GASCONY
The province of Gascony--Protest against inclusion in
Aquitaine--Union of Béarn, Foix, and Bigorre--Navarre--
Interest of Gascony to English people--Gascony annexed to the
Crown of England--Viscounty of Béarn--The Fors--Independence
of the people--A babe with open hands--An elderly wife--John
of Béarn’s treatment of a Pope--Charles of Viana--Schemes of
Juana--Murder of Blanche--The coveted crown--Death of Francis
Phœbus--Choice of a husband--Gascon braggarts.
The province of Gascony included Labourde, of which Bayonne was the
capital; the viscounty of Soule, with Mauleon as its chief town;
Basse Navarre; Béarn, a viscounty, with its residential châteaux at
Orthez and at Pau, and its cathedrals at Lescar and Oloron; Bigorre, a
county with its capital at Tarbes; Cominges, and to the south of that
Couserans; and finally the county of Foix, on the frontier of Languedoc.
The whole of this stretch of land was included by Augustus in
Aquitaine. This the peoples of Vasconia did not like, and they sent to
him an embassy to request that they might be organized into a separate
province. To this the emperor agreed. Concerning this transaction
history is silent; but we know about it from a Roman inscription at
Hasparren, set up by the ambassador, to commemorate his journey and the
favourable reply he received.
In the thirteenth century the viscounty of Béarn was annexed to the
county of Foix, and the intervening county of Bigorre fell to Foix in
1425, through the marriage of an heiress. Finally, Navarre also was
united to Foix-Béarn-Bigorre in 1479. It furnished the holder with
a royal title, nothing more save the scrap of land on this side the
Pyrenees called Basse Navarre, of which the principal town was S.
Jean-pied-du-port.
Gascony should be of special interest to us English, as it was for so
long a possession of the English Crown.
Louis VII, before the death of his father, had contracted marriage with
Eleanor of Guyenne, heiress of Poitou and of the duchy of Aquitaine. He
obtained the most splendid dower that ever fell to the lot of a French
king. It consisted of nothing less than half of the south of France.
Eleanor was a passionate, frivolous girl; Louis, a pale, feeble prince,
a prey to petty religious scruples. He took the cross and started on
the disastrous and disgraceful crusade of 1147. He took Eleanor with
him. She made no secret of her contempt for her husband. “He is a
monk, and not a man.” She became over-intimate with her uncle, Raymond
of Antioch, the handsomest man of his time. She was accused also of
carrying on an intrigue with a Saracen. On her return to Europe she
insisted on being divorced from Louis, and she cast herself into the
arms of Henry Plantagenet, Count of Anjou, Duke of Normandy, and heir
to the crown of England. Thus she detached all these provinces from
France and annexed them to the realm of England. Indeed, Henry, by the
marriage of one of his sons to the heiress of Brittany, found himself
master of nearly the whole of Western France. The House of Anjou had
sprung into domination on Gaulish soil equal to that of the French
king and his other vassals put together, and controlling the mouths of
the three great rivers. Add to all this the possession of the English
kingdom. The long protracted and desolating wars that ensued on French
soil was a struggle between the kings as to whether France should be
annexed to England, or Aquitaine to France.
“By the peace between Henry III and Louis IX,” says Mr.
Freeman, “Aquitaine became a land held by the King of England
as a vassal of the French crown. From that time it became
one main object of the French kings to change this feudal
superiority over this great duchy into an actual possession.
The Hundred Years’ War began through the attempt of Philip of
Valois (1337) on the Aquitanian dominions of Edward III. Then
the King of England found it politic to assume the title of
King of France. But the real nature of the controversy was
shown by the first great settlement. At the Peace of Bretigny
(1360) Edward gave up all claim to the crown of France, in
exchange for the independent sovereignty of his old fiefs
and of some of his recent conquests. Aquitaine and Gascony,
including Poitou ... were made over to the King of England
without the reservation of any homage or superiority of any
kind. These lands became a territory as foreign to the French
kingdom as the territory of her German and Spanish neighbours.
But in a few years the treaty was broken on the French side,
and the actual possessions of England beyond the sea were cut
down to Calais and Guines, with some small part of Aquitaine
adjoining the cities of Bordeaux and Bayonne. Then the tide
turned at the invasion of Henry V. Aquitaine and Normandy were
won back; Paris saw the crowning of an English king, and only
the central part of the country obeyed the heir of the Parisian
kingdom. But the final result of the war was the driving out
of the English from all Aquitaine and France except the single
district of Calais.
“The French conquest of Aquitaine (1451-3), the result of the
Hundred Years’ War, was in form the conquest of a land which
had ceased to stand in any relation to the French crown.”
Thus Aquitaine, including Gascony, had belonged to the crown of England
from 1152 to 1453, just three hundred and one years.
But, although nominally pertaining to England, it contained stubborn
and recalcitrant elements, notably the counts of Foix, who were
viscounts of Béarn.
Towards the close of the eleventh century the viscounty of Béarn had
enjoyed sovereign rights, admitting allegiance to none. Later, when
Louis XI went in pilgrimage to Notre Dame de Sarrance, he lowered
the sword of France on entering Béarn, as being no longer in his own
kingdom. This little territory during the Middle Ages was perhaps the
best governed corner of the earth, the freest and happiest in France,
and perhaps in all Europe. The _fors_ of Béarn were the liberties
to which the viscount was required to swear adhesion before he was
recognized as sovereign. The earliest of these _fors_ is that of Oloron
(1080), renewed in 1290, and it is one of the earliest monuments extant
of the Romance tongue. By these constitutions the inhabitants of the
viscounty governed themselves.
An instance or two of the independent spirit of the Béarnais may be
given.
Marie, daughter of Peter, Viscount of Béarn, upon the death of her
brother, in 1134, became heiress. She had been reared at the Court of
Aragon, and had married William de Moncada, a Catalonian noble. She had
the weakness to do homage to the king for Béarn. The people rose in
revolt, deposed her, and elected as their viscount a knight of Bigorre,
well spoken of for his virtues. He, however, disregarded the _fors_,
and attempted to rule as a feudal lord, whereupon within a year he
was assassinated. Then a knight of Auvergne was chosen, and held the
viscounty for two years. But he also disregarded the constitution and
was put to death. Then his estates of Béarn sent a deputation to Marie
de Moncada, to inform her that it had come to their ears that she had
given birth to twin boys, and the people authorized their commissioners
to select one of the twins to be their viscount. The deputation were
shown the cradle in which the infants lay; one slept with his hands
open, the other held his fists clenched. “We will have the open-handed
lad,” said the Béarnais, and he became Viscount Gaston VI. On his death
in 1170 his brother, the close-fisted William Raymond, claimed the
inheritance, but the Béarnais refused to acknowledge his claim as one
of right, protesting that the viscountship was elective. They compelled
him to submit to their will, and accepted him only when he had granted
still greater liberties than they had hitherto enjoyed, and this not
till five years after the death of his brother.
William Raymond died in 1223, leaving a son, William, to succeed him,
but he was killed in battle against the Moors in 1229, and William’s
son Gaston succeeded under the regency of his mother Garsende. She is
described as having been so stout that only a large wagon could contain
her, and then she overlapped the sides. Gaston VII, son of this plump
lady, left an only child, a daughter Margaret, the heiress of Béarn,
which she carried with her when married to Roger Bernard, Count of
Foix. Thus it came about that Foix and Béarn were united in one hand.
I. PEDIGREE OF THE VISCOUNTS OF BÉARN, COUNTS OF FOIX
[Illustration:
Roger Bernard = Margaret da. and heiress
Count of Foix | of Gaston VII of Béarn
_d._ 1302 |
|
+---------------+
|
Gaston VIII
of Béarn
_d._ 1316
|
+------------------------------------+
| |
Gaston IX = Eleanor of Roger Bernard
of Béarn | Cominges Visc. Castelbon
_d._ 1343 | _d._ 1349
| |
+----+ |
| |
Gaston Phœbus X |
of Béarn Roger Bernard
_d._ 1391 |
|
|
+-------------------+
| |
Matthew Isabella = Archibald de Gralli
Visc. Castelbon heiress of | Captal de Buch
_d._ 1398 Béarn | _d._ 1412
_d._ 1426 |
|
+--+
|
John of
Béarn
_d._ 1436
|
Gaston XI = Leonora of
of Béarn | Navarre
_d._ 1472 | heiress
| _d._ 1479
+----------------+----------------------+ (_See Table II_)
| |
Francis Phœbus Catherine = Jean d’Albret
K. of Navarre heiress | _d._ 1516
_d._ 1483 _d._ 1517 |
|
Marguerite = Henri d’Albret and Navarre
de France | _d._ 1555
|
Antoine de = Jeanne d’Albret
Bourbon | heiress
_d._ 1562 | _d._ 1572
|
Henri de Navarre
IV of France
_d._ 1610]
II. PEDIGREE OF LEONORA, HEIRESS OF NAVARRE
[Illustration:
Charles the Noble
K. of Navarre
_d._ 1425
|
1. Blanche = Juan I, K. of Aragon = 2. Juana Henriquez
_d._ 1441 | _d._ 1479 | _d._ 1468
| |
+---------+----+------------+ +----------------------+
| | | |
Charles of Viana Blanche Leonora = Gaston XI of Béarn |
heir to Navarre poisoned by _d._ 1479 | Count of Foix |
_d._ 1461 her sister | |
1464 (_See Table I_) |
|
+-----------------+
|
Isabella = Ferdinand the
heiress of Catholic, K. of
Castille Aragon and
_d._ 1504 Castille
_d._ 1516]
Roger Bernard and Margaret had a grandson, Gaston IX of Béarn. At
the age of eighteen he was married to Eleanor of Cominges, a lady
considerably older than himself. Some one without tact remarked to
the Countess on the disparity of their ages. “Disparity of ages!”
exclaimed she, “Why, I would have waited for him till he was born.”
The young husband fell fighting against the Moors in 1343. By his
elderly wife he left a son, Gaston Phœbus, of whom more when we come to
Orthez.
Gaston Phœbus was succeeded by a cousin, Matthew de Castelbon, who died
in 1398, without issue, and he was followed by his sister Isabella,
married to Archibald, Captal de Buch, a just and worthy ruler. They had
a son, John of Béarn, who succeeded his mother in 1426. He captured
the antipope, Benedict XIII, and threw him into a dungeon in one of
his castles, where he died of ill-treatment, and then John denied
Christian burial to his body. This so delighted Pope Martin, the rival
of Benedict, that he conferred on John the title of “Avenger of the
Faith.” Jean was succeeded by his son Gaston, who placed his sword
at the disposal of Charles VI. At Bordeaux with his aid the English
underwent a signal defeat. He was married to Eleanor of Navarre,
through whom the claim to the title of King of Navarre came to her
descendants. How that was, and the crimes that brought it about, must
now be told.
Charles the Noble, King of Navarre, died in 1425. Having lost his
only son, he bequeathed crown and kingdom to his daughter Blanche,
married to Juan of Aragon, brother of Alphonso, King of Aragon and the
Two Sicilies, and by reversion after her death to their son Charles,
Prince of Viana. Juan of Aragon acted as viceroy to his brother whilst
Alphonso was in Italy. On the death of Charles the Noble Juan and
Blanche assumed the titles of King and Queen of Navarre. Blanche died
in 1441, and by her will bequeathed the kingdom, in accordance with her
father’s desire, to her son Charles of Viana. But Juan had no thought
of surrendering the crown to his son. He married a young, handsome,
and ambitious woman, Juana Henriquez, daughter of the Admiral of
Castille, and she became the mother of Ferdinand, afterwards known as
“the Catholic.” Thenceforth she schemed to obtain all that could be
grasped for her own son Ferdinand.
Charles was an amiable, accomplished youth, fond of literature and
of the arts. Queen Blanche, in her will, had urged him not to assume
the government without the consent of his father; but when, in 1452,
the estates of Aragon recognized him as heir to the crown, and Juan
declined to resign, Charles openly raised the standard of revolt. Juan
marched against his son, and Charles was defeated, taken prisoner,
and consigned to a fortress. There he remained for a year, and would
have remained on indefinitely had not the Navarrese armed for his
deliverance. Juan was forced to yield, and as a compromise confirmed
Charles in the principality of Viana, and promised to abandon to him
half the royal revenues.
The reconciliation thus forcibly effected was not likely to last;
in fact, the compromise suited neither party. The father burned to
chastise sharply his rebellious son, and Charles chafed at being
defrauded of the crown which was his undoubted heritage. Hence in 1455
both prepared to renew the contest. The following year, 1456, the
prince was again defeated by his father, and was compelled to fly to
his uncle Alphonso, who was then at Naples. During his absence Juan
summoned the estates and declared that both Charles and his eldest
daughter Blanche were excluded from succession to the throne--Charles
on account of his rebellion, Blanche for having espoused his cause--and
Juan proclaimed his youngest daughter Leonora to be his heir. Blanche
had been married to, and then separated from, Henry the Impotent, King
of Castille. Leonora was married to the Count of Foix.
The inhabitants of Pampeluna, and the people generally throughout
Navarre, were indignant at the injustice committed by Juan; they
elected Charles to be their king, and invited him to ascend the throne.
Unfortunately for him, Alphonso, King of Aragon and the Two Sicilies,
died in 1458, whereupon Juan ascended the throne that had been occupied
by his brother. Charles now hoped for a reconciliation, which he had
reason to expect, as his father now wore three crowns which had come
to him by right; and he hoped that Juan would readily surrender to
him that of Navarre, which he had usurped, and to which he had no
legitimate claim. The Prince of Viana landed in Spain in 1459, and
dispatched a messenger to Juan entreating him to forget the past and to
recognize his claim to Navarre at present and his right to succession
to Aragon. But Juan would allow nothing further than restoration to
the principality of Viana, and expressly forbade his son setting foot
in Navarre. Had the misunderstanding ended here, it had been well for
Charles; but a new occasion of dispute arose.
Henry IV of Castille offered his sister Isabella, heiress to the crown
after his death, to Charles of Viana. This alarmed and enraged Juana,
the stepmother of Charles, who calculated on effecting this alliance
for her own son Ferdinand, and uniting under his sceptre the kingdoms
of Aragon and Castille. To obtain this end Charles must be got rid of.
Accordingly she induced his father Juan to invite him to a conference
at Lerida. The prince went thither unsuspiciously, and was at once
arrested and thrown into prison. The Estates of Aragon and Catalonia
were incensed at the harsh and unjust treatment of one whom they
hoped eventually to proclaim as their sovereign. They demanded his
liberation. The King refused. Insurrection broke out, became general,
and so menacing that Queen Juana was alarmed and herself solicited the
release of the Prince. She did more; she went in person to Morella,
whither the captive had been transferred, to open the prison gates.
He was conducted by her to Barcelona, which admitted him, but shut
its gates in her face. All Catalonia now recognized the Prince, and
proclaimed him heir to the thrones of Aragon, Navarre, and Sicily. But
the rejoicing of the people was of brief duration, as shortly after
his release from durance Charles fell ill, lingered a few days, and
died. By his testament he bequeathed the crown of Navarre to his sister
Blanche as next in order of succession to himself.
The death of Charles was too opportune for it not to have been
attributed to poison, administered by an agent of his stepmother. Soon
after a ray of sunlight focussed by a mirror set fire to Juana’s hair.
This was at once set down as a Judgment of Heaven falling on her, an
indication by the finger of God that she was the murderess of her
stepson.
Charles was now out of the way; Blanche, however, obstructed the path,
and the will of her brother in her favour proved fatal to her. Juan
was resolved to retain the sovereignty of Navarre during his own life,
and none the less to transmit it at death to his favourite daughter
Leonora, Countess of Foix, or her issue. He determined to compel
Blanche to renounce her rights. To effect this she was sent across
the Pyrenees, closely guarded, under the pretext that she was about
to be given in marriage to the Duke of Berri, brother of the French
king. But she perceived clearly enough what was her father’s purpose,
and at Roncevaux, on her way, she caused a protest to be prepared in
all secrecy, in which she declared that she was being carried out of
Spain by violence, against her will, and that force would be used to
compel her to renounce her rights over Navarre; and now she declared
beforehand against the validity of such a renunciation. Upon reaching
S. Jean-Pied-du-port, she was, as she had anticipated, constrained to
make a formal surrender of all her rights, in favour of her sister and
brother-in-law, Gaston, Count of Foix. In a letter addressed to Henry,
couched in pathetic terms, she reminded him of the dawn of happiness
that she had enjoyed when united to him years before, of his promises
made to her, and of her subsequent sorrows. As she was well aware that
her father was consigning her to imprisonment, and perhaps death at
the hands of her ambitious and unscrupulous sister, she conferred on
him all her rights to the crown of Navarre, to the exclusion of those
who meditated her assassination, the Count and Countess of Foix. On
the same day that this letter was dispatched she was handed over to
an emissary of the Countess Leonora, 30 April, 1462, and was conveyed
to the Castle of Orthez. The gates closed on her, and she was seen no
more, but not long after they opened to allow a coffin to issue to be
conveyed to Lescar, there to be interred.
The secret of Blanche’s death was closely kept, till the Navarrese
Cortes took the matter up, and demanded her release as their rightful
queen. Then only was it announced that she was dead, but on what day
and in what manner she died was never revealed.
The Count and Countess of Foix now congratulated themselves on having
secured the crown of Navarre to themselves and to their descendants,
and their son Gaston was at once invested with the title of Prince
of Viana. But the crime committed brought but a barren gain. A few
years later Gaston of Viana, their hope, was killed by a lance in a
tournament at Lillebourne. Count Gaston never obtained the kingdom,
and died at Roncevaux in 1472. His widow, Leonora, was balked to the
very last. Her father retained the title of King and the rule over
Navarre up to his death in 1479, and when the coveted diadem fell to
her, she retained it but for fifteen days, and then died also. Her
grandson, Francis, called Phœbus on account of his beauty, was indeed
crowned at Pampeluna. He was a gallant and amiable boy, but the doom
of the ill-gotten crown was on him. Ferdinand the Catholic, son of
the wicked Joanna, would not allow a pretty boy to stand in his way.
One day, 29 January, 1483, after dinner, the prince, _adonné à toutes
gentillesses_, took a flute on which he was wont to play. Scarcely had
he raised it to his lips ere he turned deadly white and sank into a
chair. In two hours he was dead, at the age of sixteen. As he lay dying
he turned to his mother with a smile and said, “My kingdom is not of
this world.”
It was the conviction of all contemporaries that Ferdinand the Catholic
had contrived to have the lad poisoned.
The claim to the crown of Navarre now passed to Catherine, the
sister of Francis Phœbus, married to Jean d’Albret. This marriage is
interesting. It was determined by the Estates of Béarn. No sooner was
Francis Phœbus dead than Ferdinand of Castille, his supposed murderer,
sent to demand the hand of Catherine for his son, a child in the
cradle. But the mother, Magdalen of France, coldly replied that the
choice of a husband for her daughter was a matter for decision by the
Assembly of the delegates of Béarn. The Estates were convoked to Pau,
and the majority voted for Jean d’Albret, whose lands adjoined Béarn,
and who was himself then but a child. During the infancy of Catherine
and Jean d’Albret Magdalen acted as regent. The Count of Grammont
and others formed a plot to poison her in favour of Jean de Foix,
Catherine’s uncle. It was discovered, and the minor conspirators were
executed at Pau; the instigators, being grandees, escaped scot-free.
Catherine, on growing to woman’s estate, left no stone unturned in her
attempt to obtain the kingdom of Navarre, but feebly supported by her
amiable husband. “Would that I had been born John and you Catherine!”
exclaimed the impetuous princess; “and then we would have secured
Navarre.” In the end Catherine died of disappointment at the failure
of all her schemes, and in dying turned her eyes in the direction of
Navarre.
The rest of the story of the viscounts of Béarn, counts of Foix, and
titular kings of Navarre, shall be told when we come to Pau.
By some fatality, surely unjustly, the Gascons are credited throughout
France with being braggarts, cowards, the makers of bad bulls and
as bad jokes. This is what a writer says of them in _Le Passe-temps
Agréable_, Rotterdam, 1737:--
“If in France you would speak of a braggart and swash-buckler,
whose magnanimity and courage are discoverable in his speech,
and in his speech alone; who speaks of war, without having been
in it; say but, He is a Gascon, and this explains everything.
Those friends at the table who are faithful so long as it is
spread with good cheer, but who vanish when the platter and
the beaker are empty--say that they are Gascons, and that
explains all. Should you encounter a fellow who boasts of his
gallantries and the favours he has received from fair ladies,
intimate that he is a Gascon, and all will know the worth of
his statements. The word Gascon suffices to comprehend various
characters never estimable. But it must not be supposed that
all Gascons are such sorry creatures as those spoken of above.
There are to be found among them men of rare merit, and men
with plenty of courage, men as honest as are any others. But,
actually, all Gascons do not come from Gascony. Every nation
under the sun breeds its braggarts and false braves. ‘The true
Gascons,’ says a writer who knew them well in their own land
washed by the Garonne, ‘the true Gascons possess a good deal of
heart, and are desirous of making all the world aware of the
fact.’ But I am not satisfied that they do not make display of
more heart than they actually possess.”
A collection of bons-mots and blunders made by Gascons is found in
_Vasconia_, Lyons, 1730. The description of a Gascon, as given by
a fellow-countryman, is more flattering than that above. He says:
“To be a Gascon is to be a happy mixture of dazzling virtues and of
agreeable and convenient faults. Everything in us is charming, even our
imperfections. What if there be blemishes perceptible in us? There are
spots in the sun itself.”