Gaston IV of Béarn

Gaston IV of Béarn, known as the Crusader , was Viscount of Béarn of 1090 until its death in 1131. Its nickname the Crusader is due to his role during the First crusade. It also carried the nickname of lord of Saragossa , after having carried out the conquest of this city for the account of Alphonse Ier d' Aragon lord lieutenant of Barbastro , lieutenant of Uncastillo , and gentleman of Aragon .
He was the son of Centulle V, Viscount of Béarn and his cousin Giséla, of which union was broken in 1074 following the injunction of the pope Gregoire VII because of their bonds of consanguinity, prohibited by Église.
His/her half-brother Centulle was count of the province close to Bigorre.

He joins together with his sovereignty the Pays of Mixes and of Ostabat, then he left guerroyer against the Moors.

Gaston IV took an active share with the first crusade. He enlisted in 1095 in the army of Raymond IV, Count de Toulouse. Its fame grows throughout the countryside until 1099, at the time of the seat of Jerusalem it was charged to build and carry out the machines of war which were to break Turkish defenses.
He was, says one, the first cross one to penetrate in the Holy Cité, then with the hands of the Seldjoukides.
Large warrior, very faithful, it would have overcome but also protected from many Moslem at the time of the first crusade.
He returned from Palestine in 1101. These important facts were worth to him the nickname of Croisé .

To its return in 1101 in Béarn, it is devoted to the organization of its Viscount. It publishes for of Morlaàs, its capital and undertakes many constructions intended to shelter the pilgrims on the road of Saint-Jacob which crosses its territory, of which the cathedral of Lescar, the Cathédrale Sainte-Marie d' Oloron and the church of Morlaàs.
It made build in 1108 celebrates it hospital of Holy-Christine of Somport in Aragon, and that of Gabas in Vallée of Ossau.

It maintained a close relationship with the kingdom close to Aragon, then comparable with the Viscount of Béarn by the size, the type of being able, the economy and the language. Its title of lord of Barbastro appears in 1113.
One will retain his long one and activates co-operation with the king Alphonse I, the catch of Saragossa to the Moslems in 1118. The Viscount was one of the principal craftsmen of the catch of the city and the king rewarded it by naming it Seigneur for Saragossa .
Gaston organized and distributes these new possessions, by privileging his vassal inhabitants of Béarn.

He continued to conduct campaigns with the Aragoneses and took part in the Bataille of Cutanda in 1120, and between 1125 and 1126, to a great forwarding which carried out it until in Andalusia.

In 1131, he died in the hands of the Moslems, who triumphantly carried his head in the streets of Grenade. Its horn of war is preserved in the cathedral of Saragossa.

His/her son, Centulle VI succeeded to him. Its grounds of Saragossa were bequeathed to the Ordre of the Temple.

In crossed good, Gaston always supported the dialog with the Moslem : that will give rise to art Mudéjar, out of Holy Land as in the South of the France and in Spain.

The youth and first years of reign

The birth date of Gaston IV is not known. One knows only that it is former to 1074, date of the dissolution of the marriage of his father, Centulle V, and of his mother Gisèla.
It Maria in 1085 with Talèse, related noble young woman with the royal family of Aragon, which brought to him in dowry the Viscount of Montaner.
It succeeded his father in 1090, and had shortly after to deal with the attacks of its hereditary enemies, the Viscounts of Dax and Soule.
It seems that he seized most of the territory of Dax, that he preserved until in 1102.
The only document of this time which reached us date of October 1094 and watch Gaston IV devoting a church.

The first crusade

Answering the call of the pope Urbain VI, Gaston enlisted in 1096 with his Centulle brother in the army of the crusaders ordered by Raymond of Saint-Gilles, composed mainly noble occitans and provençaux of the south of the kingdom of France.
The chronicles do not mention the presence of Gaston before Nicée (May-June 1097), where it took share with the battle against the Turkish army which tried to help besieged. A little later on July 1st, he faced with six other knights the chief of the Turks in the procession of Dorilea, and gained a resounding victory.

During the length and painful seat of Antioche (October 1097 - June 1098), Gaston took part in the construction of catapults S, perhaps employing techniques learned from the Byzantines lasting the head office of Nicée.
June 28th, 1098, it accepted its first important command: it led noble Gascogne and Poitou during the battle against the armies of Kerbogha, with at its sides the pontifical legate in the search of Raymond of Saint-Gilles, malade.
This battle was a total success for the crusaders, Gaston taking part in the load devastator which decided victory and ensured the control of cross on the ville.
It is possible that during the months which followed the catch of Antioche, Gaston decided to leave of Saint-Gilles, because its name is quoted among those of the 150 knights who helped Baudouin of Boulogne to seize the town of Édesse. For this reason it did not take share with the catch and the massacre of Marra.
Later, when the crusaders are reflected moving towards Jerusalem, Gaston counted with the rows of the army.

With the head of the avant-garde of the army, Gaston between on June 3rd, 1099 in Ramallah, while Norman the Tancrède moves towards Bethlehem. Of Ramallah, it overlaps to Jerusalem, and it is the first of crossed to see the walls of them. It undergoes there an attack of the garrison fatimide which could have cost him the life without the convenient arrival of Tancrède.

It is during the head office of Jerusalem that Gaston appeared a central figure of the chronicles of the crusade. He was in charge of the construction of the machines essential with the seat, the travelling castles . He benefitted from the presence with Haifa of the fleet génoise which after having brought reinforcements was blocked by the fleet fatimide. Gaston obtained chiefs of the fleet that they yield their carpenters to him and the wood of their ships for the construction of the machines of guerre.
Gaston assumed with Tancrède the command of the Gascon troops, vis-a-vis the door of Goliath, in the west of Jerusalem. In the morning of July 15th, the men of Godefroy de Bouillon managed to approach the castle and to open a breach there. Tancrède and Gaston launched out immediately to the attack, exceeded the turns of David and Goliath and moved towards the esplanade of the Temple while the cross army was delivered to plundering and the generalized massacre. With the Temple, they left their standards to a group of civilians taken refuge in top of a mosque. The next day, a group of exaltés crusaders moving towards the Temple, assassinated these civilians, causing the anger of Tancrède and Gaston.

Having only little interest for personal glory, and not having an important title, Gaston did not take share with the intrigues and the power struggles to which had to face the various commanders of the crossed force, in the conquest of the Holy City. It chooses to remain with the capacity of Godefroy de Bouillon when this one was named protective of Jerusalem, instead of embarking in personal adventures as did it Tancrède or Raymond de Saint-Gilles.

The last feat of arms of Gaston in Palestine is the Bataille of Ascalon (August 12th, 1099), cross victory which was not concretized in the catch of the city, for lack of agreement between the various chiefs. In September, it embarked for Constantinople with the port of Laodicea with the count de Flandres, the duke of Normandy and probably his brother, Centulle de Bigorre, not mentioned in the chronicles.

The Viscount of Béarn

On his Holy Land return, Gaston deployed an intense activity. In April 1101 it founded a hospital of pilgrims with Lescar. It will be the first act of long series aiming at making safe the Chemin of Saint-Jacob de Compostelle whose main roads passed by Béarn and Aragon. In 1104, Talèse made an important donation at the hospital Holy-Christine of Somport, the collar more used by the pilgrims to cross the Pyrenees (the abbey of Roncevaux had not been yet founded). Gaston and Talèse are at the origin of a series of refuges and hospitals in wood which led to Somport: Mifaget (1114), Lacommande (1118) and Sauvelade (1128).

He was a large promoter of the Romanesque art in Béarn, initiating work of the cathedral of Lescar and the Cathédrale Sainte-Marie d' Oloron. He also completed the construction of the church Holy-Faith of Morlaàs. All these monuments jointly have the influence of the cathedral of Jaca, thing logical being given the political context at the time of Gaston.

In 1102, it promulgated a privilege for the town of Morlaàs, the then capital one of the Viscount. This privilege was the core of the future For de Morlaàs , which will become in its turn one of the documents constitutive of the Fors of Béarn .

Under his foreign policy, in addition to his solid alliance with Alphonse Ier d' Aragon, Gaston signed a peace with Bernard, count d' Armagnac (1104).
As from 1102, it undergoes the attacks of the Viscounts of Dax and of Drunk who arrived, at the conclusion of a long and bloody war, to recover to it quasi totality of what they had lost in 1090, except for the small territories of Mixe and Ostabarret, as well as the town of Orthez which remained definitively under control béarnais.

Béarn and Bigorre respectively formed part of the territories of the duchy of Aquitaine and the kingdom of France, but in this XIIe century this membership was purely theoretical, contrary to the bonds with Aragon. Centulle de Bigorre lent allegiance to Alphonse 1st of Aragon in 1122, leaving thus formally the Aquitanian orbit. However, Gaston was always regarded as equal by the Aragonese king, to which it had never to lend allegiance. In that one can affirm that Gaston controlled the Viscount of Béarn like an independent principality.

Campaigns of Spain

In 1110 a group of Gascon knights helped Alphonse Ier d' Aragon to hold in failure the king of the Taifa de Saraqusta (Saragossa) Al-Musta' in II during the Bataille of Valtierra. One is unaware of if Gaston IV took part in this battle but a document gone back to 1113 mentions its title of lord of Barbastro what indicates that it had to fight in Aragon and being récompensé.

The first battle of Gaston with Alphonse which one has unquestionable traces is that of 1117, leading to the catch of Morella and the control of the Maestrazgo, blocking the communications between Saragossa and Valence. The capital of the Èbre became thus isolated from its principal support and ready to be attacked the year suivante.

For the attack of Saragossa, Alphonse Ier was going to profit, in addition to his own forces Aragonese and Navarrese, of the support of many frank knights, because the pope Gélase II had declared crossed the conquest of Saragossa. Gaston accommodated the francs in Béarn in May 1118, led them to Saragossa and took the command of the siège.

The catch of the suburbs was easy, but the city resisted of long months. Gaston made build 20 catapults and several travelling castles similar to those used in Jerusalem. The city capitulated finally on December 2nd without it being clearly established if besieged made themselves thorough by the hunger, or because of a breach that the crusaders succeeded in opening. There was neither plundering nor massacre, as opposed to what Gaston had seen and probably condemned in Palestine. The lives and the goods of the inhabitants were respected and those which wanted to leave it could. The winners were distributed the great richnesses of the governor almoravide and controls it various districts of the city. Gaston was particularly rewarded by Alphonse Ier by the title for lord for Saragossa and par for the crown for Aragon. In its turn Gaston distributes part of the grounds received between the noble inhabitants of Béarn who had it accompagné.

The following year (1119), it took share in the profitable countryside against Tudela, Borja, Tarazona and Soria, battles in which its role was probably eclipsed by the engagement of the Norman knights. Almoravides, alarmed by the Christian projection, mobilized an large army which moved towards Saragossa in 1120. In answer, a Christian large army was constituted, under the command of Alphonse Ier and Guillaume IX of Aquitaine, from which the Gascons formed part. It cut the road of Almoravides and a decisive defeat with Cutanda inflicted to them (June 18th, 1120). After that the towns of Calatayud and Daroca fell easily to the hands from Aragonais.

To the head of a wide Aragonese territory, quasi depopulated and difficult to defend, Gaston gave to Alphonse the idea to create a militia, the Chevaliers of Montreal, which would be devoted to the defense of this frontier zone. In 1122, Alphonse founded an equivalent fraternity, the Chevaliers of Belchite, in which Gaston was represented by the bishop of Lescar, Guy de Lons. In both cases, they were laic fraternities whose members did not make obedience or poverty, vows of chastity, unlike the later military orders like those of Calatrava or Saint-Jacques.

During the winter 1124-1125, Gaston returned guerroyer to Spain, fascinating share with forwarding against Peña Cadiella. The crusaders reconquered Peña, pushed back the counter-attack almoravide, but had then to withdraw themselves, not being able to preserve a position also éloignée.

The experiment of Peña Cadiella gave to Alphonse the idea to organize a forwarding even more ambitious with the town of Grenade like objective. This ride, to which Gaston took share naturally, was amply commented on in the medieval chronicles and remained in the history under the name of Bataillon of Spain . Alphonse, Gaston and their troops (estimated from 3000 to 5000 knights according to the chronicles) started from Plasencia del Jalón on September 29th, 1125 and arrived in front of Valence on October 20th. At this place, Alphonse announced the true objective of forwarding: Grenade, where it seems, the Mozarabe S were laid out to reverse the government almoravide, or at least, to leave with the Christians until in Aragon. While passing by Alcira (that they attacked without success), Denia and Peña Cadiella which they knew already, the battalion moved towards Murcie, and from there towards Purchena, Baeza (attacked also without success) and finally Cadiz where it celebrated Noël.

January 7th, 1126, the Christian army arrived in front of the ramparts of Grenade, of which they hoped that the Mozarabs of the city would open a door to them, which did not occur. Gaston could not either build machines of seat as in Jerusalem or Saragossa, for lack of materials. January 23rd, Alphonse ordered to raise the seat and launched an operation of destruction of the orchards of Grenade and Cordoue, hoping to cause a battle in open field with the army almoravide. The battle took place finally on March 10th close to Lucena, and resulted in a disconcerting victory of the Christians. Removed from their enemies, Alphonse, Gaston and the remainder of the Christians crossed Alpujarras in order to contemplate the Mediterranean with Motril. From there, they started the return, charged with spoils and accompanied Mozarabs to repopulate the conquered grounds of Aragon. However, the harassing of Almoravides and the epidemics which were declared quickly decimated most of forwarding, Gaston remaining among the knights survivants.

Died and will

The last document common to Alphonse and Gaston is gone back to September 1129, in Tafalla. Whereas Alphonse moved towards the valley of Aran, Gaston and the Esteban inhabitant of Béarn, bishop of Huesca remained in the Iberian peninsula and continued to fight Almodavides, losing both there the life. The circumstances are not clear, for lack of sources.

Jerónimo Zurita says simply that Gaston and Esteban were killed by the Moors. The historian hispano-Moslem Ibn Idhari gives more details: This same year (534 of Égire) died the governor of Valence Mohammad Yidar. Yintan Ben Ali controlled, by the grace of God. It beat the Christians and the head of their chief, Gaston, was brought to Grenade the second month of Yumada (May 24th, 1131 according to Jose María Lacarra). She was paraded in the streets, with the point of a lance, was accompanied by the bearing by the drums. This gave again the smile with the emir of the Moslems, `Alî Ben Yûsuf, which was with Marrakech.

The body of Gaston was restored, against the payment of a strong ransom and was buried in the Basilique of Nuestra Señora del Pilar of Saragossa. The site of the tomb was lost during work of 1681 or 1717. One preserves nevertheless, in the treasure of the Cathédrale LED El Salvador of Saragossa, it oliphant or horn of war of Gaston.

The young person wire of Gaston, Centulle VI of Béarn, succeeded to him the head of Béarn, under the regency of Talèse. Faithful to his chivalrous ideal, Gaston bequeathed all his grounds of Aragon to the Ordre of the Temple, recently created. This was undoubtedly source of inspiration for Alphonse Ier of Aragon, which in its will bequeathed also its properties, including its kingdom with Orders military of Holy Land (hospital, templiers and knights of the Holy Sepulchre), which started an enormous political crisis with its death (1134), which was completed by the handing-over of the kingdom of Aragon in the hands of the count of Barcelona, Ramón Berenguer IV.

Marriage and descent

  • It marries Talèse or Talesa d' Aragon, the viscountess of Montaner or Montanerès and cousin of the king Alphonse I of Aragon. In dowry, it gives him Montanerès except for 5 parishes which from now on will remain in two inclusions of the Bigorre in the Béarn: this is why there exist always two enclaves of the Hautes-Pyrénées in Yrénées-Atlantiques.
Gaston and Talèse had two girls and two boys:
  • Guiscarde de Béarn, the elder one, married with Pierre II, Viscount of Gabarret.
  • Another girl, whose name starts with NR, was married in 1110 with Bernard Ezi, lord of Albret.
  • Centulle, born in 1102 and deceased between 1124 and 1128.
  • second Centulle, shortly after born 1128 will be Viscount of Béarn of 1131 to 1134 under the name of Centulle VI.

Internal bonds

External bonds

  • History of the enclaves, grounds of Bigorre in Béarn

  • Bearn, Auñamendi Entziklopedia
  • Gastón de Bearn in el historical Information center of Saragossa
  • last wills of Gaston IV

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