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Nabarralde | About Nabarra
The
Vascons
Historians
refer to the native inhabitants of the triangle formed by the Atlantic
Ocean and the Garonne and Ebro rivers as the proto-Basques. Basque language
and civilization are prior to those of the Indo-Europeans. According
to Roger Collins, "even in historical terms it is clear that the Basques
were established in the Pyrenean homelands at least a millennium before
the arrival of the Magyars in eastern Europe." The Basque language or
Euskera is considered one of the oldest languages in Europe unrelated
to the Indo-European languages.
The first political
organization
The earliest account
of political organization among Basques are found in the works of Greek
and Roman geographers who described four tribes who spoke various dialects
of Basque. The first literary reference to the Basques is found in the
work of Strabo who referred to them as `Vasconians.' Later, Latin authors
referred to the Basques as the `Vascones.' The writer Paulinus of Aquitaine
refered to the Basques as "non-believing barbarians" who refused to
abandon their bad customs.
The Roman administration
center was established in Pamplone (Iruña in Basque language)
- what is today the capital of Navarre. Since Roman civilization was
confined to the cities while Basque culture existed mostly rurally,
most relations between the Romans and the Basque tribes were amicable.
With the collapse of the Roman Empire came successive migration movements
of Germanic people through the Pyrenees.
Under the Romans the
region of Gascony, or Vasconia, was known as Aquitania and was inhabited
by the Basques who since prehistoric times had lived in the lands north
and south of the Pyrenees. Conquered by the Visigoths (5th century)
and by the Franks (6th century), Gascony was recovered by the Basques
who in 864 set up the duchy of Gascony.
The Basques, writes
Collins, "evolved an increasingly complex and stable political organization
in order to respond to the perpetual threats posed by the wars with
the Visigoths, Franks and Muslims."
This period in history
has long been ignored and hidden by the official historians but Merovingian,
Carolingian and even Arab sources testify to the struggle of the Basques
against domination.
In 732, al-Andalus
forces entered Pamplone to fight the Frankish empire across the Pyrenees.
Pamplone remained under Muslim rule through the eighth century.
The 12th century French
epic poem Chanson de Roland do give but one example of how the
struggle of the Basques was systematically distorted by Visigoth, Carolingian,
and Hispanic chroniclers. The poem entirely ignores the Basque role
in the battle of Orreaga (Roncesvaux (Fr), Roncesvalles (Sp)), in 778,
in the interests of turning the conflict into one between Christians
and Muslims. On their way from a confrontation with the Muslims, the
troops of Charlemagne destroyed the walls of the city of Pamplone. In
order to retaliate the aggression, the Basques massacred the rearguard
of Charlemagne's army.
Each battle won by
a Visigoth king was recorder by the official writers as "Domuit Vascones"
(He subjected the Vascons) - a victory that would be sought by the heads
of the French and Spanish governments in the 20th and 21st centuries.
Isidore of Seville,
the ideologist of "Hispanic identity," deplored "the horrors of the
Cantabro" (synonym for Vascon). Gregory de Tours, the bard of the French,
portrayed the Basques as "destroyers, vagrants, and plunderers." The
Albelda chronicle speaks of "the fierce Vascones." The civilised, legal,
or permissible to these writers was integration into Frankish or Hispanic
culture.
Collins writes "[p]erhaps
the most striking testimony to the Basques' ability to act together
to inflict military humiliation on the forces of their powerful neighbors
comes in their massacre of the rearguard of Charlemagne's powerful army
in the pass of Roncesvalles in the summer of 778, the only major defeat
suffered by the Frankish ruler in the course of a long career of campaigning
and conquest."
About Basque war tactics
and clan support, Collins notes "[t]his is unlikely to have been
a matter of pitched battles on the open plains, and should rather be
interpreted as large-scale guerrilla activity in the valleys and mountain
passes, whose physical difficulties were to their advantage, and whose
hidden lines of communications, such as the crest paths, could be used
to concentrate their forces unperceived by their opponents, as well
as providing them with the means for easy `hit and run' attacks on a
slow-moving enemy. Such actions do presuppose a measure of cooperation
between family groups, and between the populations of different valleys."
The Basques, however,
could not compete with the powerful armies of the Visigoths and the
Muslims. Three years after the battle of Roncesvalles, the Basques of
the north were defeated and their warriors killed. The survivors, including
women and children, were taken beyond the River Garonne.
As a result of the
Carolingian victory over the Basque troops, a network of vassal dukes
and counts was 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. This led
the Basques from north and south of the Pyrenees to organize 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.
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
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