Through the times of Cæsar the divisions became indifferently known by various names, until with Augustus there came to be four great divisions, the Narbonnaise, Aquitaine, Lyonnaise and Belgique.
Towards the fifth century the Vascons, or Gascons, the ancient inhabitants of Spanish Cantabria, established themselves snugly in these well protected valleys of the Pyrenees. They warred with the Saracens, and for five centuries were in a continual uproar of battle and bloodshed.
Among themselves, the dukes and counts of Gascogne quarrelled continuously, and disputed the sovereignty of the country with the Vicomtes de Béarn.
In the ninth century a treaty was consummated which assured to Bernard, Comte d’Armagnac, the Comté de Gascogne, and to Gaston de Centulle the suzerainty of Béarn, while Navarre came by heritage to the Comtes de Champagne, and in the thirteenth century to Philippe-le-Bel as a dot with Jeanne, his wife. In the same manner it came to the house of Evreux through Jeanne II, daughter of Louis-le-Hutin.
With the marriage of Blanche II, the grand-daughter of Jeanne II, Navarre passed to the king of Aragon and to Eléonore, and later with the Comté de Foix et de Bigorre and the Vicomté de Béarn, went to Jean, Sieur d’Albret, with whom the history of the kingdom is so commonly associated.
Jean d’Albret II, by reason of his marriage with Catherine of Béarn, the heiress to the crown of Navarre, became joint ruler of the kingdom. He was a gentle, easy-going prince, liberal, but frivolous, and loved no serious occupation in life. He was popular to excess and dined, say the chronicles, “without ceremony, with any one who asked him,” a custom which still obtains with many who are not descendants of a king of Navarre. He danced frequently in public with the wives and daughters of his subjects, a democratic proceeding which was not liked by his court, who told him that he “danced on a volcano.” This in a measure was true, for he lost that part of the kingdom known as Spanish Navarre to Ferdinand of Aragon.
Up to the commencement of the sixteenth century, the Royaume de Navarre occupied both slopes of the Pyrenees and had Pamplona for its capital, but in 1512, Ferdinand the Catholic, of Aragon, with the approbation of the Pope, usurped most of the territory and left the king of Navarre, the legitimate sovereign, only a small morsel eight leagues long by five in width, with St. Jean-Pied-de-Port as its principal city.
A picturesque figure was Ferdinand, King of Aragon on his own part, King of Castille by his wife Isabella, and King of Grenada by conquest; “a heritor of three bastard crowns,” he was called. At his death he was succeeded by the infamous and cruel Charles V.
That which remained, French Navarre, was the portion of the united kingdom lying on the French slopes of the Pyrenees. The loss of the Spanish province was really due to the excommunication of Jean d’Albret and Catherine by the Pope, thus giving the Catholic Ferdinand power to compel a division.
The then ruling monarchs of Béarn and Navarre came to a sad realization of their position. It was this circumstance which gave birth to one of the famous mots of history. “If we had not been born, we would not have lost Navarre,” said the unhappy Catherine to her spouse.