Gascony (Lat. Vasconia), an ancient district in south-western France, situated between the Bay of Biscay, the river Garonne, and the Western Pyrenees. The total area is over 10,000 sq. m.; its inhabitants, numbering about a million, have preserved their dialect, customs, and individuality. The Gascon is little in stature and thin, but strong and lithe in frame: ambitious and enterprising, but passionate and given to boasting and exaggeration. Hence the name Gasconade has gone into literature as a synonym for harmless vapouring. The Gascons, moreover, are quick-witted, cheerful, and persevering, and make capital soldiers. This is especially true of the Gascons in the Gers department; the peasants of the Landes, living in mud-huts, are extremely ignorant and rude in their manners, but yet are honest and moral.
Gascony derived its name from the Basques or Vasques, who, driven by the Visigoths from their own territories on the southern slope of the Western Pyrenees, crossed to the northern side of that mountain-range in the middle of the 6th century, and settled in the former Roman district of Novempopulana. In 602, after an obstinate resistance, the Basques were forced to submit to the Franks. They now passed under the sovereignty of the dukes of Aquitania (q.v.), who for a time were independent of the crown, but were afterwards conquered by King Pepin, and later by Charlemagne. Subsequently Gascony became incorporated with Aquitaine, and shared its fortunes.
See Monlezun, Histoire de la Gascogne (6 vols. Auch, 1846-50); Cénac-Moncaut, Littérature populaire de la Gascogne (Paris, 1868); and J. F. Bladé, Contes populaires de la Gascogne (3 vols. Paris, 1886).