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Aquitaine (or "Guyenne" or "Guienne") now forms a région in south-western France along the Atlantic Ocean and the Pyrenees
mountain range on the border with Spain.
History
In Roman times, the province of Aquitania originally comprised the
region of Gaul between the Pyrenees Mountains and the Garonne River, but Augustus Caesar added to it the land
between the Garonne and the Loire River. At this stage the province extended
inland as far as the Cevennes and covered an area about one third of the size of
modern France. Aquitaine was quite thoroughly Romanized in its culture,
unlike northern Gaul.
The 4th century AD saw the Roman province of Aquitaine divided into three
separate provinces:
- Aquitania prima, the north-eastern portion, including the territories which later became Berry, Bourbonnais, Auvergne, Velay, Gévaudan, Rouergue, Albigeois,
Quercy and Marche
- Aquitania secunda, the northwestern portion, with its capital at Burdigala (Bordeaux) and comprising the future Bordelais, Poitou Saintonge,Angoumois and western Guienne
- Aquitania tertia or Aquitania Novempopulana, the southernmost portion, adjoining the Pyrennees and covering
what later became Bigorre, Coming, Armagnac, Béarn, the Basque country, Gascony, etc.
In the 5th century, as Roman rule collapsed, the Visigoths filled the power vacuum, until they were driven out in 507 CE
by the Franks, with a mixed army of mercenaries and federates, who included Burgundians. When
Clothaire II died in 629, he divided the kingdom of the Franks and gave Aquitaine to his son Charibert, who set up his capital at Toulouse and strengthened his claims by marrying Gisela, the heiress
of the Novempopulana; however,
Frankish control was never very secure; they were primitive by comparison and had only the most rudimentary sense of urban life
and the res publica. Aquitaine put up little resistance to the
Moors in the 8th century, but
Charles Martel drove them out, and Aquitaine passed into the Carolingian Empire.
The heirs of Charlemagne divided and redivided their inheritance, and
Aquitaine passed out of the control of Neustria, the western kingdom of
Charlemagne's house, and in the 9th century the leading local counts
gradually freed themselves of the vestiges of royal control. Bernard Plantevelue (ruling 868-86) and his son, William I (ruling 886-918), whose power base was in Auvergne, called themselves dukes of Aquitaine for a time. William V (ruling 995-1030) refounded a new duchy of Aquitaine, that was based in Poitou, and this
power center survived. Aquitaine contained Poitiers, Auvergne, and Toulouse. In 1052 the duchy of Gascony (French: Gascogne) became part of
"Aquitania", by personal union of duke William
VIII. Aquitaine achieved a high literate court culture of courteoisie that peaked under William VIII (ruled
1058-86). Duke William IX, the troubadour was a poet himself, and Poitiers became a center of the musical poetry
of the troubadours. When William X died (1137), his
daughter Eleanor of Aquitaine, the greatest heiress of
France, married her guardian, Louis VII of France and
followed him on crusade, then had the childless marriage annulled in 1152 to marry
his greatest rival Henry II of England. She maintained an
elegant chivalric court at Poitiers. Her sons, Richard I and John, and their
successors as kings of England were dukes of Aquitaine (later known as Guienne).
Fighting during the Hundred Years War enabled Edward III of England to reconstruct the old duchy in the 1360s,
but France finally conquered the remainder of it in 1453. After that the history of Aquitaine became part of the history of France.
See also: Dukes of Aquitaine family
tree, Rulers of Auvergne
Geography
Area: 41,400 km2 (7.6 % of France's total area)
Major cities in Aquitaine include Bordeaux, Mont-de-Marsan, Pau, and Perigueux.
Demographics
Population: 2,908,300 (4.97% of the total French population) (1999)
See also
External link
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