GASCONY, an old province in the S.W. of France, nearly identical with the Novempopulania or Aquitania Tertia of the Romans. Its original boundaries cannot be stated with perfect accuracy, but it included what are now the departments of Landes, Gers, and Hautes-Pyrénées, and parts of those of Haute-Garonne and· Ariége. Its capital was Auch. About the middle of the 6th century there was an incursion into this region of Vascons or Vasques from Spain, but whether of a hostile kind or not is uncertain; but as the original inhabitants, in common with those of the rest of Aquitaine were also Vasques, it is probable that the province owes its name Gascony less to this new incursion than to the fact that its inhabitants continued so long to maintain! their independence. In 602 they suffered defeat from the Franks and were compelled to pay tribute, but they continued to be governed by their own hereditary dukes, and gradually extended the limits of their dominions to the Garonne. The province was overrun by Charlemagne but never completely subdued, and in 872 it formally renounced the authority of the French kings; but through the extinction of the male line of hereditary dukes of Ga≡cony in 1054 it came into the possession of the dukes of Guienue (or Aquitaine), with which province its history was from that time identified (see Aquitania and Guienne).