MULON Order salt

04Archive

The marsh,
then

Paludiers have raked these pans the same way since the fifteenth century. A timeline from the first salines to 2024, and the pictures that kept it.

Postcard: a woman carries salt on her head along a bank toward the mulon.

01Timeline

Sixteen dates

  1. Roman–7th c.

    The first salines spread out from the foot of the Guérande hillside and from Saillé, at the end of the Roman period or with the Breton settlement.

  2. 15th c.

    The way of working a saline is fixed. It has hardly changed since.

  3. 1644

    La troque: paludiers may carry 100 kg of salt out of the marsh tax-free, as long as they bring back the same weight of goods.

  4. Late 1600s

    The golden age, with cod and herring fisheries hungry for salt.

  5. 1732

    "Fleur de sel" appears officially, in the Dictionnaire de Trévoux.

  6. 1850

    The salines reach their greatest extent.

  7. 1877–1900

    Storms in 1877, 1880, 1894 and 1900 tear away hundreds of metres of banks.

  8. 1887

    The Musée des Marais salants opens in Batz-sur-Mer.

  9. 1901

    A dyke syndicate is formed; the dykes are rebuilt in masonry.

  10. 1945

    The gabelle, France’s salt tax since the 14th century, is abolished for good.

  11. Late 1960s

    A plan to turn the marshes into a marina with a dual carriageway is stopped by protests and court cases.

  12. 1972

    The salt producers of the Guérande peninsula form a group, a cooperative from 1988.

  13. 1979

    A diploma course opens the trade to newcomers, the néo-paludiers.

  14. 1992

    Jean-Pierre Coffe puts fleur de sel de Guérande on television; the public discovers it.

  15. 2012

    Sel and fleur de sel de Guérande get an EU protected geographical indication.

  16. 2024

    Paludier know-how enters France’s inventory of intangible cultural heritage.

02Pictures

Kept pictures

A hand-drawn 18th-century chart of Le Croisic, the traicts and the marshes.
Jacques-Nicolas Bellin, Carte du Croisic et des entrées de la rivière La Vilaine, 18th century. Public domain.
Painting: two women at a salt pan, one raking with a long las.
Eugène-Jacques Feyen, Les Paludières, about 1872. Musée des Marais salants, Batz-sur-Mer. Public domain.
Postcard: two people on top of a large heap of salt in the marsh.
Geography postcard, F. Nathan, 1928: salt carried up the mulon. Public domain.
Postcard: paludiers fill sacks of salt beside a heap.
Postcard, Batz: the harvest put into sacks. Public domain.
Paludiers and paludières in festival costume.
Postcard, Bourg de Batz salt festival, 27 August 1911. Public domain.
Photograph: the marsh pans under a blue sky, small white heaps along the banks.
The salt marshes today. Photo: Gwen4435, CC BY 1.0.

Paid in salt

In the nineteenth century, a witness wrote, Guérande paludiers rarely owned the marsh. They passed the right to work it down by word of mouth and were paid not a wage but a share: a quarter of the harvest, the rest going to the owner, who paid the taxes. Inside the marsh, salt changed hands free of tax, the franc-salé. Outside it, the gabelle made smugglers of anyone carrying it cheap: the faux-sauniers.

03Credits

Credits and sources

[Images]

  • batz-mise-en-sac.jpg: Batz sur Mer-Marais salant.jpg — Unknown author Unknown author. Public domain. Wikimedia Commons: source
  • pouliguen-mulon.jpg: Le Pouliguen-Marais salant.jpg — Unknown author Unknown author. Public domain. Wikimedia Commons: source
  • mulon-1928.jpg: Collection de cartes postales classées méthodiquement pour l'enseignement de la géographie, Paris, F. Nathan, s.d. (1928), offert par l'éditeur. 353 cartes postales en 15 paquets. 1. Généralités... - btv1b8470108n (090 of 448).jpg — unknown. Public domain. Wikimedia Commons: source
  • fete-1911.jpg: Bourg de Batz. Grande fête annuelle du Sel et des Paludiers. 27 août 1911. Paludiers et Paludières - carte postale - btv1b10106198p.jpg — unknown. Public domain. Wikimedia Commons: source
  • feyen-paludieres.jpg: Eugène-Jacques Feyen-Les Paludières.jpg — Eugène-Jacques Feyen (1815-1908). Photo : Ji-Elle.. Public domain. Wikimedia Commons: source
  • bellin-croisic.jpg: Carte du Croisic, et des entrées de la rivière La-Vilaine - Bellin - btv1b8591958d.jpg — Bellin, Jacques-Nicolas (1703-1772). Cartographe. Public domain. Wikimedia Commons: source
  • marsh-today.jpg: Marais salants.jpg — User Gwen4435 on fr.wikipedia. CC BY 1.0. Wikimedia Commons: source
  • marsh-winter.jpg: Marais salants de Guérande 3 Loire-Atlantique, France.JPG — travail personnel (own work). CC BY-SA 3.0. Wikimedia Commons: source

[Facts]

  • Wikipedia (fr): Marais salants de Guérande, Marais salant, Saunier, Fleur de sel, Saumure. Wikipedia (en): Fleur de sel, Sel gris, Salt evaporation pond, Dunaliella salina, Hopper crystal, Gabelle. CC BY-SA, used in our own words.
  • Every other picture on this site is drawn in code by the site’s own saline engine.

[Type]

  • League Gothic (The League of Moveable Type, OFL) · Faustina (Omnibus-Type, OFL) · Roboto Mono (Christian Robertson, Apache 2.0).

[Fiction]

  • MULON, its saline at Kervalet, its paludière, prices, walks and readings are invented. The marsh, the trade and the history are real.