Aquitaine and Anjou
Aquitaine (Aquitània)
Occitania, is a region in southern France were historically the Occitan language was spoken it is roughly the same area as the Roman province Septem Provinciæ and the early Middle Ages the region was known as Aquitanica or the Visigothic Kingdom of Toulouse.
After Clovis had conquered the Visigoth at the battle of Poitiers in 507, the Merovingians set up the Duchy of Vasconia in 602. However, so far away from the centre they had difficulty establishing direct control. As of 660, the duchies of Aquitaine and Vasconia were united under the rule of Felix of Aquitaine to form an independent entity, they were also able to maintain its Roman civilisation.
This duchy reached its heyday under Eudes (Odo) the Great’s rule when it was attacked by the Muslims who had just invaded the Visigoth Hispania. After successfully fending them off in Toulouse in 719 he was defeated close to Bordeaux. Odo was required to pledge allegiance to the Frankish Charles Martel in exchange for help against the Muslim forces, and Vascon-Aquitanian self-rule first came to an end by 742, and definitely in 768 after the assassination of Waifer.
In 781, Charlemagne proclaimed his son Louis King of Aquitaine within the Carolingian Empire. However, the Carolingians had great trouble keeping the region under control under King of Aquitaine Pepin. After the death of the King of East Francia, Charles the Fat, the nobles of Aquitaine appointed one of them, Count Ranulf II of Poitiers, as the new duke. His basterd son Ebalus took over but after he lost a battle against Norman Rollo – the founder of what later became the Duchy of Normandy – he had to flee.
In 893 the Duchy came into the hands of his ally Guilhèm (William) I (the Pious), Count of Auvergne, he was married to Engelberga the daughter of Boso of Provence. 910, William founded the Benedictine abbey of Cluny that would become an important political and religious centre.
After his death his nephew Willam II succeeded him he was married to Gerletta a daughter of Rollo. By now however Ebalus received his title back in 928 and started his 2nd term as Duke of Aquitaine after the death of William II and his brother Acfred.
In 929, the West Francia King Rudolph started trying to reduce the power of Ebalus. As his overlord he, in 932 transferred the titles of Duke of Aquitaine and Count of Auvergne to the Count of Toulouse, Raymond Pons. After the death of Rudolph in 936, Ebalus son William claimed the title back and after battles, negotiations and some concessions he was able to do so and in became Duke William III.
The Frankish Duke and Count of Paris Hugh the Great together with the West Francia King Louis IV tried to conquer Aquitaine but William defeated them. Lothair, Louis’s successor joined Hugh to besiege Poitiers, which resisted successfully. After the death of Hugh, his son Hugh Capet was named duke of Aquitaine, but he never tried to take up his fief, William reconciled with Lothair and maintained hit title and position.
His grandson William V (the Great) was one of the first great patrons of the arts, he was a big promoter of the Peace of God and was able to maintain the peace in his duchy. He travelled widely and received many international guests at his court
Skipping a few dukes, William IX (1071 – 1126) He was also one of the leaders of the Crusade of 1101. However he is best known as the earliest troubadour — a vernacular lyric poet in the Occitan language — whose work survives.
As his father before him, William X was a patron of troubadours, music and literature. He was an educated man and strove to give his two daughters an excellent education, in a time when Europe’s rulers were hardly literate. When Alienòr (Eleanor) succeeded him as Duchess, she continued her father’s tradition and transformed the Aquitanian court into Europe’s centre of knowledge. She became one of the wealthiest and most powerful women in Western Europe of her time. Her conduct was repeatedly criticised by Church elders (particularly Bernard of Clairvaux) as improper.
The Duchy passed to France in 1137 when Eleanor married Louis VII of France. The Duchy of Aquitaine was the largest and richest province of France; Poitou and Aquitaine together were almost one-third the size of modern France. As Queen of France, she participated in the unsuccessful Second Crusade. Eleanor was severely disappointed with her husband’s performance, they travelled back on different ships and she divorced him as soon as they were back in France (1152).
As he widow her position was now extremely vulnerable and immediate attempts were made by claimants to take over Aquitaine. Within two month after the annulment she married Henry, Count of Anjou and Duke of Normandy. Two years later her second husband became King Henry III of England and Eleanor was crowned Queen of England.
Aquitaine now became an English possession. This was a critical issue for France as its own domains (in what is now France) were now smaller than those owned by the King of England. The King of France had the support of the Pope as he was not to keen in seeing England becoming too powerful on the continent.
Eleanor and Henry had five sons, three of whom would become king, and three daughters. However, the couple eventually became estranged and she left him in 1167, to move back to Poitier. Her, it has been argued by some scholars she established the ‘Court of Love’, where Eleanor and perhaps her daughter Marie meshed and encouraged the ideas of troubadours, chivalry, and courtly love into a single court.
In 1173 she supported her son Henry’s revolt against her husband. She was taken prisoner by the French king and transported to England where she was imprisoned between 1173 and 1189.
Henry III died in 1189 and he was succeeded by his son, Richard the Lionheart, who immediately moved to release his mother. Now queen dowager, Eleanor acted as a regent for her son while he went off on the Third Crusade. When Richard was captured during that campaign, she personally negotiated his (very large) ransom by going to Germany. Eleanor survived her son Richard and lived well into the reign of her youngest son King John. By the time of her death in 1204 (at the age of approx 80) she had outlived all of her children except for King John and her daughter Eleanor, Queen of Castile, who was married to Alfonso VIII, king of Castile.
Within the strict rules of the feudal system it was possible for France and England to live more or less peaceful. By simply acknowledging the feudal rules of vassalage it was acceptable for France to accept England’s possessions. However, with growing centralisation, which undermined the local nobility and the overall feudal system, it became increasingly less acceptable for France to have an English threat on its doorstep.
Aquitaine became an increasingly bitter battle ground between England and France which led to the Hundred Years’ War. It remained in English possession until the end of the war in in 1453, when it was finally annexed by France (Since known as Guyenne).
Angevins (House of Anjou)
Anjou was an independent duchy – in the north of France (Orléans and Angers) since the 9th century. The Angevins, also known as the House of Anjou, were a noble family founded in the early years of the Carolingian Empire. They first emerged as part of the minor feudal nobility, in what would soon be known as the Kingdom of France during the 10th century. After Geoffrey III, Count of Anjou inherited Anjou from his mother in 1060, the family began to grow in prominence, soon acquiring Maine. After going on crusade and becoming close to the Knights Templar, the Kingdom of Jerusalem was received through marriage by Fulk of Jerusalem in 1131.
The Angevins of Jerusalem became extinct in 1205 with the death of Isabella of Jerusalem..
Plantagenet
| The senior line of the family branched off – with Geoffrey V of Anjou – to become the House of Plantagenet. The Latin name ‘Planta genista’ derived from the name of a shrub, the common broom, Geoffrey wore a yellow sprig of the common broom in his hat.After William the Conqueror died, his son Henry I became king of England, he was married to Eleanor of Aquitaine. Their daughter Matilda married the Holy Emperor Heinrich V, after his death Empress Matilda married Geoffrey V. After Henry I died Matilda became the (first) queen of England
Their son Henry became the next king (Henry II) of England the family eventually ruled the Kingdom of England form 1154 until 1485 (in total fifteen Plantagenet monarchs). Henry was also: Count of Anjou, Count of Maine, Duke of Normandy, Duke of Aquitaine, Duke of Gascony, Count of Nantes, Lord of Ireland and, at various times, controlled parts of Wales, Scotland and western France. The reign of the Plantgenet ended when they finally lost the Hundred Years’ War in 1453. |
In 1204, Anjou was lost to king Philip II of France. It was re-granted as an appanage for Louis VIII’s son John, who died in 1232 at the age of thirteen, and then to Louis’s youngest son, Charles, later the first Angevin king of Sicily.
Charles’ granddaughter, Margaret married, in 1290,Charles of Valois, the younger brother of king Philip IV of France. He became Count of Anjou in her right, and was created Duke of Anjou and a Peer of France in 1297.
House of Anjou-Sicily and House of Anjou-Naples
Through the above mentioned Eleanor of Castille, the daughter of Eleanor of Aquitaine and Henry II of England, the House of Anjou established yet another branch. Blanca (Blanche) of Castile (daughter of Eleanor of Castile and granddaughter of Eleanor of Aquitaine) married the French king Louise VIII ( a marriage arranged by her grandmother). After the early death of her husband Blanche proofed to be a very powerful ruler first as the regent of her son and when he came at age as King Louis IX St Stain she became Queen Mother.
Louis was able to wrestle Anjou back from the Plantagenet and bestowed the County of Anjou upon his brother, Charles (1227–1285) as a western vassal state of the Kingdom of France. This House would go on to rule Sicily, Naples, and Hungary, suffering many tragedies and disasters on the way; the second would eventually succeed to the French throne, collecting Navarre along the way.
Charles married the heiress of the County of Provence named Beatrice of Provence, she was a member of the House of Barcelona; this meant Charles’ holdings were growing as Count of Provence. After fighting in the Seventh Crusade, rather unexpected Charles was offered by Pope Clement IV, the Kingdom of Sicily — which at the time also included the southern half of the Italian Peninsula. The reason for Charles being offered the kingdom was because of a conflict between the Papacy and the Holy Roman Empire, the latter of whom were represented by the ruling House of Hohenstaufen. However, after the night of the Sicilian Vespers in 1282, he was kicked out of Sicily by Peter III of Aragon.. This led to the split of the country into the Kingdom of Sicily and the Kingdom of Naples. Charles now only was in charge of the latter. Throughout the following centuries Sicily and Naples would be contested between the various French and Spaniard dynasties.