REGIONAL HISTORY

BCE 29-19 With the conquest of Asturias by the Romans under Augustus, the region entered into recorded history.

CE 450-600 The Astures were subdued by the Romans but were never fully conquered. After several centuries without foreign presence, they enjoyed a brief revival during the Germanic invasions of the late 4th century AD, resisting Suevi and Visigoth raids throughout the 5th Century AD, ending with the Moorish invasion of Spain. However, as it had been for the Romans and Visigoths, the Moors did not find mountainous territory easy to conquer, and the lands along Spain's northern coast never fully became part of Islamic Spain.

CE 722 They began to regain control under the leadership of the Visigothic nobleman Pelagius of Asturias, whose victory at the Battle of Covadonga circa 722 began the centuries-long Reconquista. Rather, with the beginning of the Moorish conquest in the 8th century, this region became a refuge for Christian nobles, and in 722, a de facto independent kingdom was established, the Regnum Asturorum, which was to become the cradle of the incipient Reconquista (Reconquest).

CE 711-788 Umayyad Conquest of Hispania

Charles Martel (c. 688 – 22 October 741) was a Frankish political and military leader who, as Duke and Prince of the Franks and Mayor of the Palace, was the de facto ruler of the Franks from 718 until his death. He was a son of the Frankish statesman Pepin of Herstal and a noblewoman named Alpaida. Charles, also known as ‘The Hammer’ (in Old French, Martel), successfully asserted his claims to power as successor to his father as the power behind the throne in Frankish politics. Continuing and building on his father's work, he restored centralized government in Francia and began the series of military campaigns that re-established the Franks as the undisputed masters of all Gaul. According to a near-contemporary source, the Liber Historiae Francorum, Charles was “a warrior who was uncommonly ... effective in battle”.

Charles Martel gained a very consequential victory against an Umayyad invasion of Aquitaine at the Battle of Tours, at a time when the Umayyad Caliphate controlled most of the Iberian Peninsula. Alongside his military endeavors, Charles has been traditionally credited with a seminal role in the development of the Frankish system of feudalism.

Eudes (Odo), the duke of Aquitaine, was already allied with the Merovingian Franks when he pledged both his daughter and his support to a breakaway Berber chieftain named Munusa in Llívia.

An army under Charles, mayor of the palace of the eastern Frankish kingdom of Austrasia, responded to Eudes’s apparent assertion of independence by twice invading Aquitaine in 731. Charles humiliated Eudes but failed to bring the border region fully under control. That same year, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Ghafiqi, the Muslim governor of Córdoba, launched a punitive expedition against Munusa. During that campaign, Munusa either was slain or committed suicide.

At the end of his reign, Charles divided Francia between his sons, Carloman and Pepin.

The latter became the first king of the Carolingian dynasty.

Pepin's son Charlemagne, grandson of Charles, extended the Frankish realms and became the first emperor in the West since the fall of Rome.

The Battle of Toulouse (721) was a victory of an Aquitanian Christian army led by Odo the Great, Duke of Aquitaine over an Umayyad Muslim army besieging the city of Toulouse, led by al-Samh ibn Malik al-Khawlani, the Umayyad wāli (governor-general) of al-Andalus.

The decisive Aquitanian victory checked the spread of Umayyad control westward from Narbonne into Aquitaine.

Odo returned three months later with Aquitanian, Gascon, and Frankish troops, and just as the city was about to surrender, attacked the Umayyad invasion force on June 9.

The Frankish army : Charles ‘the Hammer’ Martel, in 731, after defeating the Old Saxons, turned his attention to the rival southern realm of Aquitaine, and crossed the Loire, breaking the treaty with Duke Odo the Great of Aquitaine.

The Franks ransacked Aquitaine twice, and captured Bourges, although the Duke Odo retook it.

While Odo faded into history after his 732 defeat at Battle of the River Garonne, near current day Bordeaux, Martel was hailed in later times as the "savior of Europe" by many Western and European authors and academic figures.

Odo had ambiguously left the kingdom jointly to his two sons, Hunald and Hatto. The latter, loyal to Francia, now went to war with his brother over full possession.

Victorious, Hunald blinded and imprisoned his brother, only to be so stricken by conscience that he resigned and entered the church as a monk to do penance according to Carolingian sources.

His son, Waifer, took an early inheritance, becoming duke of Aquitania, and ratified the alliance with Lombardy. Waifer decided to honor that allegiance, repeating his father's decision, which he justified by arguing that any agreements with Charles Martel became invalid on Martel's death i.e. the honores of Aquitainia.

CE 760 Basque troops defend the town of Bourges, along the northern border of Aquitania, and the count of Bourges, against the King of the Franks.

For reasons unknown, Waiofar attacked Pepin's forces while they were camped by the city of Toulouse, "as his father had attacked Charles Martel" in the words of the Annals of Aniane.

Aquitania was now Pepin's inheritance as per the assistance given by his late father, Charles Martel, and according to some, Pepin and his son, the young Charles - or Charlemagne, hunted down Waifer, who could only conduct a guerrilla war, and executed him.

By 766 most of Waifar's followers had abandoned him, but the war over Aquitaine did not end even with his death, shortly before Pepin's own, in 768.

The final active phase of the war between the two (766–67) was fought mainly in the Périgord, the Angoumois and the Bordelais, all regions closer to Gascony, which if not ruled directly by Waifar was either under his control or allied to him.

The chroniclers record how Pepin destroyed fortresses and cities, castella and civitates, and so devastated the countryside that "there was no settler to work the land" (nullus colonus terram ad laborandam).

Around this time, Pepin defeated the Gascons in pitched battle.

In 768, the erstwhile count of Bourges, Blandinus, submitted to Pepin.

Most of Waifar’s family was captured and executed in the forest of Périgord. Waiofar himself was assassinated by his own men, allegedly at Pepin's instigation, on the 2nd of June.

A kinsman, perhaps his son, Hunald II, succeeded to his claims on Aquitaine and continued to fight against Pepin's successor, Charles the Great, or Charlemagne.

Battle of Roncevaux Pass (778) also Roncesvalles Pass

“The battle is recounted in the 11th century ‘The Song of Roland’ the oldest surviving major work of French literature, and in ‘Orlando Furioso’ one of the most celebrated works of Italian literature.”

“Before leaving the Iberian Peninsula, Charlemagne decided to further secure his hold on the Basque territory (Wasconia). He first eliminated any possible opposition from the natives of the region (the Basque tribes), believing that many of them were allied with the Moors.”

“After securing the region, Charlemagne marched for the Pyrenees mountain pass to return to France. Many of his notable lords, such as his nephew Roland, military governor of the March of Brittany or ‘Breton March’ were in the rearguard probably to protect the retreat and the baggage train. Unknown to Charlemagne, the enraged Basques sent their warriors in pursuit of him and his army in retaliation for the destruction of their city Iruña (Pamplona) , and the Basques' knowledge of the region helped them overtake the Franks.”

Lupus II, Grand Duke of Gascony, -778, King of the Basques

(Final Independent Basque Ruler of Wasconia)

Lupus II is the third-attested duke of Gascony (dux Vasconum, or princeps) appearing in history for the first time in 769. His ancestry is subject to scholarly debate.  He died probably in 778 (likely in relation to the Carolingian sack of Iruña (Pamplona) and the Battle of Roncevaux Pass). His relationship to the previous dukes of Aquitaine-Vasconia and his successors is unclear. If he is to be regarded as related to subsequent Gascon dukes, which seems reasonable on the basis of patronymics, a genealogy can easily be constructed. He was the father of Sancho Lupus, Seguin, Centule, and García (Garsand). All of his sons ruled Gascony at one time or another, except García, who died in battle with Berengar of Toulouse in 819. He may have had another son named Adalric, who was active in the reign of Chorso of Toulouse.

The princeps - i.e. “the First Citizen of Rome” and dux Vasconum “Ruler of the Ducal State” i.e. a Grand Ducal domain, sometimes called a Principality.

The powers of Lupo II of Gascony, -778, - may - or may not have - extended to the Pyrenees, but the trans-Pyrenean Basques were also under the Carolingian suzerainty.

Basque Armies:

Southern Basque Fortress:

Iruña (Pamplona), Navarre

Aranguren, Navarre

Castillo de Irulegi, Navarre

House of Jiménez

Kings of Iruña (Pamplona)

House of Jiménez

Kings of Navarre

House of Jiménez-Aragon (cadet branch)

Kings of Aragon

Berengaria of Navarre

Queen consort of England

Daughter of Sancho IV of Navarre

Pepin's son, Charlemagne, fulfilled the Carolingian goal of extending the defensive boundaries of the empire beyond Septimania, creating a strong barrier between the Umayyad Caliphate and Francia, besides tightening control over the Duchy of Vasconia by establishing the Kingdom of Aquitaine, ruled by his son Louis the Pious in 781.

Charlemagne’s son, Louis I ‘the Pious’ was crowned King of Aquitania at three years old, and lived there with his own royal court by virtue of a guardianship.

“Our country was nominally under the authority of the King of France, who levied taxes on it. But this remote king no longer secured public order or administered justice.

The royal taxes were not used to pay for public services; they had become a hateful tribute, paid by the people and utterly unprofitable to them.

The Merovingians had, as representatives in our country, dukes and counts who were high and powerful officials.”

The dukes of Gascony made themselves independent about the ninth century (more likely it was independence until 778 when Lupus II was speculatively assassinated - or until the ducal reign of Sancho I Lopez, Duke of Gascony from 801-812, whom it is inferred was a Basque royal Frankish appointee of the court of Emperor Charlemagne, and also likely the son of Lupus II of Gascony, -778, seated as the Duke in order to moderate what was described by original chroniclers in latin as ‘Basque perfidium’ that translates as infidelity or treachery, i.e. subordinate ‘infra indignitatem’); they governed the country in their own names - ultimately as vassals of the Holy Roman Empire.

The Basques (Vascones, Wascones) of the Duchy of Vasconia, one of the mainstays of the Aquitanian army, submitted to Pepin in 766 and 769, but the territory south of the Garonne remained largely unscathed and self-governed.

However, as of 778 Charlemagne expanded Frankish takeover of Aquitaine to present-day Gascony, by appointing trusted Franks, Burgundians, and Church officials in key regional positions and establishing counties, such as Fezensac, Bordeaux, and Toulouse, on the left bank of the Garonne.

Before leaving the Iberian Peninsula, Charlemagne decided to further secure his hold on the Basque territory (Wasconia).

He first eliminated any possible opposition from the natives of the region (the Basque tribes), believing that many of them were allied with the Moors. He gave orders to tear down the walls of the Basque capital Iruña (Pamplona), possibly fearing that it could be used for future conflicts.

Some primary sources suggest that he destroyed the city altogether, and many towns in the region were also razed.

Garrisons and military outposts were placed throughout the territory, and there were accounts of the Franks' harsh treatment of the Basques during their occupation.

After securing the region, Charlemagne marched for the Pyrenees mountain pass to return to France. 

Many of his notable lords, such as his nephew Roland, military governor of the Breton March, and Eggihard, Mayor of the Palace, were placed in the rearguard probably to protect the retreat and the baggage train.

Unknown to Charlemagne, the enraged Basques sent their warriors in pursuit of him and his army in retaliation for the destruction of their city, and the Basques' knowledge of the region helped them overtake the Franks. 

In the evening of August 15, Charlemagne's rearguard was suddenly attacked by the Basques as they crossed the mountain pass. The Franks were caught off guard by the surprise attack, with their army in confusion and disarray as they tried to escape the ambush.  The Basques managed to cut off and isolate the Frankish rearguard and the baggage train from the rest of the escaping army, and although the Basques were not as well-equipped, they held the upper ground and the knowledge of the terrain gave them a huge advantage in the skirmish.  As Charlemagne tried to regroup and evacuate his army, Roland and the others held for a considerable amount of time before the Basques finally massacred them completely. Though killed to the last man, the rearguard nonetheless succeeded in allowing Charlemagne and his army to continue to safety. The Basques then looted the gold baggage that was left behind and took advantage of the darkness to flee, leaving no trace for the Franks to follow the following morning. The revised version of the Annales Regni reads:

Having decided to return, [Charlemagne] entered the mountains of the Pyrenees, in whose summits the Vascones had set up an ambush. They attacked the rearguard, causing confusion which spread to all the army. And, while the Franks were superior to the Vascones both in armament and in courage, the roughness of the terrain and the difference in the style of combat made them generally weaker. In this battle were killed the majority of the paladins that the King had placed in command of his forces. The baggage was sacked, and suddenly the enemy vanished, thanks to their knowledge of the terrain. The memory of the injury so produced overshadowed in the King's heart that of the feats done in Hispania.

The Basque army : one of the principal units of the Vascones was the guerrilla army of the Basques.

A later source, the anonymous Saxon Poet, talks of the Basque spears, agreeing with the Pyrenean and Basque tradition much later among the almogavars.

A typical Basque mountain warrior was armed with two short spears and a knife or short sword as his main weapons, and bows or javelins for missile weapons. He would not normally wear armor.

Pierre de Marca, a Béarnese author, suggests that the attackers were a reduced number of mostly local Low Navarrese, Souletines, and Baztanese, whose main motivation may have been plunder. The Vascones had a history of resisting Carolingian rule since the incursion of Frankish king Pepin the Short, which saw the defeat of Waiofar, the last independent Duke of Aquitaine.

The accounts of Einhard and Pierre de Marca suggest that the perpetrator of the attack was Lupo II of Gascony.

He held the territory of the Pyrenees, making him responsible for the tragedy that happened in his realm. Regions surrounding his kingdom such as Bordeaux were under the control of the Carolingians. While the Duke did pay homage to Charlemagne by offering Hunald II (a rebel leader and a possible heir to Waiofar) and his wife to him, there were disputes over the trans-Pyrenean Basque lands ruled by Lupo and those under Carolingian suzerainty.

The authors of the General History of Languedoc also believed in the same theory that the Duke was the leader of the attack. Their reasons were that he and the Vascones opposed Carolingian expansion into Vasconia after the Franco-Aquitanian war (760–769).

During all this period the war with the Old Saxons to the south of Denmark continued : Pepin had compelled them to pay tribute, and beside this forced them to receive missionaries, but they could neither bear to pay the one nor embrace the religion of the other, the pacific spirit of which was so contradictory to the human passions. 

Having massacred several of the missionaries, and committed several other outrages, they provoked Charlemagne to wage war against them, and so strenuously were they attached to liberty, that they held out against his power for thirty years.

In one of these battles Witikind or Widukind, the Old Saxon general, inflicted a severe defeat on the French, which Charlemagne cruelly avenged by the massacre of Verden, where four thousand and five hundred of the principal Old Saxons were beheaded.

At length Witikind, after being defeated with great slaughter in several battles, made his submission, and embraced Christianity. His followers were not equally tractable; they often revolted, and were not completely subdued until Charlemagne removed many thousand families of them, which had dispersed through Flanders and other countries. Some of the most resolute tribes retired into Scandinavia, carrying with them an implacable hatred against the dominion and religion of the French.

Château de Saint-Lô, Manche, Normandie

The Emperor Charlemagne, 768-814, in anticipation of possible future incursions into the Marches of Neustria (consisting of the Breton March and the North March) notably by the Vikings, erected a castle at Saint-Lo, known as the chateau de Saint-Lo, Manche.

The castrum: the origin of the castle is traced back to the time of Charlemagne, who had to build a fortified castle or "castrum" there, in order to offer serious resistance to the invasions of Danish pirates and other barbarians from the North.

Indeed, we learn in the very old chronicles that this sovereign with powerful ideas chose everywhere by preference the places from where his military forces could command the passages, intercept communications, divide the army corps, protect a territory, monitor the course of rivers or the coast of the sea. In Saint-Lô, he established his fortress on an impregnable and very high rock, located on the right bank of the Vire, which had a certain importance. The soil of this lush and fertile region could tempt all covetousness, it was a question of defending it.

Soon a long enclosure, surrounded by wooden palisades circumscribed the most considerable and strongest part of the rock. And in the center, a large retreat was established for the armed fighters. This is formed of sturdy timber frames capable of offering energetic resistance, and the castrum exists. A border of fresh and green hills frames this picture of a very picturesque character.

During the winter of 889-890, the Normans and one of their leaders, Rollo, used subterfuge to defeat those whom the force of their arms had not been able to subdue. They cut the aqueduct which carried water into the fortress, and, a few days later, the garrison had to capitulate.

It was then that, according to tradition, the invaders who had become masters of the place violated the capitulation by slitting the throats of the bishop of Coutances and the inhabitants of Saint-Lô, to whom they had promised their lives.

The fortifications were demolished shortly afterwards at ground level: castrum solo cooequatum est.

This definitely indicates there were numerous arrangements being made to defend especially vulnerable areas - several decades and more - before the AD 911 royal treaty with the vikings towards a Normandy that was years in the making.

Viking Incursions occurred between 790 and the 1000’s. First Siege of Chartres in CE 858; Second Siege of Chartres in CE 911. On 20 July 911 the battle between the French and Danish armies commenced.

Rollo and his forces were shamefully routed, smitten, as the legend tells, with corporeal blindness.

A panic assuredly fell upon the heroic commander, a species of mental infirmity discerned in his descendants: the contagious terror unnerved the host. Unpursued - they dispersed and fled without resistance.

At the end of the day 6,800 Danes lay dead on the field of battle.

The French Commanders

It had begun with a force of 8,000 consisting of Aquitanians under Richard, Duke of Burgundy, the West Frankish cavalry led by King Charles I ‘the Simple, or Straightforward’ likely meaning of few words, and a mob of peasants under the leadership of the Bishop Gantelme - versus 20,000 viking Danes under Rollo.

Ebalus or Ebles, Duke of Aquitaine, also known as Manzer or Manser meaning “bastard” - his mother was supposedly a concubine Jewess - was somewhat slow in arriving at Chartres, so he was unable to ‘take his due share in the conflict’ - his victorious partners proudly boasted of their success, and mocked Ebles and his tardy army. To redeem his honor and quiet the ridicule, Ebles accepted a challenge to confront the remnant of the Danish army that remained camped on the hill Mont-Levis north of the city, as the remaining were stationed on the plains outside Chartres. But instead of driving the Danes away, Ebles’ army was defeated soundly.

In the dark of the night, the Northmen, sounding their horns and making a terrible clamor, rushed down the mountain and stormed Ebles camp. Ebles fled and hid in a drum in a fuller's workshop. His cowardice and dishonor was derided in a popular French ballad of the Plantagenet age. In 935 Rollo’s daughter, Gerloc, was wedded to William Towhead, a son of Ebalus Manzer of Aquitaine and a future duke of Aquitaine.

House of Poitiers

Ebalus, Duke of Aquitaine, 870AD to 935AD

Spouse(s): Aremburga; Emilienne; Adele

Father: Ranulf II of Aquitaine

Ebalus, or Ebles Manzer, or Manser (c. 870 – 935), was Count of Poitou and Duke of Aquitaine on two occasions: from 890 to 892; and then from 902 until his death in 935 in Poitou, and from 928 until 932 in Aquitaine. Ebles was an illegitimate son of Ranulf II of Aquitaine. "Manzer", or "Mamzer", is a Hebrew word that means bastard, son of a forbidden relationship, although in the case of Ebles it may have been applied to bastardy in general.

Charlemagne was the King of the Franks who conquered Italy and took the Iron Crown of Lombardy in 774 and, on a visit to ? actually established the Marca Hispanica, or Spanish March, across the Pyrenees in part of what today is Catalonia, reconquering Girona in 785 and Barcelona in 801.  This sector of what is now Spain was then called ‘The Moorish Marches’ by the Carolingians, who saw it as not just a check on the Muslim Caliphs in Hispania, but the beginning of taking the entire country back. This formed a permanent buffer zone against Islam, which became the basis for the Reconquista, along with the King of Asturias, named Pelayo 718-737, who started his fight against the Moors in the mountains of Covadonga, from Latin Cova dominica, ‘Cavern of the Lady’, it is a village in Asturias, northwestern Spain, among the Picos, until all of the Muslim Caliphs were eradicated from the Iberian Peninsula.

Meanwhile, private men gradually sought for themselves and their properties, the protection of some neighbor more powerful than they, asking them to fulfill the duties which the State fulfilled no longer.  On the other hand, some bolder men compelled the people to obey them.

Charlemagne tried in vain to mend this state of things. The functions of the State were assumed by those violent or crafty men, who thus became lords. The whole kingdom was divided into duchies, counties, etc., all of them nearly independent.  It was the feudal system.

After a series of struggles the County of Barcelona (with Ausona) was taken by Frankish forces in 801. A number of castles were established in Aragon between 798 and 802 (appointment by Count Aureolus). 

After subduing the Basques to the north of the Pyrenees (790), Frankish overlordship expanded to the upper Ebro (794) and Iruña (Pamplona) (798), when Alfonso II of Asturias also came under Charlemagne's influence. Sobrarbe was not incorporated into the march, as it appears later in history and was probably within the area of influence of the County of Aragon.

The death of Charlemagne (814) was followed by a scene of open revolt and Carolingian setbacks around the Pyrenees.

After being defeated by the Moors in the 816 Battle of Pancorbo, Iruña (Pamplona) - now led by the Basque lord Iñigo Arista broke away from the Spanish March, with the County of Aragon following suit shortly thereafter in 820. The counties to the south, which were used by the Moors to enter and overrun Visigothic Septimania in 719, became, at this point, a natural extension of the March of Gothia ruled by local counts under the Carolingian Empire.

The ninth century witnessed the raids of the Vikings who later became the Normans. Those men were pirates coming from Scandinavia or Denmark.

Viking raiders conquered several Gascon towns, among them Bayonne in 842–844.

They rowed up the rivers in their boats, landed, plundered towns and churches, set them on fire and went back with their booty. Clergymen and laics ("lay clergy") ran away from their dreaded hordes, taking with them their sacred vessels and relics.

From about 844 the country of Bordeaux was several times plundered by them.

At last, in 911, the king of France granted them a province, which has since been called from their own name, Normandy.

Their attacks in Gascony may have helped the political disintegration of the Duchy - until their defeat against William II Sánchez of Gascony in 982. William might be the ‘Count William Sánchez’ who, according to Sampiro, defeated the Vikings in Galicia in 970. No Galician of that name is known from the 10th century, but neither is there any other record of William Sánchez traveling to Galicia.

It has been proposed, however, that the duke of Gascony was on a pilgrimage to the shrine of Saint James at Compostela when, in an emergency, he took command of the defenses during a Viking attack.

In turn, the weakened ethnic polity known as Duchy of Wasconia or Wascones, unable to get round the general spread of feudalization, gave way to a myriad of counties founded by Gascon lords.

Insecure state of the country: it is difficult to say, with accuracy, what was the state of the inhabitants of our country under the feudal system, during the period before the 13th century. 

We have very few chronicles of those years.  Besides, the chroniclers usually note the extraordinary events in the life of a people, the crimes and catastrophes. 

The inconvenience of studying medieval society merely according to the chroniclers is the same as if we described the present state of our times according to the accounts of criminal trials and small items of information in newspapers.

A single ruffian engrosses public attention much more than thousands of peaceful citizens. 

Yet we know that our country, like all other provinces, especially during the 10th and 11th centuries, lived shut up, confined within itself. If the crops were not sufficient, all purchase from neighboring provinces was forbidden and famine prevailed throughout the country.  Epidemic diseases caused frightful disasters. When a man was attacked and injured or robbed, there was no means of obtaining redress from the king, who lived too far away or from the rough local lords who often were brutish and rapacious. Everybody had to take justice into his own hands; hence there arose frightful private wars, odious robberies, plunderings and slaughters.

Those ages deserve rightly to be called iron ages.