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Aquitaine (or "Guyenne" or "Guienne") now forms a région in south-western FranceThe French Republic or France ( French: Republique francaise or France is a country whose metropolitan territory is located in western Europe, and which is further made up of a collection of overseas islands and territories located in other continents. along the Atlantic OceanFor other uses, see Atlantic (disambiguation The Atlantic Ocean is Earth's second-largest ocean, covering approximately one-fifth of its surface. The ocean's name, derived from Greek mythology, means the " Sea of Atlas". This ocean occupies an elongated, and the PyreneesFor other meanings see: Pyrenees, Victoria and Montes Pyrenaeus. The Pyrenees ( Spanish Pirineos French Pyrenees Catalan Pirineus Basque Aunamendi are a range of mountains in southwest Europe that form a natural border between France and Spain. They separ mountain range on the border with SpainThe Kingdom of Spain is a country located in the southwest of Europe. It shares the Iberian Peninsula with Portugal, Gibraltar and Andorra. To the northeast, along the Pyrenees mountain range, it borders France and the tiny principality of Andorra. It inc.

1 History

In Roman60 and 400 with major cities. During this time only Dacia and Mesopotamia were added to the Empire but were lost before 300. The Roman Empire is the term conventionally used to describe the Roman state in the centuries following its reorganization under t times, the provinceA Roman province (Latin, provincia was the largest territorial and administrative unit of the Roman Empire's foreign possessions (beyond the Italian peninsula). The word province in modern English therefore has its origins in the term employed by the Roma of Aquitania originally comprised the region of GaulGallia (in English Gaul is the Latin name for the region of western Europe occupied by present-day France, Belgium, western Switzerland and the parts of the Netherlands and Germany on the west bank of the Rhine river. In English the word Gaul commonly ref 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 (of the "nine peoples"), the southernmost and most strongly Basque 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 AD 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 Aquitania 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 marriage annulled under the pretext of kinship 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