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 civilisation 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 Euskara 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 referred to the Basques as "non-believing barbarians" who refused to abandon their bad customs.

The Roman administration centre was established in Pamplona (Iruña in Basque language) - what is today the capital of Navarre. Since Roman civilisation 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 Pamplona to fight the Frankish Empire across the Pyrenees. Pamplona remained under Muslim rule through the eighth century.

Different names for Vascones

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 Pamplona. 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 neighbours 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 Pamplona 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 organise a resistance. This was the origin of the kingdom of Pamplona 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

Published in http://www.ehj-navarre.org/navarre/na_history_vascons.html