[Illustration: Fig. 193.--View and Plan of Marseilles and its Harbour, in
the Sixteenth Century.--From a Copper-plate in the Collection of G. Bruin,
in folio: "Theatre des Citez du Monde."]
Languedoc, depressed, and for a time nearly ruined in the thirteenth
century by the effect of the wars of the Albigenses, was enabled,
subsequently, to recover itself. Beziers, Agde, Narbonne, and especially
Montpellier, so quickly established important trading connections with all
the ports of the Mediterranean, that at the end of the fourteenth century
consuls were appointed at each of these towns, in order to protect and
direct their transmarine commerce. A traveller of the twelfth century,
Benjamin de Tudele, relates that in these ports, which were afterwards
called the stepping stones to the Levant, every language in the world
might be heard.
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