Duke of Aquitaine

“ There was to be an end to the power of the courts of Paris to harass the duke of Aquitaine, by using the rights of the suzerain to interfere with the vassal’s subjects. It was hoped that for the future the insidious legal warfare which had been used with such effect by the French kings would be effectually prevented. ”

“ Henry himself seems to have long ago perceived that a duke of Aquitaine, to be thoroughly sure of his ground, needed a different apprenticeship from that which might befit a king of England, a duke of Normandy or Britanny, or a count of Anjou. The very first step in his plans for the future of his children—a step taken several years before he seems even to have thought of crowning his eldest son—was the designation of the second as his mother’s destined colleague and ultimate heir. Richard had been trained up ever since he was two years old specially for the office of duke of Aquitaine. ”

“ The feudal rights of Aquitaine—the right, that is, to demand homage and service—extended far beyond the limits of the sovereign authority of the dukes, and it was always an object to turn a claim of overlordship into an actual exercise of sovereign authority. The tie between the great county of Toulouse and the duchy of Aquitaine was complicated both by legal difficulty and by questions of descent. The rights over Auvergne, claimed by both the king and the duke, were so complex as to be the matter of continual arbitration, and at last were left to settle themselves. ”

“ Until the dukedom of Aquitaine passed to a woman, as were the vassals, so was their sovereign. Eleanor’s grandfather the crusader-duke William VIII. and her father William IX. were simply the boldest knights, the gayest troubadours and the most reckless adventurers in their duchy. There can be no doubt that the submission of Aquitaine to Louis VII., so far as it ever did submit to him, was due to Eleanor’s influence ”

“ Glorious, indeed, to an eyewitness, must have been the ceremony of admitting these noble and valiant youths into the solemn mysteries and chivalric honors of knighthood. On that day the Prince of Wales was first dubbed a knight, and made Duke of Aquitaine; and so great was the pressure of the crowd, in their eagerness to witness the ceremonial in the abbey, where the prince hastened to confer his newly-received dignity on his [Pg 79] companions, that three knights were killed, and several fainted from heat and exhaustion. ”

“ Hemmed in alike to south and east by close allies of the English king whose own duchy of Aquitaine surrounded almost the whole of its north-western border, the house of St.-Gilles felt that it was no longer possible to resist his claim to overlordship over its territories. Henry carried his guests back with him to Limoges; there he settled the dispute between Raymond and Alfonso; and there Raymond did homage to the two Henrys for Toulouse, [641] promising to do the like at Whitsuntide to Richard as duke of Aquitaine, and pledging himself to military service and yearly tribute. ”

“ A few days later William and Gyburg went with the victorious 417 army to where Ludwig was staying with the court. They met with a hearty reception, and the count of Orange was created duke of Aquitaine, while Rennewart was given the town and district of Nismes. The emperor then rewarded all the other leaders for their services, and gave a great feast to the men-at-arms, and a banquet to the nobles. ”

“ The richest baron of Aquitanian Berry, Ralf of Déols, the lord of Châteauroux, whose lands were said to be worth as much as the whole ducal domains of Normandy, [79] had died at the close of 1176 leaving as his sole heir a daughter three [22] 1176 years old. The wardship of this child and of her heritage belonged of right to her suzerain, the Duke of Aquitaine; but her relations were resolved to keep, if possible, both herself and her lands in their own power, [80] so they carried her off to La Châtre, [81] and prepared her castles and their 1176 own for defence and defiance. ”

“ But we must remember that, under the earlier French Kings, the connexion of most of these provinces with their nominal suzerain was even looser than the connexion of the German princes after the Peace of Westphalia with the Viennese Emperors. A great French Duke was as independent within his own dominions as an Elector of Saxony or Bavaria, and there were no common institutions, no Diet or assembly of any kind, to bring him into contact either with his liege lord or with his fellow-vassals. Aquitaine and Toulouse ... ”

“ The people of the south had clung to their Duke, even though their Duke was a foreign ruler. They had stubbornly resisted incorporation with Northern France. While preserving however their traditional fealty to the descendants of Eleanor they still clung to the equally traditional suzerainty of the kings of France. But the treaty of Brétigny not only severed them from the realm of France, it subjected them to the realm of England. Edward ceased to be their hereditary Duke, he became simply an English king ruling Aquitaine as an English dominion. ”

“ Aquitaine, was not to be combined with the dominions of the King of France after the marriage, but was to continue a separate and independent realm, to be governed by Louis and Eleanora, not as King and Queen of France, but as Duke and Duchess of Aquitaine. Both these conditions were complied with. The interview was arranged between Louis and Eleanora, and Eleanora concluded that she should like the king for a husband very much. ”

“ Its local distribution, too, is significant. The restless barons of Aquitaine, still smarting under their defeat of 1169, were but too eager, at the instigation of their duchess and their newly-crowned duke, to renew their struggle against the king. Foremost among them were, as before, the count of Angoulême, [660] the nobles of Saintonge, and Geoffrey of Lusignan, beside whom there stood this time his young brother Guy, now to begin in this ignoble strife a career destined to strange vicissitudes in far-off Palestine. ”

“ In the spring Charles raised two large armies for the invasion of Aquitaine; one, under the Duke of Anjou, was to enter Guyenne by La Reole and Bergerac, the other, under the Duke of Berry, was to march towards Limousin and Queray, and both were to unite and besiege the prince in Angoulême. Ill as he was, the prince left his bed of sickness (Chandos, 1. 4043) and gathered an army at Cognac, where he was joined by the Barons of Poitou and Saintonge, and the Earls of Cambridge, Lancaster, and Pembroke. ”

“ Political significance it has none. Some great Italian nobles are dukes, notably the heads of the great Roman ducal families, but not all Italian dukes are great nobles.
In France the title duke at one time implied vast territorial power, as with the dukes of Burgundy, Normandy, Aquitaine and Brittany, who asserted a practical independence against the crown, though it was not till the 12th century that the title duke was definitely regarded as superior to others. ”

“ In 1372, when the Black Prince had surrendered the principality of Aquitaine into the king's hands, it was granted by royal commission to Felton and Sir Robert Wykford; and on the final withdrawal of the Duke of Lancaster, Felton was appointed seneschal of Bordeaux. ”

“ But the bishop protected those that took refuge in his palace, instead of killing them as he ought to have done—potius concidere debens. For a time Paris had respite. Cowardly Charles the Fat was deposed, and in 887 Count Eudes was acclaimed king of France after his return from Aquitaine, whose duke he had brought to subjection. He counselled a gathering of all the peoples near Paris to make common cause against the Normans. Abbo saw the proud Franks march in with heads erect, the skilful and polished Aquitaines, the Burgundians too prone to flight. ”

“ The city of Bordeaux, near the mouth of the Garonne, as shown by the map, [E] was the chief city of Aquitaine. There the prince established his court, and reigned, as it were, for several years in great splendor. The [Pg 141] fame which he had acquired attracted to his court a great number of knights and nobles from all lands, and whenever a great personage had any wrongs, real or imaginary, to be redressed, or any political end to gain which required the force of arms, he was very likely to come to the Prince of Aquitaine, in order, if possible, to secure his aid. ”

“ The two great powers of northern and southern Gaul, Normandy and Aquitaine, each carrying with it a crowd of smaller states, were united in the hands of a single prince, and that a prince who was also the king of a powerful foreign kingdom. The Aquitanian duchy contained, besides the county of Poitou, a number of fiefs, of which the most important were those of Perigueux, Limoges, the dauphiny of Auvergne, and the county of Marche which gave kings to Jerusalem and Cyprus. ♦Union of Aquitaine and Gascony. ”

“ After the Treaty of Bretigny in 1360, Aquitaine ceased to be a French fief, and was exalted in the interests of the King of England into an independent sovereignty, together with the provinces of Poitou, the Saintonge, Aunis, Agenois, Perigord, Limousin, Quercy, Bigorre, Angoumois and Rouergue, greatly to the dissatisfaction of the people, who remonstrated against being handed over to a foreign lord. Charles V. and Charles VII. sought on every available occasion to escape from its obligations, and the towns were in periodic revolt. ”

“ For nearly a century the city remained in the power of the Visigoths, who, being Arians, persecuted the Catholic inhabitants. Sidonius Apollinaris deplores the injury done to learning by their invasion, but perhaps the decline of learning was partly owing to a growing distaste for pagan literature among Christians. The barbarians were finally routed by Clovis in 507, and he took possession of Bordeaux. Charlemagne made Aquitaine a kingdom for his son Louis le Débonnaire. Louis, son of Charles le Chauve, was the last king of Aquitaine. ”

“ The new duchy of Aquitaine, comprising the three districts already mentioned, remained in the hands of Rainulf’s successors, in spite of some trouble with their Frankish overlords, until 893 when Count Rainulf II. was poisoned by order of King Charles III. the Simple. Charles then bestowed the duchy upon William the Pious, count of Auvergne, the founder of the abbey of Cluny, who was succeeded in 918 by his nephew, Count William II., who died in 926. ”

“ The old Karolingian kingdom of Aquitania had been of far greater extent; it had, in fact, included the whole country between the Loire, the Pyrenees, the Rhone and the ocean. Over all this vast territory the Counts of Poitou asserted a theoretical claim of overlordship by virtue of their ducal title; they had, however, a formidable rival in the house of the Counts of Toulouse." K. Norgate, England under the Angevin Kings, volume 1, chapter 10. See, also, TOULOUSE: 10TH AND 11TH CENTURIES. AQUITAINE: A. D. 1137-1152. Transferred by marriage from the crown of France to the crown of England. ”

“ In 781 Charlemagne bestowed Aquitaine upon his young son, Louis, and as Louis was generally described as a king, Aquitaine is referred to during the Carolingian period as a kingdom, and not as a duchy. When Louis succeeded Charlemagne as emperor in 814, he granted Aquitaine to his son Pippin, on whose death in 838 the Aquitanians chose his son Pippin II. (d. 865) as their king. The emperor Louis I., however, opposed this arrangement and gave the kingdom to his youngest son Charles, afterwards the emperor Charles the Bald. ”

“ The southern provinces of France, Poitou, Saintogne, Auvergne, Perigord, Limousin, Angoumois and Guienne, received of the Romans the classic appellation of Aquitaine. This beautiful land, watered by the Garonne and Loire, whose clear and sparkling streams, flowing from vine-clad hills, stretched their silvery arms to irrigate the fairest fields and to enclose the finest harbors in the world, was in the twelfth century, inhabited by the most civilized and polished people on the face of the earth. ”

“ If their commission from the emperor had given them authority to judge causes, to raise taxes, or to collect troops, they maintained from henceforth that those high powers were inherent in their lands. The dukes, therefore, invested their estates with ducal rights, independent of the Crown, and left to the holder of the kingly name no real authority except in his own domains. Brittany, and Aquitaine, and Septimania, withdrew their allegiance from the poor King of France. ”

“ GUIENNE, an old French province which corresponded roughly to the Aquitania Secunda of the Romans and the archbishopric of Bordeaux. In the 12th century it formed with Gascony the duchy of Aquitaine, which passed under the dominion of the kings of England by the marriage of Eleanor of Aquitaine to Henry II.; but in the 13th, through the conquests of Philip Augustus, Louis VIII. and Louis IX., it was confined within the narrower limits fixed by the treaty of Paris (1259) . It is at this point that Guienne becomes distinct from Aquitaine. ”

“ Charles, by the grace of God King of France, to our nephew the Prince of Wales and of Aquitaine, greeting. Whereas many prelates, barons, knights, universities, communes, and colleges of the country of Gascony and the duchy of Aquitaine, have come thence into our presence, that they might have justice touching certain undue grievances and vexations which you, through weak counsel and silly advice, have designed to impose upon them, whereat we are quite astounded, . ”