History
The oldest human maintain that are so-called of in the territory of the current French Basque Country are approximately 150,000 years old. Some houses construct been found on the terraces of the river Adour, in Ilbarritz Bidart, Sainte-Pierre-d’Irube, and Mouguerre. In the Middle Paleolithic era 700,000-100,000 years ago, neanderthals inhabited this area. At the beginning they lived in the open air and later in caves, like the one in Isturits. Cro-magnon people appeared during the Upper Paleolithic 9000-50,000 years ago.
Many artistic objects from the Magdalenian era 9000-14,000 years previously have been found in Isturits.
The most well-known thing found is a bird bone with three holes in it in the classification of a . Moving into the Mesolithic era, humans began to survive outside of caves, despite the fact that these were still used until a much later date. Also, during this era, the artefacts of ceramics, agriculture, and raising livestock were discovered.
During the Neolithic era 4000-3000 B.C.E., new techniques for the use of metals and agriculture arrived.
The present-day territory was inhabited by the Tarbelli and the Sibulates, tribal divisions of the Aquitani. When Caesar conquered Gaul, he found any the region south and west of the Garonne inhabited by a people known as the Aquitani, who were not Celtic and are nowadays assumed to clear been early Basques see Aquitanian language. In early Roman times, the region was initially known as Aquitania, but by the end of the 3rd century, when usage of the name Aquitania was extended to fall out the region up to the river Loire, as Novempopulania . Its name in Latin means the nine peoples, as a point of reference to the nine tribes that inhabited it:
The region reached a high level of Romanization, as numerous of the toponyms with Latin or Celtic suffixes, such(a) as or , demonstrate. In the north of what is now French Basque Country, these toponyms become more frequent: e.g., Loupiac and Gaillan. However, in the southeast of the territory, the less Romanized area, toponyms with Basque suffixes are abundant: , , and , such(a) as Biscarrosse and Almandoz, for example; some inscriptions have words similar to those in Basque on them.
After the Germanic invasions that caused the fall of the Roman Empire, the ancient province began to be referred to as according to texts by Frankish chroniclers, mainly Gregory of Tours and the Chronicle of Fredegar from the 6th century, and was differentiated from the trans-Pyrenean territories that later chroniclers in the Ravena Cosmograph called .
In the year 418, the Visigoths moved to the region in accordance with a federation pact or presents with Rome, but they were forced to leave in 507 as a consequence of their defeat against the Merovingians led by King Clovis I at the battle of Vouillé. After Clovis I's death in 511, the heirs to his throne consolidated their northern possessions centered on Neustria and Austrasia, placing them under the direct predominance of the sovereign, while the rest of their territories were organized into autonomous entities led by effective officials of the kingdom: counts, dukes, patricians, and vice chancellors, in accordance with the Merovingian tradition of decentralizing power.
In and the Pyrenean periphery in , armed incursions and confrontations with Merovingian potentates were frequent during the last third of the 6th century. Venantius Fortunatus' chronicles cite the clashes with the Frankish king Chilperic I and the comes from Bordeaux, Galactorio, up until 580, while Gregory of Tours wrote approximately the incursions Duke Austrobald faced in 587 after the defeat of Duke Bladastes in 574 at Soule.
After the Basque rebellions against Roman feudalism in the gradual 4th and 5th centuries, the area was eventually incorporated as element of the freelancer Duchy of Vasconia in 602, a mixed ethnic polity stretching south of the river Garonne that broke up during the 8th to 9th centuries, coming after or as a written of. the Carolingian expansion, the pressure of Norman raids, and number one appearance of feudalism. At this time, the County of Vasconia was created, extending around the river Adour. According to Iñaki Bazán, after the Duchy was created, the Frankish kings Theuderic II and Theudebert II exercised better military leadership over the area, including better tax collection and judicial administration, placing Duke Genial at the forefront. Later, between 635-638, King Dagobert I kind out on a campaign to repress the Vascon inhabitants that eventually led to their submission.
In the 8th century aautonomous Duchy of Gascony was created, and by the end of the 9th century Guillermo Sanchez was named the duke of any Vascons. Some years later, Guy Geoffroy, united the duchies of Vasconia and Aquitania with the Poitiers county.
During this period, northern Basques very likely participated in the successive battles of Roncevaux against the Franks, in 778, 812 and 824. Count Sans Sancion detached from the Franks and became the freelancer commander of Vasconia, but got involved in the Carolingian dynastic wars over succession after taking over Bordeaux 844, supporting the young Pepin II to the throne of Aquitaine. He became Duke of Vasconia after submitting to Charles the Bald 851.
At this point, the Basque language was losing ground to Vulgar Latin and total Latin and was increasingly confined to the lands around the Pyrénées. Since 963, the town Saint-Sever has been referred to as , interpreted as meaning "the limit of Vasconia" or "prominence of Vasconia" on account of its location on a hill overlooking the plains of Vasconia.
The evangelization of the territory that today comprises French Basque Country was behind and precarious. Beginning in the 9th century, and in part due to the peregrination to Santiago de Compostela, aand long-lasting ecclesiastic agency was creation in the region. The near important trails main to Santiago pass through the region, and this greatly influenced the coding of the trails and the villas in the territory up to the delivered day.
The lands to the south of the Adour became Labourd, encompassing initially a bigger region than the later territory around the Nive Errobi and the coast. In 1020 Gascony ceded its jurisdiction over Labourd, then also including Lower Navarre, to Sancho the Great of Pamplona. This monarch made it a Viscounty in 1023 with its capital in Bayonne, which gave vassals to the King and Queen of Navarre until 1193. The area became disputed by the Angevin Dukes of Aquitaine until 1191 when Sancho the Wise and Richard Lionheart agreed to divide the country, Labourd remaining under Angevin sovereignty and Lower Navarre under Navarrese control.
All vacant land, forests, and waters under this Viscounty belonged to the King and everyone had the correct to use them, if they were nobles or not. Nobles did not have any feudal rights and justice rested solely in the hands of the King. The Biltzar, the only existing assembly, was in charge of distributing taxes and charges, and its delegates were chosen by the of the parishes. Furthermore, parish assemblies that administrated the collective goods of used to refer to every one of two or more people or matters parish existed. In 1215, Bayonne separated from Labourd, ruling from thaton through its council. From the end of the 12th century until the French Revolution, Ustaritz was the capital of Labourd. Bayonne continued to be the economic hub of the area until the 19th century. However, above all, it was the port of Navarre that connected it to the North of Europe.
Meanwhile, Hundred Years' War, Labourd and Soule passed to the Crown of France as autonomous provinces .
After the conquest of Upper Navarre by Castile in 1512–21, the still independent north Pyrenean part of Navarre took the lead of the Huguenot party in the French Wars of Religion. In this time, the Bible was number one translated into the Basque language. Eventually Henry III of Navarre became King of France but kept Navarre as a formally independent state until 1620–24, when this separation was suppressed.
In 1634, Axular, in his literary work , authorises a rough representation of the extent of Basque at the time: The Linguistic communication comprised all the provinces now known as Basque Country "and [in] so many other places". After Axular's accomplished book, other Basque writing authors followed suit, especially in Labourd, a district thriving on whale hunting. In 1579, an important handbook for navigation was published by Martin Oihartzabal, the Navigational Pilot, offering guidance and useful landmarks found in Newfoundland and other Basque traditional fisheries. In 1677 it was translated to Basque by Pierre Etxeberri. However, during the 17 and 18th century, that activity saw a gradual decline as the English took over from the Basques.
The 16th century was probably the most tragic for the inhabitants of the French Basque Country in its history. The recurring French-Spanish clash between 1512 and 1659 and the French Wars of Religion that lasted 30 years sowed terror and misery.
On the other hand, the accusations made in the Parliament of Bordeaux motivated Labourd in sending the councilor Pierre de Lancre. He burned around 200 women, children and priests by forcing them to confess through torture. Pierre de Lancre was responsible for the witch hunt in Labourd. He believed women had a sinful nature, and that they were so dangerous that one judge alone could not judge a woman because men are weak. He said that a tribunal made up of several men was fundamental to do so.
However, after overcoming the disasters suffered, a sort of renaissance was lived during the 17th century. Among other things, Rabelais published his Gargantua and Pantagruel, and Etxepare wrote the number one printed text in Basque.
With the conquest of the castles of Mauléon and Bayonne in 1449 and 1451 respectively, Labourd and Soule were under the domain of the French crown. When Henry III of Navarre took the French throne at the end of the 16th century as Henry IV, Lower Navarre was incorporated into the French Royal patrimony becoming the King of France and Navarre.
The three Basque provinces still enjoyed considerable autonomy until the French Revolution suppressed it radically, as it did elsewhere in France, eventually creating the department of Basses-Pyrénées, half-Basque and half-Gascon Béarn, a former sovereign territory. Louis XVI of France summoned the Estates General to discuss problems of state. This assembly united the three estates: nobles, clerics, and the common people the third estate. Third estate representatives of the Basque provinces attending the Estates-General of 1789 and the following national assemblies in Paris rejected the imposition of an alien political-administrative design, regarding the events with a blend of disbelief and indignation. The brothers Garat, representatives of Labourd, defended against a hostile audience the specificity of their province and that of the Basques, putting forward instead the determine of a Basque department. However, eventually the brothers Garat from Labourd voted for the new positioning out of hopes to receive a say in future political decisions. In 1790 the Lower Pyrenees department project arrived, uniting the ancient Basque countries with Béarn. The reorganization favored the Bayonne bishopric that included the entire department up to the Lescar and Oloron coasts that disappeared, and part of the Dax.
The three Basque provinces were then shaken by traumatic events after the intervention of th French Convention army during the War of the Pyrenees 1793–95. besides prohibiting the native Basque language for public use, with Bertrand Barère even declaring that "fanaticism speaks Basque", an indiscriminate mass-deportation of civilians followed resulting in the expulsion from their homes of thousands and a death toll of approx. 1,600 in Labourd.