The centuries of ‘Pax Romana’ were followed by periods of unrest and war, with barbarian invasions. In Aquitaine, the first invasion took place in 407, by the Alans, Suebi and Vandals who, coming from Germania under pressure from the Huns, crossed Gaul, then Aquitaine, and finally settled in Spain in 409, after pillaging the region in their wake. In 412, the Visigoths settled in Aquitaine, initially as auxiliaries of Rome, then founding an independent kingdom comprising Aquitaine and Provence, with Toulouse as its capital. In 476, the Western Roman Empire came to an end.
It was the Franks' turn. in 507, at the Battle of Vouillé, his king Clovis (Clovis) defeated the Visigoths, and the Visigoths had to retreat to Spain, where they were to establish their kingdom, with Toledo as their capital, while the Franks built their kingdom in Gaul and Aquitaine. When Clovis died, his descendants divided their kingdom, but Novempopulania continued to resist the Merovingians.
Then comes the moment when the Vascones from the mountains carry out incursions into the plain. The first takes place in 581, followed by another in 587. It is Gregory of Tours who informs us of this:
“As for the Vascones, they burst forth from their mountains, descended into the plains, devastating the vineyards and , burning houses, and carrying off captives along with their herds.”
This text has been considered the starting point of the settlement of the Northern Basque Country by the Basques. However, Gregory of Tours is clear: these were incursions by the mountain Vascones into the plain, not their permanent settlement. See Gregory of Tours. But who were they?
Among the peoples of “Euskarian” language, we find the Vascones. Originally, they inhabited present-day Navarre, but their name spread and eventually came to designate, from the outside, all individuals speaking the Euskarian language whom we today call Basques. In this way, these Vascones who descended from their mountains could also have been Zuberoans.
The first hypothesis, that of the settlement of the French Basque Country by Vascon invaders in the 6th century, had illustrious defenders such as Oihenart (Notitia, 1638) and Jaurgain (La Vasconie, 1898). The opposing hypothesis, that of the settlement of the Northern Basque Country by an Aquitanian or Euskarian population before historical times, is the one that prevails today, supported by P. Narbaitz, J. Allières, Orpustan, Goyheneche, and many others.
The fact is that, from the 7th century onward, the name Vasconia replaced that of Novempopulania among contemporary authors. Moreover, this name, which would later become Gascony, appears for the first time in 602 in the chronicle of Fredegar to designate Novempopulania, and its inhabitants were called Vascones or Gascons, depending on whether they lived in the mountains or the plains, and whether they were Romanized or not.
The Christianization of the country was late. The Basques, attached to their beliefs and customs, did not convert until around the end of the 5th century. Even so, Christianity took even longer to penetrate the rural areas, as evidenced by the term “paganus,” which refers both to the peasant and the pagan. It is thought that in the 7th century, the majority of Basques were pagan.
As we have seen, Zuberoa (Soule) was a “pagus” or “country” dependent on the city of Iluro or Oloron. The Christians, in establishing churches and episcopal seats, adopted the Roman administrative divisions. In this way, the church of Zuberoa belonged to the diocese of Oloron from its beginnings. The first known bishop of Oloron, Gratus, who became Saint Grat, appears in 506, in connection with the Council of Agde. According to tradition, Saint Grat was born at the borders of Zuberoa, in Lichos, a parish long annexed to Charritte-de-Bas.
The Vascones were not satisfied with just the incursions of the 6th century; they continued to confront the Franks while their southern brethren fought the Visigoths, which did not prevent them from occasionally joining forces against those barbarians whose presence they could barely tolerate. According to the chronicle of Fredegar, in 602 the Franks subdued the Vascones and made Vasconia a duchy, appointing Genial as the first duke. Subsequently, the dukes were chosen from among the Vascones. Zuberoa (Soule) was part of this duchy, along with Pamplona, Labourd, and Lower Navarre.
Menjoulet writes (Op. cit., I, 76 and 81):
“We believe that Zuberoa was the headquarters of the Vascones... As we will soon see the most famous of the Vascones’ battles take place in Zuberoa, we conclude that this was their main strategic position and that the ancient oppidum of Malleo must have been the habitual residence of their duke.”
In 629, Dagobert, king of the Franks, established the first Kingdom of Aquitaine for his brother Charibert. Vasconia was included in the new Kingdom. However, upon his death, Aquitaine returned to the Frankish royal crown, and governance was entrusted to dukes. This duchy extended from Aquitanian Toulouse to Bordeaux, without including the latter city.
Having risen in rebellion once again, the Vascones were confronted by Dagobert, who sent an army in 635 to subdue them. This army arrived after devastating the country, but this victory was accompanied by a cruel defeat for the Franks. Let us hear Fredegar (Chron., LXXVIII):
“This army would have returned without any loss if Duke Arimbert, the first duke of the Franks, had not, through his negligence, been killed by the Vascones in the valley of Subola (Soule, Zuberoa) along with the lords and nobles of his army.”
This is the first time Zuberoa is mentioned in a text, and the exact location of this battle is unknown, but Fredegar continues:
“Once the battle was joined, seeing that they were about to be defeated, they (the Vascones) fled, according to their custom, and, seeking refuge in the cliffs of the Pyrenees, hid in the inaccessible rocks of these mountains.”
(Descheemacker, 1974, 21-29)
Menjoulet (t. I, 76 and 81) places this battle at Chéraute, at the Baragarri pass, whose name means “that stops,” where the Souletins supposedly held off the Franks. However, these cliffs and inaccessible rocks evoke more the Upper Soule, and the battle likely took place Larrau and Santa Engracia. This Souletin episode foreshadows what would happen a century later to the rearguard of Charlemagne’s army as it returned from Pamplona after having razed its walls.
We have already discussed the “gaztelus” or fortified , which we noted are difficult to date because they were reused in different periods. Probably built mostly in protohistoric times, they were certainly used by the Vascones. They are numerous in Zuberoa (Soule), particularly along the borders of the region up to the Adour, forming there a kind of line along the ridges, serving as frontier observation points.
They undoubtedly served as shelters in peacetime and as refuges in wartime, and we know that the Vascones attacked by surprise with extreme agility, then taking refuge atop their “inaccessible rocks.” Oihenart had already observed that from each fortification on a summit, another could be seen, making it easy to communicate via fire and thus immediately alert the entire region to the presence of enemies.
Around 660, the Vascones chose Félix as their leader, who was already governing Aquitaine, thus uniting the two duchies. Upon his death, Vascones and Aquitanians elected Lupo as duke, and his son Odo succeeded him around 710.
At the same time, in 711, the Arabs landed in Andalusia, crushed the Visigoths, and quickly conquered Spain. During the summer of 732, the army of Abd al-Rahman left Pamplona, crossed the Roncesvalles pass and possibly the Larrau pass, and invaded Vasconia. Bayonne and Oloron were devastated; Zuberoa (Soule) was undoubtedly affected as well. Odo called upon Charles Martel, and for the first time, Franks and Vascones united to crush the Arabs at Poitiers in October 732, halting Arab expansion in Europe.
This alliance would not last, and in 735, Charles Martel attacked Aquitaine. Hunald, son of Odo, repelled him, but in turn, his son Waifre had to fight against the Franks. In 768, Aquitaine had to submit to Pepin the Short, king of the Franks.
But Vasconia did not follow the fate of Aquitaine and remained independent. The Vascones elected Lupo II, the youngest son of Odo, as duke. Aquitaine was not to remain subdued for long and revolted once again. It was up to Charlemagne, son of Pepin, to suppress this new attempt at independence. He came in 769, subdued Aquitaine, and the duke of the Vascones himself, Lupo II, offered him his submission.
A few more years of “cold war” would pass before Charlemagne returned. In 778, he undertook an expedition to Spain, passed through Pamplona, went to Zaragoza, then returned, and to leave a mark of his passage, had the walls of Pamplona razed. This undoubtedly displeased the Vascones, and what followed is well known: the Vascones retaliated, the Frankish rearguard was ambushed and massacred at Roncesvalles. The event resonated widely, inspired epic poetry, and the death of Roland recalls, in various ways, that of Duke Arimbert. See Roncesvalles.
After Roncesvalles, Sancho I, son of Lupo II, had to submit to the Franks, and the Vascones were forced to pay tribute. In order to win over the Aquitanians, Charlemagne created in 781 the Kingdom of Aquitaine in favor of his son Louis the Pious. This state encompassed Aquitaine and Vasconia and had Toulouse as its capital (Dartigue, 1950).
However, in 812, the Vascones attempted to secede from this kingdom, and Frankish soldiers once again invaded and devastated Vasconia. The death of Charlemagne in 814 did not put an end to the Vascones’ revolts against Frankish rule; on the contrary. Louis the Pious, his successor, and Pepin I, his son, to whom he entrusted the Kingdom of Aquitaine in 817, had to suppress continuous rebellions.
In 816, Semen Lupo, duke of the Vascones, lost his life in a battle in which the Franks were victorious, and in 818, García Semen, his son and successor, also died fighting. These Vascon revolts against Frankish authority likely continued until the Norman invasions.
With the death of Charlemagne in 814, the decline of the Carolingian Empire began. His son, Louis the Pious, succeeded him; his reign was marked by revolts and conspiracies. His own sons, in rebellion, fought over his inheritance with arms before his death. He died in 840, and the struggle for succession intensified among his children.
Finally, in 843, the Empire was divided, and Aquitaine fell to Charles the Bald. The latter had to fight against his nephew Pepin II, son of Pepin I, king of Aquitaine, who sought to claim his father’s kingdom.
The Vikings, whom the Franks called the Normans (men of the North), taking advantage of the weaknesses of the Carolingian Empire, had already launched some raids into Frankish territory. In 843, the same year as the division of the Empire, they sailed up the Loire and captured Nantes.
They moved in light boats (drakkars), and their main strength lay in their mobility. They plundered and destroyed churches and monasteries, burned everything in their path, and inspired immense terror in the population. In 844, they appeared in the Gironde and sailed up the Garonne to Toulouse. Eventually, they destroyed Lapurdum (Bayonne), sailed up the Adour, and plundered Dax, Aire, and Tarbes.
844 and 850, they subjected Aquitaine to all kinds of hardships. Oloron was completely destroyed and disappeared for more than two centuries. The Saison valley likely did not escape these disasters, although no documents confirm it. Aquitaine, plunged into extreme misery, saw a new wave of Normans 862 and 865, led by Pepin, nephew of Charles the Bald, who sought to reclaim his inheritance. By the end of the 9th century, the Normans were still there and reportedly beheaded Saint Leon in Bayonne. See Bayon, Leon.
Following the Norman invasions and the disintegration of the Frankish kingdom, and in response to the insecurity prevailing everywhere, the feudal was established from the 9th century onward. The centralized Carolingian monarchy gave way to decentralization. Power was divided and effectively passed to those able to impose themselves by force; populations placed themselves under the protection of those who could defend them.
Places offering refuge, such as fortified castles, multiplied. Feudalism was based on the following principles: the sovereign granted a territory to a person, the vassal, capable of defending it, in exchange for certain services, especially military. The vassal swore an oath of loyalty to his sovereign. In reality, the bonds of dependence were more or less strong depending on the balance of power sovereign and vassal.
Thus, in 824, the Kingdom of Pamplona was established, and by the mid-9th century, the Duchy of Gascony emerged, as a vassal of Aquitaine. The feudal compartmentalization of the former Novempopulania continued, and from the 9th century to the early 11th century, a multitude of hereditary fiefs appeared, vassals of the Duchy of Gascony, among them the viscounts of Béarn, Oloron, Lavedan, Dax, Labourd, and finally Zuberoa or Soule.
Feudalism therefore existed in Zuberoa, but, as in the rest of the Basque Country, it gradually acquired an important particularity: the lands were free of all vassalage; they were called “franc-alleu” (“alleu,” hereditary property exempt from all dues; “franc-alleu,” “alleu” free from all servitude), and the people were exempt from servitude (Veyrin, 1947, 106). Later, when the kings of England, and subsequently France, became the sole lords of Zuberoa, feudalism was practically abolished.
Little is known about the beginnings of the hereditary Duchy of Gascony. Zuberoa (Soule) was part of it, as in the former Vasconia, and Bordeaux marked its northern boundary. The first duke was probably, around 850, Sancho Mitarra or Menditarra (the Mountaineer), though his existence is not certain (Courteault, 1938).
Duke García Sancho (887-920) could have been his son. He was succeeded by Sancho García (920-963) and William Sancho (963-999), who married Urraca, sister of the King of Pamplona Sancho García Abarca (970-994). It is thus observed that from the 10th century onward, the destinies of Gascony and Navarre became closely linked for a long time.
During this 10th century, the Normans still appeared periodically. Their raids and destructions constituted a constant threat, leaving the country in ruins. William Sancho, already celebrated for his battles against the Moors of Spain, definitively repelled the Normans at Taller, near Saint-Sever, around 982, restoring peace to Gascony (Mussot-Goulard, 1983).
The sons of William Sancho, Bernard William (997-1009) and Sancho William (1009-1032), continued their father’s policy, and the Duchy of Gascony, detached from France, continued its life within the orbit of Navarre.
Without it being possible to speak of Gascony as a subordinate of the Kingdom of Pamplona, feudal ties were established during the reign of Sancho the Great, who exercised some authority over Gascony and even d himself “King of all Vasconia.” In any case, Sancho William of Gascony, whose entire childhood had been spent at the court of Pamplona, was always one of his most faithful companions (Narbaitz, 1978, 107).
After the Norman raids destroyed the churches and abbeys of Gascony, the secular lords seized their assets. The ruined dioceses were left without a bishop. A single bishopric of Gascony was created, formed from the former dioceses of Dax, Bazas, Aire, Bayonne, Lescar, and Oloron, for the benefit of a member of the ducal family. The first “episcopus Vasconiae” was, in 977, Gombard, brother of Duke William Sancho.
However, the Popes worked to reform these abuses, and the suppressed bishoprics were restored in the 11th century. We have seen that at its beginnings, the church of Zuberoa (Soule) belonged to the diocese of Oloron, just as the “pagos solensis” belonged to the city of Iluro. The latter town was completely destroyed by the Normans; subsequently, the diocese itself disappeared for a time in favor of the bishopric of Gascony. Zuberoa eventually came under the jurisdiction of the bishop of Dax, before returning to the diocese of Oloron in 1058, remaining so until the Revolution.