboise (1563), adherents of this religion were allowed to build a place of worship, but outside the municipality.[26]
The town was captured and looted by Protestant captain Paulon de Mauvans in the summer of 1560, during the Wars of Religion.[27] The town was again attacked by Protestants in 1574,[28] who this time held it thereafter. The Baron of Germany hid here in 1585, before the offensive of the Catholic League,[29] without preventing the capture of the city by the Duke of Épernon.[30] During the siege, the bell tower was destroyed.[31]
At the end of the Wars of Religion, the Duke of Lesdiguières established a camp where he prepared his campaign to take Provence back from the Catholic Leaguers.[32]
The Protestant Reformation had despite this fighting some success in Seyne, and some of the town's inhabitants remained Protestant. The Protestant community remained into the 17th century around their church, through the Edict of Nantes (1598). However, the Edict of Fontainebleau abolished the provisions of the edict of Nantes in 1688. It was fatal to the Protestant community, which disappeared, its people either emigrating or converted by force.[33]
In 1656, the two hospitals (Hôtel-Dieu and hospital Saint-Jacques) merged into a single institution and moved to a shared building in 1734.[17]
In 1690, the Marquis de Parelle led the Piedmontaise army of 5,000 men down from the Ubaye Valley and besieged Seyne. The city was forced to negotiate since the medieval enclosure was insufficient to ensure its defence, and a ransom was set at 11,000 livres. However, the militia of Provence and the regiment of Alsace succeeded in driving them back.[34] On 24 December, funds were found and new bastions were built by Niquet. The new wall completed in August 1691 left the great tower outside of the city, but reinforced.[35]
After a more serious alert in 1692, the entire Alpine border was reconsidered by Sebastien Vauban. In December 1692, he asked for the construction of a citadel including the great tower. Richerand led the work from 1693 to 1699. Although not satisfied during his inspection tour in 1700, Vauban failed to modify the fortifications, in part by building redoubts of setbacks in the north. The annexation of Ubaye by the Treaty of Utrecht removed the threat sufficiently for the work to be deferred indefinitely,[36] (except for repairs to the walls in 1786).[37]
The city was occupied in this condition by the Austro-Sardes in 1748 during the War of the Austrian Succession and again in 1815, at the end of the Napoleonic Wars.[38] The city was almost undefended at the end of the Ancien Régime, with nine guns served by a garrison of three invalids, and an arsenal of 93 guns.[37]
The city was the seat of a viguerie until the French Revolution[39] and an office of the Poste Royale at the end of the Ancien Régime.[40]
Just before the French Revolution, unrest mounted. Several years of fiscal problems preceded a bad harvest in 1788 and a very cold winter of 1788-89. The election of the Estates-General of 1789 was prepared by elections for States of Provence in 1788 and in January 1789, which highlighted the political oppositions of class and caused some agitation.[41] At the end of March, as the cahiers de doléances were drawn up, a wave of insurrection shook Provence. A wheat riot occurred in Seyne on 29 March.[42] Peasants[43] gathered, protesting with shouts and threatens against the wealthy. However, the riot went no further, and did not cause any changes, unlike others in the region.[44]
At first, reaction consisted in gathering the Maréchaussée staff. Then lawsuits were commissioned by the Parlement of Aix-en-Provence, but sentences were not carried out because of the storming of the Bastille and the Great Fear. In appeasement, an amnesty was announced in early August.[45]
The fall of the Bastille was welcomed and thought to presage the end of arbitrary use of royal power, and perhaps profound changes. The advent of the new regime triggered a great phenomenon of collective fear that seized France, fear of an aristocrats conspiring to recover their privileges.
Rumours of armed soldiers devastating everything in their path spread rapidly, accompanied by gunfire, violence against nobles, and the organization of militias. The Great Fear came from Tallard, and awareness of the fear of the Mâconnais reached Seyne on the evening of 31 July 1789.[46] The consuls of Turriers and Bellaffaire, warned by those at Gap that a troop of 5-6,000 brigands was headed to Haute-Provence after plundering the Dauphiné, sent word to the consuls of Seyne,[37] who sent word to Sisteron[37] and Digne, thereby spreading the Great Fear.[46] They also warned all parishes within the purview of the viguerie of Seyne, and sent messengers to Gap and Embrun to ask for news.[37] The arsenal of the citadel was requisitioned, and 93 guns and nine cannons were distributed in Seyne and the villages of Saint-Pons, Selonnet and Chardavon. Men took refuge with their furniture and livestock away from the walls of the citadel.[37]
That night, messengers from Rochebrune and La Motte confirmed the news, and added that Romans-sur-Isère had been sacked. From the south, disquieting news arrived of the occupation of Castellane by 4,000 Barbets and the advance of 1,000 Piedmont soldiers in the Durance Valley. On 2 August, the panic declined, as the facts became clearer. However, a significant change took place. All communities Department were to be armed, organized to defend themselves and to defend their neighbours. A sense of solidarity was born within communities and between neighbouring communities, and the consuls usually decided to maintain the National Guard on foot. As soon as the fear had settled, the authorities disarmed workers and landless peasants, and kept only landowners and business owners in the National Guard.[37]
The patriotic society of the municipality was created in the summer of 1792.[47]
Seyne saw some industrialization in the 19th century with the development of textile industries.[15]
As with many municipalities in this department, Seyne had schools well before the Jules Ferry laws. In 1863, it had five, one in the town proper and also in the villages of Pompiery, Bas-Chardavon, Pons and Couloubroux. These schools provided primary education for boys.[48] In the main town, a school for girls was mandated by the Falloux Laws of 1851.[49] The commune took advantage of subsidies from the second Duruy Law (1877) to rebuild or renovate its schools. Only the Bas-Chardavon school was not addressed.[50]
Seyne is classified as a flower in the towns and villages floral competition.
A brigade of the National Gendarmerie is located in the town center of Seyne.[56]
In 2012, Seyne had 1419 inhabitants. Its population had been stagnant since 1999. In the 21st century, communes with fewer than 10,000 inhabitants only have a census every five years (2004, 2009 and 2014, etc. for Seyne). Since 2004, the other figures are estimates.
In 2008, the commune was 6,862nd in size in the national rankings. It was 6,215th in 1999, and of the 200 communes in the departement it ranked 22nd.
The demographic history of Seyne, after the population losses of the 14th and 15th centuries, and the long period of growth until the beginning of the 19th century, was marked by a period of 'spread' where the population remained relatively stable at a high level. This period lasted from 1821 to 1861. The rural exodus then caused a trend of long-term demographic decline. By 1921, the town had lost more than half its population from its maximum in 1846.[59] The drop continued until the 1970s. Since then, population growth has resumed but without returning to the level of 1911.
The population of the commune is relatively old. The proportion of people over 60 (34.1%) is higher than in France as a whole (21.6%) and the department (27.3%). Like national and departmental allocations, the female population of the commune is greater than the male population. The rate (52.2%) is of a similar order of magnitude