Vascones - Early Middle Ages

Early Middle Ages

In AD 407 Vascon troops fought on the orders of Roman commanders Didimus and Verinianus, repelling an attack by Vandals, Alans and Suebi. In AD 409 the passage of the Germans and Sarmatians toward Hispania went unhindered. The Roman reaction to this invasion and unrest related to the Bagaudae was to give Aquitania and Tarraconensis to the Visigoths, in return for their services as allies by treaty (foederati). The Visigoths soon managed to expel the Vandals to Africa.

After chronicler Hydatius´s death in AD 469 no contemporary source exists reporting on the social and political situation in the Vasconias, as put by himself. At the beginning of the 4th century, Calagurris is still cited as a Vascon town. During the 5th and 6th century, the gap between town and the rural milieu widened, with the former falling much in decay. Since 581 and 587, chronicles start to mention Vascones again, this time hailing from the wilderness, as opposed to the towns that remain attached to Roman culture or under Germanic influence.

By this time, Vascones are not cited confined to the ancient boundaries, but comprising a much larger territory, from Álava in the west to the Loire River in the north (7-8 centuries). The island of Oléron, along with Ré, formed the Vacetae Insulae or the Vacetian Islands, according to the Cosmographia. where Vaceti are the Vascones by another name. The concept underlying the medieval naming Vascones points to a much wider reality than Strabo's former tribal definition, this time encompassing all Basque-speaking tribes.

The independent Vascones stabilised their first polity under the Merovingian Franks: the Duchy of Vasconia, whose borders to the south remained unclear. This duchy would eventually become Gascony. After the Muslim invasions and the definite re-incorporation of Gascony to the Frankish Kingdom under Pepin the Short (768-769), the territory south of the Pyrenees was reorganized around Pamplona. When Charlemagne destroyed the walls of this city after a failed attempt to conquer Zaragoza, the Vascones annihilated his rearguard in the Battle of Roncevaux Pass in 778. Some decades later, in 824, a second battle of Roncevaux took place that led to the establisment of the Kingdom of Pamplona, founded with Eneko Arista as head of the new polity, presented by Arab sources as emir of the Vascones (Baskunis). However, the 824 Carolingian expedition itself included two different columns made up of Frankish and Vascones (Gascons).

After the 9th century, the Vascones (Wascones, Guascones) come to be more closely identified in the records with the current territory of Gascony, at the time still a Basque-speaking territory but progressively being replaced by the new rising Romance language, Gascon.