The first literary reference to the Celtic people as keltoi or hidden people, is by the Greek Hecataeus in 517 BC.

“Celt” is pronounced /kelt/, and “celtic” as /keltIk/ (in SAMPA). The pronunciation /seltIk/ should only be used for certain sports teams (eg. Boston Celtics NBA team).

The Origins of the Celts
The Urnfield people were the largest population grouping in late Bronze Age Europe and were preeminent from c. 1200 BC until the emergence of the Celts in c. 600 BC. The period of the Urnfield people saw a dramatic increase in population probably due to innovations in technology and agricultural practices. The spread of iron-working led to the development of the Hallstatt culture (c. 700 to 500 BC). The Hallstatt culture effectively held a frontier against incursions from the east by Thracian and Scythian ethnic tribesmen.

The subject of the succession of Halstatt culture by La Tène culture, the final stage of the Iron Age, and its gradual transformation into a characteristically Celtic culture is both complex and diverse, however the technologies, decorative practices and metal-working styles of the La Tène were to be very influential on the Celts. The La Tène style was highly derivative from the Greek, Etruscan and Scythian decorative styles with whom the La Tène settlers frequently traded.

Geographical distribution of the Celts
Their original homeland has been shown by archaeological findings to have been around the upper reaches of the Danube, Switzerland and southern Germany, and before that perhaps the central Asian steppes. From central Europe they spread as far south as the Iberian peninsula, as far north as Scotland and Denmark and as far west as Ireland, no doubt assimilating the previous inhabitants of these regions as they went. It was not the Celts but these previous inhabitants who had built Stonehenge and the other Neolithic and Bronze Age megalithic monuments in Europe. But even if the Celts had not constructed these monuments themselves, the religious significance of these places may well have endured among the conquered people and the Celts eventually adopted the practice of worshipping there as well. Many Celts settled in present-day France. These were the Gauls who are described by Julius Caesar in his De Bello Gallico (The Gaulish wars).

Other Celtic tribes invaded Italy, establishing there a city they called Mediolanum (modern Milan) and sacking Rome itself in 390 B.C. Not until 192 B.C. did the Roman armies conquer the last remaining independent Celtic kingdoms in Italy.

Other Central European tribes moved eastwards and settled in Asia Minor, there to become the Galatians (that is, Gauls) to whom an epistle of St Paul’s is addressed.

Although they were for a long time the dominant people in central and western Europe, the Celts in France, Britain and Spain were eventually conquered by the Romans, while elsewhere they were pushed further westwards by successive waves of Germanic invaders, who had themselves been evicted from the Indo-European homeland on the Southern Russian steppes by Mongols, Huns and Scythians. Thus, today the Celts are still the most westerly of European peoples, as they were in Herodotus’s time, since their modern descendants still inhabit the Atlantic coast. These include the Irish, Scots, Welsh, Breton, Manx and Cornish peoples and their descendants in the New World and other ex-colonies. (In fact, there are more people of Celtic descent in the United States alone than there are in all the Celtic countries combined!)

Elsewhere, the Celtic populations were assimilated by others, leaving behind them only a legend and a number of place names such as the Spanish province of Galicia (i.e., Gaul), Bohemia, after the Boii tribe which once lived there, or the Kingdom of Belgium, after the Belgae, a Celtic tribe of Northern Gaul and south-eastern Britain. Their literary heritage has been absorbed into the folklore of half a dozen other countries. For instance, the famous Arthurian tale of “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight” is clearly an adaptation of a much older Irish legend about the exploits of the hero Cu Chulainn.

The Celts had a well-organised social system, which was harmonious with nature. They produced little in the way of literary output, preferring the bardic, oral, tradition. They were highly skilled in visual arts and produced a great deal of intricate and beautiful metalwork.

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These Paleolithic cave paintings consist mostly of realistic images of large animals, most of which are known from fossil evidence to have lived in the area at the time. The other common theme of the paintings is outlines of the human hand.

The cave was discovered in 1940 by a dog named Robot, and public access was made easier after World War II. By 1955, the carbon dioxide produced by 1200 visitors per day had visibly damaged the paintings. The cave was closed to the public in 1963, in order to preserve the art. After the cave was closed, the paintings were restored to their original state, and are now monitored on a daily basis.

A replica of two of the cave halls — the Great Hall of the Bulls and the Painted Gallery — was opened in 1983. Reproductions of other Lascaux artwork can be seen at the Centre of Prehistoric Art at Le Thot, France.

The original caves are located near the village of Montignac, in the Dordogne département.

The Basques are an indigenous people who inhabit parts of both Spain and France. They are found predominantly in four provinces in Spain and three in France. This area is to be found around the western edge of the Pyrenees on the coast of the Bay of Biscay.

Besides Spanish or French, a minority of Basques speak their own language, Euskara, which is not only distinct from French and Spanish, but utterly different from every other language in Europe and the world. Most Europeans speak an Indo-European tongue, with some Finno-Ugric and Turkic (also known as Altaic) speakers in the east. The Basque language, however, belongs its own entire category and is utterly distinct from every other language in the world. Also, Spanish language was greatly influenced by Euskara, singularly in the vowel set.

The Basques are unique in Europe not only for their language. Investigations of Basque blood types has found that there are far more Basques with type O blood than in the general European population. Basques also have a comparatively lower chance of being either type A or type AB. Modern genetic techniques are also being applied to the Basques and it has been found that there is a great deal of difference between the Basques and their Spanish neighbours. There is less difference, however, with the population of neighbour Aquitania in France, perhaps a sign of past interbreeding. Even more intriguingly it could also be a sign that the ancient Aquitanian people and their now extinct language may have been closely related to the Basques.

There are also interesting social differences between the Basques and their neighbours. The Basque people have an unusually close attachment with their homes. A person’s home is their family in Basqueland. Even if one does not still live there and has not for generations a Basque family is still known by the house in which it once lived. Common Basque surnames could translate as “top of the hill”, or “by the river” all relating to the location of their ancestral home. This is interesting evidence for considering the Basques to be the only people who have always had a fixed and stable abode. Another interesting fact is that Basque society has traditionally been very matriarchal, with lines of succession being from mother to daughter. This is another interesting contrast with other European societies, which are uniformly patriarchal.

In spite of this, until the Industrial Age, poor Basques (usually the younger sons) have emigrated to the rest of Spain or France and the Americas. Saint Francis Xavier and Conquistadors like Lope de Aguirre were Basque.

This unique and isolated people has attracted the interest of a great many linguists and historians trying to discover how and when it came to be where it is. The other non-Indo-European languages in Europe, Finnish, Hungarian, Estonian, and Turkish, were all brought in by invaders from Asia during recorded history. The Indo-European languages were introduced in the same way a few millennia earlier. When could the Basques have arrived? This important question is still not known but it has been narrowed down. The first time we find Basque in writing is the late Middle Ages, not a help, for the Basques were already very well established by this point. Less direct evidence must thus be considered. The most important sources are the classical writers, especially Strabo, who confirms that at about the birth of Jesus Christ the western part of the Pyrenees were inhabited by a people known as the Vasconnes. This is quite identifiable as one of a number of variations on the word Basque. Further evidence for these people being Euskara speaking Basques is provided when lists of names and place names are encountered.

One theory of the origins for the Basques has them arriving along with the Indo-Europeans four thousand years ago. There have been antecedents to such an event. During the Germanic migrations that swept Europe after the fall of Rome, for instance, almost all the tribes were Indo-Europeans, except for the Alans (also known as the Sarmatians) who it now seems were probably Turkish speakers. Furthermore it is now believed the Indo-Europeans began their invasion of Europe from a position just north of the Caspian Sea. South of this region is the Caucasus, a small and mountainous region home to some thirty separate languages, from two separate language groups of which there are no other relatives. Similarities between Basque and the Caucasian language groups have been advocated on a number of occasions. Could a group of Caucasians have joined the invasion of Europe by the Indo-Europeans that was departing just north of them? It is not impossible but there is little to no evidence for this and much against it.

The relationship between Basque and the Caucasian languages is voceferously denied by authors such as R.L. Trask who see no evidence of a connection, and most modern scholars agree with this view. A second argument against the idea of the Basques arrving sometime around the arrival of the Indo-Europeans is archeological. There is no evidence of a new group of people arrving in Basqueland at this time. While the traditions changed, for instance the building of dolmens slowly faded out, these changes seem far more like a single evolving society than a replacement by new groups of people.

In fact the only evidence for an invasion of Basqueland dates from thousands upon thousands of years ago when Cro-Magnon people first arrived in Europe and superseded the Neanderthals. Could this have been when the Basques first arrrived in Europe? The archeological evidence is shaky and it is difficult to assume there was never an invasion just because evidence for one has not yet been found. But so far the evidence is fairly clear, and even if the arrival of the Basques is postponed it is now quite certain that they arrived before the Indo-Europeans and thus that they are the oldest surviving people in Europe.

It is now believed by most scholars that the Basques have been in the same location for thousands of years, unmoved by any of the calamities of war, plague, or famine that destroyed all the other ancient civilizations of Europe. How could one small group of people survive when so many others were overwhelmed by the waves of invaders that have swept Europe? These questions can be dangerous and lead to speculation about racial superiority, a trap that a number of Basque writers have fallen into. In reality, however the reason the Basques have survived is mostly luck, they happened to be at the right place in the right time over and over again.

The Basques either chose their easily defended home in the Pyrenees, or what is more likely were forced into it at some time in the past. It is quite common for mountainous regions to remain as bastions of an all but vanished group of people. When the Celts of Europe were overwhelemed by the Germanic hordes from Asia and the Roman Empire from the south the only areas left speaking Celtic were the isolated island of Ireland and a number of mountain bastions, most of which still retain Celtic speakers to the present day, These regions include Brittany in the northwest of France as well as Scotland and Wales in the British Isles. In these regions the Celtic language survived fifteen hundred years of isolation. The Basque homeland is quite well suited to survival. Its low mountains are combined with dense forests and heavy vegetation to make the region almost impassable to outsiders (this didn’t stop the Way of Saint James, connecting Santiago de Compostela and mainland Europe), but still temperate enough to support a large agricultural base. Despite this growth the soil is of much lower quality than the surrounding plains in Spain and France leaving the area a much less tempting target for invaders. For invaders bent on plunder the Basque areas have few reserves of precious metals, especially in comparison to the gold reserves to the west in Spain or to the wealth in Gascony just to the north of Basqueland. The Basques seem to have ended up the best locale for uninterrupted survival on the continent.

The first two known invasions the Basques survived were those of the Indo-Europeans and then the Celts. These two invasions occurred in prehistory and the secret of the Basque survival is only hinted at by limited archeological evidence. For the next invasion of the region, however, there is much written evidence. The Romans entered the Iberian peninsula after their defeat of Carthage in the Punic wars. Roman rule quickly spread from the Carthaginian settlements along the Mediterranean coast through the rest of the peninsula. The northwest, including the Basque regions, were conquered by Pompey, after whom the large Basqueland city of Pamplona is named, in the first century BC. The looseness of the Roman federation well suited the Basques who retained their traditional laws and leadership within the Roman Empire. The poor region was little developed by the Romans and there is not much evidence of Romanization; this certainly contributed to the survival of the separate Basque language. The lack of a large Roman presence was encouraged by the passivity of the Basques. Roman miltiary records show that there was never a need to fight insurrections in the Basque country. Basqueland never needed Roman garrisons to control the populace, unlike the surrounding Celtic areas.

On the contrary Basques were used by the Romans to guard their empire. There is a great deal of evidence for a Vasconne cohort. This cohort spent many years guarding Hadrians Wall in the north of Britain. Also at some time in its history it earned the title fida or faithful for some now forgotten service to the emperor. There is some evidence for other Basque units serving in the empire as well. Even today nationalist Basques look back on the Roman Empire as an ideal time when, even though there was no Basque independence, the Basques were still able to have almost total internal control. As well as their lack of exposure to Roman garrisons, the Basque survival was also aided by the fact that Basqueland was a poor region. It had no unused cropland that could be used to settle Roman colonists and it had few commodities that would interest the Romans. Only a small number of Roman traders would have come to Basqueland. This isolation is what allowed the Basque language to survive and not be overwhelmed by Latin as occurred in so many other regions of the Empire. If the Roman Empire had continued, however, there is a good chance the Basque language would have vanished. During the Roman period the territory where Basque was spoken slowly declined and by the end of the period it seems Basque had become limited to rural regions, while the major cities such as Pamplona were Romanized.

The history of Basqueland darkens, however, with the arrival of the Germanic peoples and the collapse of the Roman empire. Rather than being an isolated area in the centre of a large empire the Basques were placed at the border between the warring Visigothic and Frankish kingdoms. Basqueland became a very strategically important piece of territory desired by both sides. At the same time the Basques lost their lifestyle, which was dependent on trade with the Roman Empire. These two changes transformed the Basques from being one of the most docile people in Europe into a group of dedicated warriors bent on survival. There are scattered reports from this period of presumed Basque brigands (in Latin, bagaudae) in Aquitania and Spain stealing those things which they used to be able to trade for. Most of the confrontations with the Basques were, however, instigated by the outsiders. Both the Franks and Visigoths sent armies through Basqueland repeatedly during their long running war. While there are few records armies of the day rarely treated the inhabitants of the lands they were passing through well. The Basqueland was probably repeatedly plundered for foodstuffs and fodder to maintain the armies. The rugged Basque territory is ideal for banditry and it is not surprising that despite the oppresion by their neighbhours the Basques could still survive. Just as in every time of persecution in their history the Basques simply moved to the hills and held out there for many years.

The Basques also proved during this period that despite a lack of central authority they could protect their homeland when the need arises. After Charlemagne’s Franks invaded northern Spain they returned home and en route pillaged the Basqueland, stripping it of any wealth they could find. The Basques came together with the Pamplona Muslims, however, and intercepted the Frankish army while it made its way through a mountain pass. Despite poor weaponry and fewer fighters the Basques destroyed much of the Frankish force. The Battle of the Roncesvalles Pass was the only major defeat Charlemagne suffered in his long career. These events were immortalized in the Chanson de Roland, an important piece of medieval verse. Similar mobilizations by the Basques occurred just a few years later against the Islamic invaders who had seized all of Spain. The newly Christianized Basques put up stiff resistance and prevented Islamic penetration of their region for the entire period of the Caliphate.

The Basquelands were eventually divided between France and Spain after the Middle Ages, with most of the Basque population ending up in Spain, a situation which persists to this day. Until modern times the Basques lived peacefully in the separate nation states becoming renowned mariners. Basque sailors were some of the first Europeans to reach North America, and many early settlers in Canada and the United States were of Basque origin.

In 1937 the troops of the Autonomous Basque Government surrendered to the Italian allies of General Francisco Franco. Then one of the hardest periods of Basque history in Spain began. The Basques fought in the Spanish Civil War divided between the nationalist and leftist, siding with the Spanish Republic, and the Navarrese Carlist, siding with Franco forces. One of the greatest atrocities of this war was the bombing of Guernica, the traditional Biscayne capital, by German planes. Much of the city was destroyed and a great deal of Basque history was erased. Once Franco won the war he began a dedicated effort to turn Spain into a uniform nation state. Franco introduced severe laws against all Spanish minorities in an effort to suppress their culture and language.

The backlash to these actions created a violent Basque separatist movement that has resulted in the deaths of about 800 people over the past 30 years. The separatist group responsible for most of the violence is known as Euskadi Ta Askatasuna or ETA. The end of the Franco regime saw an end to the suppression and a creation of an autonomous Basque region in Spain. ETA continues its actions, however, fighting for full independence and communism.

The current autonomous Basque area, known as Euskadi or País Vasco by its inhabitants, is composed of three provinces or territories: Araba-Alava, Bizkaia-Vizcaya and Gipuzkoa-Guipuzcoa. There are 2,123,000 people living in the Basque Country: Araba – 279,000 inh., Bizkaia – 1,160,000 inh. and Gipuzkoa – 684,000 inh. The most important cities are: Bilbo-Bilbao (Bizkaia), Donostia-San Sebastian (Gipuzkoa) and Gasteiz-Vitoria (Araba). There are two official languages: Basque and Spanish. 27 per cent of the people speak the Basque Language, but this number is increasing for the first time in many centuries.

Despite ETA and the crisis of heavy industries, the Basques have been doing remarkably well in recent years, emerging from persecution during the Franco regime with a strong and vibrant language and culture. For the first time in centuries the Basque language is expanding geographically led by large increases in the major urban centres of Pamplona, Bilbao, and Bayonne where only a few decades ago the Basque language had all but disappeared. The opening of the new Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao is seen as a symbol of this revival.

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“Une foi, un loi, un roi”

(one faith, one law, one king). This traditional saying gives some indication of how the state, society, and religion were all bound up together in people’s minds and experience. There was not the distinction that we have now between public and private, between civic and personal. Religion had formed the basis of the social consensus of Europe for a millenium. Since Clovis, the French monarchy in particular had closely tied itself to the church — the church sanctified its right to rule in exchange for military and civil protection. France was “the first daughter of the church” and its king “The Most Christian King” (le roy tres chretien), and no one could imagine life any other way.

“One faith” was viewed as essential to civil order — how else would society hold together? And without the right faith, pleasing to God who upholds the natural order, there was sure to be disaster. Heresy was treason, and vice versa. Religious toleration, which to us seems such a necessary virtue in public life, was considered tantamount to letting drug dealers move next door and corrupt your children, a view for the cynical and world-weary who had forgotten God and no longer cared about the health of society.

Innovation caused trouble.

The way things were is how they ought to be, and new ideas would lead to anarchy and destruction. No one wanted to admit to being an “innovater.” The Renaissance thought of itself as rediscovering a purer, earlier time and the Reformation needed to feel that it was not new, but just a “return” to the simple, true religion of the beginnings of Christianity.

These fears of innovation certainly seemed justified when Henri II died suddenly in 1559, leaving an enormous power vacuum at the heart of social authority in France. The monarchy had never been truly absolute (although François Ier made long strides in that direction), and had always ruled in an often uneasy relationship with the nobility. The nobles’ sense of their own rights as a class, and the ambitions of some of the more talented, were always there to threaten the hegemony of the crown.

When the vacuum appeared, the House of Guise moved in. François II, although only 15, was married to Mary Queen of Scots, a niece of the Duc de Guise. The Guise were a cadet branch of the House of Lorraine (an independent imperial duchy) that were raised to the peerage by François Ier. They were ambitious and had already produced at least two generations of exceptional leaders. The duc de Guise, François, was a military hero, and his brother, the Cardinal de Lorraine, was a formidable scholar and statesman. During François II’s brief reign, Guise power was absolute.

This greatly threatened the House of Montmorency, an ancient line which had enjoyed great political prominence under Henri II, as well as the Bourbons, who as the first princes of the blood had the rights of tutorship over a minor king. François II was not technically a minor (14 was the age of majority), but he was young and sickly and no one expected much from him.

These dynastic tensions interweave with the religious and social ones. The Bourbon princes were Protestant (the Antoine de Bourbon, King of Navarre and the Louis de Bourbon, Prince de Condé), and although the constable de Montmorency was Catholic, his nephews, the Châtillon brothers (including Admiral de Coligny) were Protestants. The Guise identified themselves strongly as defenders of the Catholic faith and formed an alliance with Montmorency and the Marechal St. André to form the “Catholic triumvirate.” They were joined by Antoine de Bourbon, who flip-flopped again on the matter of his religion. His wife, Jeanne d’Albret, the Queen of Navarre, remained staunchly Protestant and established Protestantism completely in her domains.

Catherine de’ Medici tried to promote peace by issuing the “Edict of Toleration” in January ’62, which made the practice of Protestantism not a crime, although it was restricted to preaching in open fields outside the towns and to the private estates of Huguenot (Protestant) nobles. This was not well-received by many Catholics.

The First War (1562-1563)

The first religious war was provoked by the Massacre at Vassy in ’62. The Duc de Guise, travelling to his estates, stopped in Vassy on a Sunday and decided to hear Mass. A few of his servants got into a scuffle with some Huguenots who were attending a service in a nearby building, and the whole thing escalated until the Guise faction had fired on the unarmed Huguenots, set the church on fire, and killed a number of the congregation.
The national synod for the reformed church met in Paris and appealed to the Prince de Condé to become the “Protector of the Churches.” He, his clients, and their respective client networks took on the task, and from this point the leadership of the Huguenots moves away from the pastors towards the noble “protectors”, and takes on a more militant tone. Condé mobilizes his forces quickly and moves decisively to capture strategic towns along the waterways, highways, and crossroads of France. He takes a string of towns along the Loire and makes his headquarters at Orléans.

As described in Julius Caesar’s Gallic_Wars, Rome had secured domination over the Celtic tribes beyond the Provincia Narbonensis (modern day Provence) through a careful strategy of divide and conquer. Vercingetorix ably unified the tribes, adopted the policy of retreating to natural fortifications, and undertook an early example of scorched_earth methods by burning the towns to prevent the Roman legions from living off the land.

Caesar and his chief lieutenant Labienus lost the initial minor engagements, but captured the tribal capital at Avaricum (Bourges), and then overtook and encircled Vercingetorix at Alesia. Vercintegorix summoned his Gallic allies to attack the besieging Romans, prompting Caesar to build a legendary doughnut-shaped fortification: an inner wall and siegecraft to attack the Arvernian garrison, and an outer defensive perimeter to protect against the attempted relief.

Caesar decisively defeated both forces. Vercingetorix was captured and imprisoned in the Tullianum in Rome for five years, before being publicly displayed and beheaded as part of Caesar’s triumph in 46 BC.

]]> http://www.france.com/glossary/vercingetorix/feed/ 0 http://www.france.com/glossary/albigensian_crusade/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=albigensian_crusade http://www.france.com/glossary/albigensian_crusade/#comments Mon, 01 Sep 2003 15:27:00 +0000 France.com http://www.france.com/albigensian_crusade/ The Albigensian Crusade (1209-1229) was part of the Roman Catholic Church's efforts to crush the Cathars.

The Cathars were especially numerous in southern France, in the region of Languedoc. They were termed Albigensians because of the movements presence in and around the city of Albi. Political control in Languedoc was split amongst many local lords and town councils, the area was relatively lightly oppressed and reasonably advanced.

The Gauls sacked Rome circa 390 BC, destroying all Roman historical records to that point.

Roman rule in Gaul was established by Julius Caesar, who defeated the Celtic tribes in Gaul 58-51 BC and described his experiences in De Bello Gallico, which means Of the Gallic War. The war cost the lives of more than a million Gauls, and a million further were enslaved.

The area was subsequently governed as a number of provinces, the principal ones being Gallia Narbonensis, Gallia Lugdunensis, Gallia Aquitania and Gallia Belgica. The capital of the Gauls was Lyon (Lugdunum).

On December 31, 406 the Vandals, Alans and Suebians crossed the Rhine, beginning an invasion of Gallia.

After coming under increasing pressure from the tribes of Germany from the middle of the 3rd century AD, Roman rule in Gaul ended with the defeat of the Roman governor Syagrius by the Franks in AD 486.

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