History of Aquitaine

It is remarkable how the history of Aquitaine has followed – and sometimes preceded! – the history of France. A visit to Aquitaine takes you to an encounter with France’s ancestors…

Starting with the most distant of our ancestors. The Vézère Valley in the Dordogne is quite simply considered as the cradle of humanity, as homo erectus settled here 400,000 years ago! The painted caves, shelters and sites tell us the story of the daily life of prehistoric man.

What about the famous Gauls? In the 3rd century BC their tribes mixed with the peoples of Aquitaine. The Petrucores founded Périgueux, and the Bituriges Vivisques founded Bordeaux... Together they occupied South West France – from the Loire to the Rhone and the Mediterranean.

In 56 BC, Rome conquered the region. The Romans settled without too much conflict – indeed they brought with them the benefits of their civilisation. The roads were constructed, town plans traced, and rich villas built. The first vines were planted, too – "biturica" in Latin.

The fall of Rome (in 476 in Constantinople) and the start of the Middle Ages. Aquitaine suffered the Vandal and Visigoth invasions, the sieges of the armies of Clovis (6th century) to build a free kingdom, and then the battles to keep it in the face of more independence-minded peoples such as the Vascons (or Gascons) in the Pyrenees.

And in 719, the Pyrenees were crossed by the Muslim armies, who got as far as Poitiers before being stopped by the army of Charles Martel in 732. Under the Carolingians and Charlemagne, a more closely united Aquitaine began to take shape.

The period also saw the emergence of the Catholic Church from the 4th century onwards, and many of those born in Aquitaine at the time will have taken part in building bishops’ palaces, monasteries and abbeys. Places of worship such as churches and basilicas were also constructed for the people: Saint Front in Périgueux, Saint Pierre and Sainte Eulalie in Bordeaux. This development continued with the construction of a series of routes pointing pilgrims along their way to Compostella.

In the 10th and 11th centuries, the region was divided once again, this time between the Duchies of Aquitaine and Gascony, before being reunited within a vast, single State forming the dowry of Eleanor, Duchess of Aquitaine, newly divorced from King Louis VII of France. She went on to marry Henry II Plantagenet, future King of England, in 1152.

Then came the era of the Anglo-Gascon princes (12th-15th centuries) as the struggle for possession of Aquitaine – often referred to as Guyenne, by phonetic alteration – opposed the crowns of England and France during the Hundred Years War (1334-1453). The war came to a close with the victory of the French at Castillon-la-Bataille, on 17 July 1453. 

Those were hard times for the people of Aquitaine: armies left a wake of destruction, epidemic and famine behind them as in-fighting between powerful feudal lords intensified. Many of the region’s castles date from this stormy era: Beynac in Perigord, Roquetaillade in the Gironde, Bonaguil in the Lot-et-Garonne and Montaner in Béarn, to name but a few.

But the war was not waged continuously and the period was also marked by a certain form of prosperity. It saw the development of a growing urban population in fortified new towns, referred to as bastides, and also the spread of the French language in the region’s towns and castles. It was also a time of growing trade and saw the first successes of Bordeaux wines. No fewer than 100,000 casks (or 85 million litres!) of wine were exported to England in 1308.