Provençal

The Provençals are the people of Provence, the Mediterranean land between the lower Rhône and the Alps. Their Romance speech is Occitan, whose Old Occitan form the troubadours used for lyric poetry from the late eleventh century. The region took its name from the Roman Provincia Romana; Saracen raiders held a coastal base from 887 until their defeat in 973.

From 1112 its counts were the counts of Barcelona, until in 1246 Charles of Anjou married the heiress Beatrice and tied Provence to the Angevin kings of Naples. From 1309 to 1377 Avignon housed the papal court, and the Black Death of 1348 to 1350 devastated the towns.

The last native ruler, Good King René, died in 1480; in 1481 his lands passed to Louis XI, entering the French royal domain in 1486. The Great Plague of Marseille of 1720 to 1722 killed some forty thousand people; during the Revolution the province was split into departments in 1790, while British-occupied Toulon was retaken in 1793 by the young officer Napoleon Bonaparte.