Vanished Kingdoms

by Norman Davies

  In terms of historic provinces – which were replaced during the French Revolution by the départements – the montant nord or ‘northerly slope’ of the Pyrenees was occupied towards its Mediterranean end by Cerdagne as well as by Roussillon, both of which go back to the days of the Marca Hispanica. On the southern slopes, if one starts from the Costa Brava, the line of the March parallel to the ridge takes one today through upper Catalonia, past the Principality of Andorra, and back into the north-western corner of Catalonia. Historically, one is passing through a series of ancient counties from Perelada on the coast to Pallars in the heart of the mountains.

  In some stretches, the French side of the Pyrenees is less accessible than the Spanish side. The inland valley of the Ariège, for example, which runs north from Andorra, was kept apart politically from Cerdagne and Roussillon by a near-impassable tract. As a result, the counts of Foix, who once dominated the Ariège, were drawn westwards into Béarn and Navarre. The eastern Pyrenees, in contrast, though containing some mighty summits, have always invited human movement and migration, rarely acting as the cultural and linguistic wall which political planners in Paris or Madrid might have preferred. The area of Catalan speech, for instance, straddles the Pyrenean ridge just as Basque does in the far west.

  Roussillon (Rosselló in Catalan) combines a short length of coastline with a long stretch of the Pyrenean ridge. Its 1,500 square miles are dominated by one huge mountain and two transverse rivers. Le Mont Canigou or ‘Canigo’ (9,137 feet), where Catalans light their traditional Midsummer Eve bonfires, is visible across the sea from the vicinity of distant Marseille. The Rivers Têt and Tech, which water the Roussillon plain, rise in the upland districts of Conflent and Vallespir respectively, once counties in their own right. The region is famed for its vin doux naturel from the Côte Vermeille, for its ancient Romanesque abbeys such as St Michel de Cuxa or St Martin de Canigou, and for some of ‘the most beautiful villages in France’ – Castelnou among them, together with Evol, Mosset, Vinca and St Laurent de Cerdans.7 From the thirteenth century onwards, Roussillon’s northernmost border, from the plateau of Caspir to the medieval fortress of Salses, formed a defence line against the growing power of France. It faces the formidable ‘five sons of Carcassonne’, the French castles of Aguilar, Quéribus, Peyrepertuse, Puilaurens and Termes along the Languedoc frontier. Salses was built to plug the gap between the seaside lagoons and the inland heights.

  Roussillon’s folklore differs markedly from that of other French regions.8 The sardana is pure Catalan; men and women hold hands in a ring, and circle back and forth to measured patterns in 6/8 rhythm. The typical band is the coble; nine or ten wind-players blow tenora and tible (high and low oboes), flabiol (flute), and the goatskin bodega (bagpipes), usually accompanied by drum and double bass. An international folk festival is held every August at Amélie-les-Bains (Els Banys d’Arles).9

  Unlike Roussillon, Cerdagne (Cerdanya in Catalan, Cerdaña in Spanish) is entirely landlocked, and is nowadays split into French and Spanish halves. It grew strong through its relative inaccessibility, and rich from an ancient trans-Pyrenean trade route. Its historic capital and county seat stood at Llívia. The counts of Cerdagne-Conflent, who reached their apogee during the eleventh century, founded the abbeys both of St Michel de Cuxa and of Montserrat, before bequeathing their inheritance to their descendants, the counts of Barcelona. Their legacy stayed intact until the seventeenth century. During the negotiations held at Llívia in 1659, when Cerdagne was divided, the French commissioners demanded 130 communes in northern Cerdagne; the Spanish commissioners argued that Llívia was not a commune, but a city. Llívia has remained a Spanish enclave inside French territory ever since.10 A visit there is instructive. At the start of the local ‘Historical Trail’, Llívia is proclaimed to be the ‘cradle of the Catalan State’.

  At some 12,300 square miles, modern Catalonia or Catalunya is much larger than either Roussillon or Cerdagne. It is triangular in shape, and is divided into forty-one comarques or ‘rural districts’. The top side of the triangle follows the Pyrenean frontier. The coastal side runs down at a right angle along the Costa Brava, past Barcelona and the Costa Dorada, and as far as the province of Valencia. The inland side of the triangle links the southernmost point on the coast with Catalonia’s westernmost point in the mountains. Since 1978, after painful experiences under General Franco, the province has enjoyed autonomy within Spain, and has successfully reinstated the official status of the Catalan language.

  The section of the eastern Pyrenees where upper Catalonia abuts the old French County of Foix reveals some of the region’s geographical, historical and linguistic complexities. The Catalan district of Pallars nestles in the vicinity of three diverse neighbours. To its west lies a clutch of Spanish-speaking districts, starting with Sobrarbe and Ribagorza. To its north lies the Vall d’Aran, which can only be approached by vehicles through the Vielha tunnel and which, though located on the French side of the ridge, still belongs to Spain. The people of the Vall d’Aran speak a unique language that mixes Basque and neo-Latin elements (aran means ‘valley’ in Basque). To the east lies the Principality of Andorra, one of Europe’s oldest states.

  Andorra occupies a tiny mountain retreat wedged between France and Spain. For 700 years from 1278, its government was jointly supervised by the comte de Foix (or later by the préfet of the Ariège) and by the bishop of Seu d’Urgell. Since 1993, however, it has joined Monaco, Liechtenstein and San Marino as one of Europe’s sovereign mini-states. The Andorrans, like the inhabitants of the ‘Franja d’Aragón’ – a strip of territory immediately adjacent to Pillars – speak Catalan, but their national anthem is bilingual. Few countries can boast a national song more redolent of history:

  El Gran Carlemany, mon Pare, Le grand Charlemagne, mon père,

  dels arabs em deslliura, des arabes me délivra,

  i del cel vida em dona et du ciel me donna la vie

  Meritxell, la Gran Mare. Meritxell, notre mère.

  Princesa nasqui i Pubilla, Je suis née princesse héritière

  entre dues nacions neutral neutre entre deux nations.

  sols resto l’única filla Seule, je reste l’unique fille

  de l’imperi Carlemany. de l’empire de Charlemagne,

  creient i lliure croyante et libre

  onze segles depuis onze siècles,

  creient i lliure vull ser pour toujours je veux l’être

  siguin els furs mos tutors que les Fueros soient mes tuteurs

  i mos prínceps defensors. et les princes mes protecteurs!11

  (‘My father, the great Charlemagne, / saved me from the Arabs, / and Meritxell, my great mother, / gave me life from Heaven. / I was born a princess, an heiress / neutral between two nations. / I remain alone, the one and only daughter / of Charlemagne’s empire. /Faithful and free /for eleven centuries, / I wish to be so for ever, / may the customary laws be my tutors / and the princes my protectors.’) The Andorrans still sing of Charlemagne for their country started life under his rule and was never incorporated by the great powers which succeeded him.

  Nowhere can one understand the lie of the land better than standing on the high Franco-Spanish frontier south of Perpignan. The strong afternoon sun shines in one’s face. The sea glistens on the horizon to the left, the last outcrop of the French coast merging into the Costa Brava. On the right, the line of the mountain ridge leads off towards Andorra and the central Pyrenees. Roussillon and Cerdagne are at one’s back, and beyond them Languedoc. In front, the steep hills of Catalonia stretch out as far as the eye can see. Catalonia’s chief port and city, Barcelona, is just out of sight, but it can be reached by car in little more than an hour by following the Autoroute/Autopista E-15, which snakes over the foothills below.

  Thanks to the present dominance of centralized national states, it is easy to think of this Pyrenean region as peripheral, both to France and to Spain – far from Paris and far from Madrid. Rambling round the Pyrenean ridge, however, prompts do
ubts. Landscape, itself the product of aeons of change, evokes thoughts about the changeability of everything else. Not so very long ago, France was nowhere in sight in these parts, and Spain did not even exist. Perpignan was once a capital city. So, too, were Barcelona and Zaragoza. Then, people on both sides of the eastern Pyrenees became subjects of one king, members and beneficiaries of a political community whose furthest bounds stretched far beyond the shining horizon.

  II

  The origins of the kingdom can be traced to a mountain stream – the Aragon* – that flows down from the high pastures of the central Pyrenees into the broad valley of the Ebro. The river gave its name to the landlocked district, now known as the Alto Aragón, or ‘High Aragon’, whence it springs. The landscape that it traverses consists mainly of a desert plain covered by thin, chalky, salt-ridden soil. In most seasons it is characterized by dry watercourses and ash-coloured shrublands. The summers are scorchingly hot, the winters cold and snowbound. Yet the mountains which ring the plain carry oak, pine and beech forests, and the high pastures form a fine habitat for merino sheep. The Pyrenean ridge, dominated in this section by the peaks of the Aneto and the Perdido, creates a formidable barrier. A few oases of greenery nestle in the steep, upland valleys, but the only area suitable for large-scale agriculture spreads out below the mountains among the wheat fields, orchards and vineyards that line the Ebro. One of the oldest trans-Pyrenean trade routes runs across the pass of the Port de Canfranc from Zaragoza to Béarn.

  Here, towards the end of the first millennium, Christian lords ruling the north-eastern perimeter of Iberia started to fight back against the Muslim Moors, who had ruled over most of the peninsula since crossing from North Africa some two centuries earlier. That gaggle of Christian lordships, large and small, had been created when Frankish power spilled over the Pyrenees to confront Islam as it advanced. Charlemagne’s campaign of 778 against the Moors was recorded in the opening lines of the Old French epic poem, the Chanson de Roland:

  Carles li reis, nostre emperere magnes,

  Set anz tuz pleins ad estet en Espaigne.

  Tresqu’en la mer cunquist la tere altaigne,

  N’i ad castel ki devant lui remaigne,

  Mur ne citet n’i est remés a fraindre,

  Fors Sarraguce, ki est en une muntaigne.

  Li reis Marsilie la tient, ki Deu nen aimet,

  Mahumet sert e Apollin recleimet:

  Nes poet guarder que mals ne l’i ateignet.

  Charles the King, our great Emperor,

  Advanced that year in full array into Spain.

  He conquered the high lands as far as the sea,

  No castle which stood before him,

  Nor any fortified wall was unbroken,

  Except for Zaragoza, which lies in a mountain range.

  [Zaragoza] was held by a King, Marsilie, whom God did not love.

  He served Mahomet, and worshipped Apollo:

  Poets record only the ills which he performed.12

  Charlemagne’s retreat from Zaragoza culminated in the heroic fight at the Pass of Roncevalles, where Roland and Oliver were immortalized.

  Charlemagne’s response to the threat from Muslim Iberia was to organize four militarized buffer zones: the March of Gascony, the March of Toulouse (to which Andorra was attached), the March of Gothia along the Mediterranean coast from Narbonne to Nîmes, and the Marca Hispanica from the central to the eastern Pyrenees. This fourth March consisted of no fewer than sixteen counties, each controlled by a military commissioner or comitatus. The first to be formed, in 760, was Roussillon; the last, in 801, Barcelona. Others on the March’s eastern flank included Pallars, Urgell, Conflent, Vallespir, Cerdagne, Besalú, Perelada, Ausona, Girona and Empúries.13 The population of these counties contained a strong admixture of Visigoths (see Chapter 1), and it is from the mingling of Frankish, Iberian and Gothic cultures that Catalonia was to assume its inimitable language and character.

  In the period which followed, the overextended Franks pulled back; the power of the Moors also began to ebb and the Christian lords of the Pyrenees asserted their freedom. One of the more important lordships in the former Marca Hispanica centred on the County of Barcelona, which lost all semblance of subordination to the Frankish Empire once the Carolingians gave way to the Capetians. Another was the domain of Sancho El Mayor of Navarre (d. 1035), known as ‘the Great’, who ruled extensive lands on either side of the Pyrenees. His capital at Pamplona lay in the heart of the Basque country, which had never submitted to foreign domination. It was flanked on the west by Christian Castile and León, and to the east by the mountainous counties of Aragon, Sobrarbe and Ribagorza, all of which he came to control. For a time, he even extracted recognition of his suzerainty from the count of Barcelona, Berenguer Ramón I El Corbat, ‘the Crooked’ (r. 1022–35).*

  Sancho El Mayor was blessed with five sons, and he conceived a plan to perpetuate his family’s fortunes. Taking the title of ‘King of all the Spains’ for himself, he designed a future whereby his Christian ‘empire’ would be supported by an array of tributary sub-kings. He set up his eldest legitimate son as king of Navarre; gave Castile and León to his second son; and in his will, bequeathed Sobrarbe and Ribagorza to his two youngest sons. Sancho’s bastard son, Ramiro, was passed over in the will, but was left undisturbed as the baiulus or ‘steward’ of Aragon.

  Needless to say, Sancho’s happy scheme did not long survive its author. The four royal sons were soon embroiled in wars against their brothers. In 1050, at the Council of Coyanza, Ferdinand reaffirmed the model charter passed in León thirty years before which now provided the guidelines for all the Christian states of Iberia, including the principle of hereditary kingship. After that, he gave priority to the nascent Reconquista, the reconquest of the peninsula from the Moors, through which he forged a reputation that made him ‘emperor of Spain’. The Christian warriors of his generation were destined to reach the gates of Seville and Toledo before being driven back. Ramiro exploited his brothers’ preoccupations. Barely five years passed after their father’s death before he seized Sobrarbe and Ribagorza, joined them to Aragon, and was proclaimed king. The three adjacent territories united by Ramiro formed the cradle of his kingdom’s later expansion.

  For the first hundred years, the House of Ramiro ruled Aragon in undisputed succession. It produced four kings, who, following a civil war among their western neighbours, came to reign in Navarre as well as in Aragon. Initially, there was no substantial Aragonese town to act as an administrative or ecclesiastical centre. Ramiro’s subjects’ pastoral needs were served by itinerant priests, and by the remote Benedictine monastery of San Pedro de Siresa. The city of Chaca or Jaca, previously the base for a Carolingian county, was adopted in 1063 as the seat of the first Aragonese bishopric. The larger and older city of Huesca – Roman Osca, and in the eleventh century the Moorish fortress of Wasquah – was not conquered until forty years later. Ramiro, now King Sancho Ramírez, built the castle of Monte Aragon beside it to facilitate his attacks, and was killed by a stray arrow when reconnoitring the city’s walls. The final assault was led by the late king’s successor, Pedro I, Ramiro’s eldest grandson, who was buried there after making it his principal residence. Regular disputes occurred with the counts of Toulouse over control of the mountain passes, but the overarching danger lay in the incessant fighting between Christians and Muslims to the south.

  From the outset, therefore, the infant Kingdom of Aragon did not possess the best chances of independent long-term survival. It was squeezed between the stronger kingdoms of Castile and Navarre, the powerful Muslim emirate of Zaragoza, and, beyond Ribagorza, the eastern flank of the former March dominated by the counts of Barcelona. In those days, warlords devoured their neighbours or were devoured themselves. Ramiro and his successors could certainly benefit from their mountain retreat, but their dilemma was stark: if they tried to expand, they risked the vengeance of their rivals; if they stayed inactive, they could stagnate and attract the vultures. T
heir insecurity is mirrored in their repeated attempts to join forces with their neighbours, first with Navarre, then with Castile and eventually with Barcelona.

  The initial historical and cultural connections of Aragon were very specific. Starting as the homeland of the pre-Roman Celtiberian tribe of the Ilergertes, it had never belonged to the Basque country, and had never been subject either to substantial Moorish settlement or to the heavier Frankish influences evident in Catalonia. In the continuum of the peninsula’s linguistic idioms, its native speech was distinct. Aragon, above all, was small and poor. It could not raise large armies, as Castile could, and, though its society was largely free of feudal impositions, it did not possess Catalonia’s commercial potential or its easy contacts with the outside world. Hence, it could only satisfy its growing circle of clients and partners by granting them wide measures of autonomy. In opposition to the traditions of Castile, ‘Aragonism’ favoured respect for local laws and shunned centralized authority.

  The little land of Sobrarbe – one of the three constituent parts of the first Kingdom of Aragon – holds a special place in the evolution of its political traditions. According to a legend which was accepted as historical fact for centuries, the rulers were required to swear an oath embodying a formal contract with their subjects. ‘We who are worth as much as you,’ they were told, ‘take you as our king provided that you preserve our laws.’ They were also obliged to confirm the appointment of an elected justiciar, who was the guardian of those laws. Modern research has shown the ‘Oath of Sobrarbe’ to be an invention of much later times; even so, many commentators take it to reflect the essence of an ancient tradition.14