End of Basque home rule in France

Lower Navarre nominally remained a kingdom apart from France located at the feet of the Pyrenean passes and benefiting from the cross-border trade routes, e.g. Pamplona-Bayonne.

[1] The Estates of Lower Navarre went through a similar fate when litigation with officials in Pau led to their legislating powers being severely curtailed by royal decree in 1748.

The tiny Principality of Bidache, which, since the 16th century, claimed sovereignty apart from Navarre, did not send representatives to the Estates, but was declared part of the French department.

Likewise minor territorial entities were redesigned, most notably, merging Ustaritz and Bayonne to dysfunctional effects, right after the 1780s separation of Labourd from the latter as demanded by its assembly of representatives (Biltzar).

The kingdom turned into a Republic in September 1792, the Jacobins and the National Convention rose to prominence, followed by the arrest, trial and eventual execution of King Louis XVI (January 1793).

"[8] In the spring of 1794, thousands[9] were forced out of their homes, regrouped, and segregated by age and sex, then conducted in a long column to at least 40 km away of their houses, to the vicinity of Capbreton.

Within months, many deportees managed to come back home when the Jacobin National Convention collapsed, only to find their properties in the hands of French "patriots".

Turmoil and unrest ensued in southern Labourd triggered by a desire for restoration and revenge, leading for example to the assassination in Ustaritz of Monsieur Mundutegi, a local proponent of the mass deportation.

[16] Still Dominique Joseph Garat, a high-ranking official close to Bonaparte at the turn of the 19th century, put forward the possibility of establishing a buffer Basque principality loyal to France.

In 1804, the Napoleonic Civil Code was decreed, breaking up the native legal approach to inheritance and property, bringing about the fragmentation of the family's farmstead and restriction to communal lands (duties required by the state), prompting yet further emigration waves.