Sovereign Principality of Bidache

The sovereign principality of Bidache (or sovereignty of Bidache ) was a small territory in extreme cases of the France and Navarre which, with 17th and 18th centuries, had in acquired fact a statute of practically independent principality.

Limits of the principality

The sovereignty of Bidache extended only on the grounds of the parish even from Bidache, small town of current the Yrénées-Atlantiques at the edge of the Bidouze, to about thirty kilometers in the east of Bayonne.

It should not be confused with the Duché of Gramont, formed of other grounds under the jurisdiction of the family of Gramont but where the sovereignty of king de France and Navarre was exerted.

Chronology of sovereignty

The Middle Ages: Bidache in Navarre

At the time of the period of extension of the Royaume of Navarre towards north to the 13th century, with annexation of the Pays of Mixes, Bidache between under sovereignty of king de Navarre, initially in a a little ambiguous way it September 22nd 1329, when Arnaud-Guillaume III lord of Gramont lends for the first time a homage to king de Navarre for his castle of Bidache, it is stipulated that “if the castle were not in Navarre, or that somebody put opposition at it, the pact would be null in its connection, but valid for that of Gramont” - then undoubtedly possible: the homages reiterated in 1385, 1409, 1429 or 1434 by the later lords of Gramont do not comprise any more a restrictive clause.

Beyond this last date of 1434, more trace of homage for Bidache to king de Navarre. The situation of the parish thus remains more than one century in a blur maintained by Gramont.

Establishment of sovereignty

The date to be retained in the history of the establishment of a sovereignty with Bidache, it is 1570 and more particularly the October 21st. This day, Antoine Ier de Gramont, who intervenes in his capacity as mayor of Bayonne in front of the body of city states there that Bidache “is held by him in sovereignty, except however that the King and the Queen of Navarre, of absolute power, can about it differently lay out because of their size”. Accompanied with a careful restriction, it is the first public assertion by the dukes of Gramont of a sovereignty on their ground of Bidache.

One knows however an act older, but deprived, where Antoine Ier asserts this “sovereignty”, namely a testamentary legacy of 1566 where it yields to his wife the “usufruct of sovereignty” on Bidache.

As of the end of 1570, the acts affirming of the sovereign rights accumulate quickly. The November 13rd of this same year, Antoine Ier signs in Bidache an ordinance carrying payment of justice like sovereign lord; the April 6th 1575 it makes publish a specific habit for this ground.

More daring still, Antoine II uses the formula of majesty “because such is our good pleasure” in fence of a promulgated ordinance the September 22nd 1596. Starting from this date, it is described as “sovereign” in his acts, for example its marriage contract.

Lastly, the most convincing document undoubtedly in the direction of the sovereignty of Bidache, it is the letters patent by which the Inhabitant of Béarn Henri IV of France - which is at the same time the king Henri III of Navarre- grants to the inhabitants of Bidache the same franknesses as those that it grants elsewhere in his kingdoms of France and Navarre (what is already to implicitly recognize that Bidache does not form part of it). In this document indeed, the King of France and Navarre qualifies Antoine de Gramont of “sovereign of the ground of Bidache”.

Adventures of 1610: the business Louise de Roquelaure

Of return of hunting, the count Antoine II of Gramont finds his wife Louise de Roquelaure in the arms of his rider, Marsilien. Taken anger, the husband misled occit the lover, while the unsteady wife flees.

Where the fact various meets the question of the sovereignty of Bidache, it is that it will give place to disputes and legal documents which have a range on the statute of the small principality.

Initially, Antoine II, rather curiously, assigns his wife in front of the Parlement of Bordeaux this which seems to be of its share recognition of a French sovereignty on Bidache. The baron de Roquelaure has time to answer it in the name of his daughter, but new King de France, the young person Louis XIII (i.e. its advisers, the child is only eight years old) sends a letter to the protagonists to summon them “to hide these domestic businesses and offenses rather to highlight them at people who, without these continuations and procedures, had any never yes to speak”. Seeing the badly committed business in Bordeaux, Antoine then subjects it to his justice of Bidache, which condemns the countess to the capital punishment. Very dissatisfied with the turning which the business takes, the French royal capacity sends an emissary to Bidache, charged to require communication of the judgment delivered by the court of the small town like of the whole of the parts of the procedure. There very clearly, Antoine III fact act of sovereignty since it initially prohibits the entry to him on its territory, and authorizes it finally only after the representative of the King agreed to sign a declaration according to which it enters in Bidache “not in the public capacity as anybody (...) ains like individual”.

The stop will not be carried out: the countess dies the November 9th 1610 under conditions particularly not very clear, “poisoned” according to Pierre of Estoile, “fallen in a deep well” because of collapse from the rotted floor of the room where it had been assigned with residence according to Tallemant of Réaux.

The procedure does not follow from there less its course. The Conseil of the King seizes judgment of the Court of Bidache this would be thus that it is not sovereign and the break-in, while letters of abolition (i.e. of forgiveness) of the King gracient the count and “all others” for their role in this sad business. Antoine II hastens to make record these letters before the Parliament of Bordeaux, seeming once again to recognize the sovereignty of King de France for a business relating to Bidache.

From 1611 with the French revolution

Raymond Ritter raises during this time two new adventures likely to inform us on the exact statute of Bidache.

The first is a complaint addressed to the cardinal of Richelieu the October 24th 1631 by a president of availability of the Parlement of Navarre. It felt sorry for there that Bidache became a “asylum of brigands” and that one there “judaïse” and suggests police chief sending in the city to obtain the application of the stop of 1611 which, in its reading, has deposed the counts de Gramont of their sovereignty. The complaint will not be followed of effect, it is interesting since it shows us how a contemporary can interprêter the adventures of the beginning of the century, and as well sure for the table as it recalls us one of the most concrete incidences of this sovereignty, the existence of a right of asylum to the profit of those which want to flee the kingdoms of France and Navarre, and in particular two categories which can have good reasons to do it: criminals and Jews.

The second occurs in 1710. The May 9th of this year, informing a business which relates to Bidache, the public prosecutor close the Parliament of Navarre concludes with competence from this one. The judgment delivered grants weight to these conclusions since, without endorsing expressly them, it opens an investigation and prescribes with the judge of Bidache to appear before the Parliament “to answer the conclusions of Mister the public prosecutor who claimed that the seigniory of Bidache is located in Navarre and that there can be call of what is decided and regulated by the judges of this seigniory, and that names must be carried before the Parliament of Navarre. ”. Gramont very take the business with serious, and immediately undertake a procedure against this stop which discusses their claims with sovereignty. Memories are exchanged; the business is finally carried in front of the Conseil of Regency. The business finishes in a quite singular way, since the historians who lean on this one at the 20th century do not find any trace of a stop of the council regulating this litigation. Raymond Ritter provides a plausible explanation of it: according to him, it is although no judgment was handed down; solution juridically heretic, but who is a skilful way to recognize the sovereign rights of the duke of Gramont without taking the risk of a dangerous jurisprudential precedent.

End of the principality

The January 4th 1790, Bidache, which was not represented with the General states, load notable, Louis Perret, “of going to Paris to see the duke of Gramont to know if the sovereignty of Bidache must remain in the state, and see the National Assembly, if sovereignty not existing more, Bidache would belong to one of the recently formed departments”. It is if to take well late, work of the committee in charge of the new administrative cutting of France is already quite advanced, and it does not seem that the independence of Bidache posed problem to them. It is the April 16th which the small town will learn its fastening in France by listening to the reading from the letters patent of the King about the division of the Kingdom in departments, and the decree specifying cutting: Bidache was annexed to the the Low-Pyrenees and there constitutes a chief town of canton, which was joined together with the district labourdin of Ustaritz. Sovereignty is definitively extinct.

Bidache, an independent country? Retrospective readings

The question of the sovereignty of Bidache reappears at the end of the 19th century, this time like historical object of interest. The History and genealogy of the house of Gramont published in 1874 by Agénor de Gramont, monument with the glory of the family of Gramont, wants to make of Bidache a true State, which would have been sovereign since the neighborhoods of the year thousand. Vis-a-vis him, the polemist Jean-François Bladé rebounds on the topic for on the contrary making fun of the claims of Gramont and denying any sovereignty with this family. To the next century, Raymond Ritter will return them back to back by criticizing the scientific low value their work, which one will thus not take too with the serious one.

Armand Brette, besides in its study on the Limits and Territorial Divisions of France in 1789 published in 1907 evokes with recreation these polemics and for its part concludes with reality from sovereignty from Bidache: it indeed underlines that to profit from a justice in last spring is precisely a sign of unambiguous sovereignty, even the definition even of sovereignty.

Historical work is done much more precise, with the succession of research of the two specialists in the house of Gramont, Jean de Jaurgain then Raymond Ritter. The work signed of the two authors, supplemented by the second after the death of the first and published in 1967, contains a detailed appendix relative to this legal question, and which could benefit from a thesis of right especially devoted to the question by Jean Labrit in 1939. Raymond Ritter as concludes him very clearly with the existence from a true sovereign capacity on Bidache, being of course as the versions claiming to make it go back to the Middle Ages are only plots.

Finally more recently still, in 1984, in the historical panorama of the canton of Bidache which it publishes then, Jean Robert is him rather critical on the thesis of sovereignty he underlines for example that the directory of the nobility of France of 1845 does not count less than 33 French strongholds which claimed at one time or another being “sovereignty” or “principality”. It is also that the author is interested more in the space lived than with institutional space, and its work is invaluable to seize the real consequences on the daily life with Bidache of the very particular statute of the city and in particular its situation of harbor where can find asylum, according to the political economic situations, huguenots, catholics or Jews, but also the attractivity of the territory for the brigands of any species.

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