THE CHRISTIAN REALMS 247in 819, when King Pippin I of Aquitaine (817-38) had to cross the
Pyrenees to re-impose Frankish rule.^39 Whether Pamplona and its re-
gion was placed under the administrative authority of a Basque called
Sancho Lopez, the dux of Frankish Vasconia (Gascony), or was formed
into a separate unit in its own right is unknown. However, a Frankish
marcher county was established in the valley of the river Aragon,
where another Basque, Asnar Galindez, was appointed the first count.^40
The newly created march, that paralleled the one created at the
same period in Catalonia at the eastern end of the Pyrenees, proved
to be short-lived. By 824 Pam pion a was again in rebellion, and an
expedition under the Frankish counts Eblo and Asnar, the latter
conceivably the Count of Aragon, having taken the city, was destroyed
in the pass of Roncesvalles. This second battle of Roncesvalles is
perhaps of greater importance than that of 778, for it seems to have
put an end to Frankish intervention across the western Pyrenees, and
led to the establishment of an independent kingdom in Pamplona,
whose first ruler was probably Inigo Arista. Of the Frankish counts
taken in the battle, Asnar, as a fellow Basque, was released but Eblo
was sent as a present to the Umayyad amir, an indication perhaps that
the new kingdom saw the Franks as a greater threat than Cordoba.
The small county of Aragon seems soon to have come under the
suzerainty of Pamplona, to which it was linked geographically. This
resulted from a family drama recorded in one of the tenth-century
genealogies preserved in the Roda codex.41 The elder son of Count
Asnar, called Centolle, having made fun of his brother-in-law, was
murdered by him. This man, known as Garda 'the Bad', with the
assistance of Inigo Arista of Pam pion a and some unidentified Mauros,
that is to say Arabs or Berbers, then evicted Asnar from his county.
This may be related to the latter's involvement in the disastrous cam-
paign of 824. Garda, divorcing Asnar's daughter Matrona, married
an unnamed daughter of Inigo Arista, whose suzerainty he accepted,
while the unfortunate Asnar was compensated with appointment to
the newly created office of Count of Cerdanya and Urgell in Catalo-
nia by the emperor Louis 'the Pious'.
If this story is to be believed, Asnar was succeeded in his offices
by his second son Galindo, who was, however, dispossessed by the
emperor in 834, probably for having supported the usurpation of
Louis's sons in the previous year. The exiled Galindo returned to
Aragon where he succeeded in expelling Garda 'the Bad', but having
then married Inigo Arista's granddaughter Iniga he continued the