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Origins of Navarre, The Basque State

Three years after the battle at the pass of Orreaga (Roncesvaux (Fr); Roncesvalles (Sp)) in the Pyrenees, the Basques of the north were defeated by the Carolingian troops (781) and their warriors killed. The survivors, including women and children, were taken beyond the River Garonne.

After the Carolingian victory over the Basques, a network of vassal dukes and counts were installed as far as Pamplone, where Charlemagne's descendants hoped to install a pro-Carolingian party to control the commercial routes between the Christian world and the Moslems of al-Andalus. The Basques north and south of the Pyrenees organized a resistance. This was the origin of the kingdom of Pamplone in the 9th century, which was to become the kingdom of Navarre in the 10th century.

An autonomous principality was formed in Navarre under the ruling dynasty of Banu Quasi who were descendants of a certain Visigothic count Cassius. The Banu Quasi converted to Islam in 714 and allied to the al-Andalus of Cordoba. Members of this dynasty governed Pamplone until the end of the 8th-Century. The Banu Quasi were overthrown by the Vascons who elected Eneko Aritza as king of Pamplone in 824.

Coinciding with the formation of the kingdom of Pamplone, a certain Santxo "Menditarra" (the Mountaineer, in Basque), was summoned by the Basques north of the Pyrenees in 864 and was by them elected as duke. From him descended the ducal line (dukes of Gascony, or Vasconia) that became extinct in 1032. A possible genealogy of the first line of the dukes of Gascony (c. 769-864) has Lupus (fl. 769-778) as the first duke of Gascony. According to Roger Collins, "In 816 the Basques across the Garonne and around the Pyrenees rebelled because the new Frankish ruler, the Emperor Louis the Pious (814-40), had removed their Duke Sigiwin [son of Lupus]."

The duchy's borders fluctuated as the Vascons fought the Visigoths, the Franks, and the Arabs throughout the Merovingian period. The duchy kept an independent spirit throughout its history, even when Charlemagne forced the duke of Gascony to recognize Louis the Pious, king of Aquitaine, as his suzerain (9th century).

Navarre developed into one of the most advanced Christian states and had the support of the Church which later betrayed it in favor of the Reconquest. Santxo III the Great (999-1035) was accepted as sovereign by the various buruzagiak (lineage heads) in what are today the Basque provinces of Araba, Bizkaia, and Gipuzkoa, and in the Basque territories north of the Pyrenees -- today the provinces of Behe-Nafarroa, Lapurdi and Zuberoa. Recently restored Baiona and the other Basque lands at least south of the Adour if not the Garonne became part of Navarre. During the reign of Santxo III, most of the Basque-speaking regions were consolidated - for the first and only time in their history under one political jurisdiction.

The dukes of Gascony, who had become relatives by marriage of the Navarrese royal house in the late 10th century, were periodic attenders at his court. The death in 1032 of duke Santxo Guillermo, who left no heirs, ushered in a period of political instability. In 1052, with the exception of northern Navarre, which continued separate, the remainder of Gascony passed to the duchy of Aquitaine.

Gascony shared the fate of Aquitaine, fell under English control in 1154, and was a major battleground in the Hundred Years War (1337-1453).

The Angevin dynasty of kings of England acquired the duchy of Aquitaine, and with it therefore Gascony. Baiona became linked to the English crown by the accession of Richard I in 1189, as the heir to both Henry II and to Eleanor duchess of Aquitaine, but in practice the region was dominated by Henry since their marriage in 1152.

The fleet of Baiona, in rivalry with that of Bordeaux, had came to dominate the trade route between the two parts of the English empire. The city provided, under the authority of and led by Bishop Bernard II, a substantial contingent ships to assist in the transportation of Richard I off to the third Crusade in 1190. On April 19, 1215 English king John granted communal status to Baiona.

By 1454 most of Gascony was held by the counts of Armagnac, the counts of Foix, and the lords of Albret. All these lands passed, through marriage and inheritance, to Henry of Navarre, who became king of France as Henry IV in 1589. The lands, including the Basque territories, went to France in 1607. The resulting province of Guienne and Gascony was divided under the jurisdiction of the parliaments of Bordeaux and Toulouse.

The rise of the dukes of Aquitaine and subsequently the Angevin kings (mid-11th century and onwards), confined Navarre's territory north of the Pyrenees to the area centered on Donibane Garazi (St Jean Pied de Port in French) in what is today the province of Behe-Nafarroa or Lower-Navarre - northern Navarre.

Enclosed by Aragon and Castile (Spain) and denied the possibility of recovering the northern territory, Navarre from the 11th century onward entered a period of isolation and rapid territorial desmemberment.

Bibliography: Mikel Sorauren, Historia de Navarra, el Estado vasco, Pamiela, 1999; Tomas Urzainki, La Navarra maritima, Pamiela, 1998; Roger Collins, The Basques, Basil Blackwell, 1986; Jean-Louis Davant, Ebauche d'une histoire du peuple Basque, in Euskadi en guerre, Ekin, 1982; Marianne Heiberg, The Making of the Basque Nation, Cambridge University Press, 1989; Luis Nuñez Astrain, La Razón Vasca, Txalaparta, 1995