The Gramont family at Bidache: seven centuries of sovereignty

The story of the Gramont family at Bidache is the story of a small piece of land patiently transformed into a sovereign principality.

It begins around 1190, when Brun de Gramont, descended from the viscounts of Dax, received Bidache as his share of the family inheritance and built a first castle there.

It was a military reversal that settled the Gramont family at Bidache for good. After their fortress of Agramonte, at Viellenave-sur-Bidouze, was destroyed by the army of the King of England, they made Bidache their stronghold. It was in their fief of Viellenave, in 1215, that the Gramont family had established itself as a lordship.

From this period dates the feudal ambiguity out of which their whole singular status would grow.

In 1486 Roger de Gramont became hereditary mayor of Bayonne, and from then on the family used this double foundation to govern both the great port city and the land of Bidache.

On 22 September 1329, Arnaud-Guillaume III paid homage to the King of Navarre for his land of Bidache, but attached a decisive clause to the act: if the castle should prove not to lie within Navarre, or if anyone should raise an objection, the pact would be void as regards the king, yet still binding on the lord of Gramont.

Later acts of homage, in 1385, 1409, 1429 and 1434, dropped all such reservations, and then simply stopped. After 1434 there is no further trace of homage paid to the King of Navarre for Bidache. This carefully maintained silence, lasting a century, left the land in a state of uncertainty that the Gramont family knew how to turn to their advantage.

By the end of the 15th century the church of Bidache had become their burial place.

The disaster of 1523 nearly swept everything away. While Jean II, Baron of Gramont, was fighting the troops of Charles V in the service of François I, it was Philibert de Chalon who besieged the château of Bidache and burned it.

It was a woman who restored the house. Claire de Gramont, sister of Jean II and widow of Menaud d’Aure, led the rebuilding of the château with the support of her uncle Charles de Gramont, Archbishop of Bordeaux. He died without heirs, leaving her the sole heiress of the House of Gramont, a rare thing at a time when great houses were seldom raised up again by a woman.

In 1541 she obtained a precious relic of Saint James of Compostela, which made the collegiate church of Bidache a place of pilgrimage known far beyond the region.

In 1549 Antoine de Bourbon, King of Navarre, was received at Bidache.

In July 1565 Antoine I hosted a royal reception for Catherine de’ Medici and Charles IX.

In 1568 the marriage was celebrated of Antoine I’s eldest son, Philibert, to Diane d’Andoins, Countess of Guiche. Diane d’Andoins took the name “Corisande”. Later, as the widow of Philibert de Gramont, she became the muse of the future King of France, Henri IV, giving Bidache considerable political weight.

In 1566 Antoine I began the process of making his land of Bidache sovereign, arranging a private bequest to his wife.

In October 1570, in his capacity as mayor of Bayonne, Antoine I publicly declared before the city council that he considered Bidache to be held “in sovereignty”. Three weeks later he signed an ordinance of justice as a sovereign lord. The principality was born.

It was consolidated under Antoine II.

In 1609 Henri IV, King of France and Navarre and also a Béarnais neighbour, released Bidache from his kingdoms, implicitly acknowledging that it did not form part of them, and described Antoine II as “sovereign of the land of Bidache”. This gave him rights of asylum, legislation and justice.

In 1602 the right of asylum had already shown its full significance, when Diane d’Andoins obtained permission from Henri IV to welcome Jews fleeing Spain.

The episode that best reveals the nature of Gramont power at Bidache is the Marsilien affair of 1610. Having caught his wife, Louise de Roquelaure, with his equerry, Antoine II killed the lover and then had his wife tried and sentenced to death. When a royal emissary arrived to demand the case file, the count first barred him from his territory and gave way only after obliging him to declare that he entered “not in the capacity of a public person, but as a private one”. Sovereignty was never asserted more clearly, even though the King’s Council promptly quashed the ruling handed down by the court of Bidache and so reminded everyone of the limits of the exercise. The judgment of the Bidache court was never carried out, but the countess died in unclear circumstances, leaving the question of sovereignty more ambiguous still.

The high point came with Antoine III, Marshal of France. The house was raised to a duchy and peerage in 1643, a striking paradox: a self proclaimed sovereign made duke and peer by the King of France.

In July 1659 Bidache reached its greatest splendour when Duke Antoine III received Mazarin, who had come to negotiate the Treaty of the Pyrenees.

This was also the period when the Jewish community, settled in significant numbers from around 1652, obtained its own cemetery in 1665. Its members played an important role in trade and finance. Bidache also served as a place of exile for the Marshal’s own son, the Comte de Guiche, sent away from court because of his attachment to Henrietta of England.

The 18th century was one of decline. Louis XIV required the presence of the Gramont family at Versailles.

By 1710 the château of Bidache was no longer inhabited, yet a theoretical sovereignty persisted over the land, which the Parlement of Navarre attempted to bring under its jurisdiction. The case was taken as far as the Council of Regency but was never settled. This prudent silence preserved the duke’s rights without creating a precedent.

In 1756 the intendant d’Étigny denounced a principality without a prince, become a haven for “criminals, bandits and scoundrels”. Tobacco smuggling flourished there.

The Revolution brought a quiet end. On 16 April 1790 Bidache learned of its attachment to the Basses-Pyrénées, and the sovereignty was extinguished. The fire of 1796 and the desecration of the family vault followed.

The memory survived. Duke Antoine VIII restored the vault in 1819, gathering the bones of his ancestors into a single coffin.

In the 19th century the ruins drew romantic visitors, among them Napoleon III, the Empress Eugénie and the future King Edward VII.

The château still belongs to the House of Gramont. The duke, Antoine XIV, was buried there in 2014, in the crypt of the church of Bidache that the family has used for seven centuries.

Today the Duke of Gramont, Antoine XV, lives in the United States and returns to Bidache every summer.