County of Bigorre
Open-knowledge reference entry
The County of Bigorre was a small feudatory of the Duchy of Gascony in the 9th through 15th centuries. Its capital was Tarbes.
The county was constituted out of the dowry of Faquilène, an Aquitainian princess, for her husband Donatus Lupus I, the son of Lupus III of Gascony. The original Bigorre was considerable in size, but successive generations, following on Gascon traditions, gave out portions as appanages to younger sons. The county lost Lavedan, Aster, Aure, and Montaner in the first two generations.
The original dynasty died out in Bigorre in the 11th century, the county passing to the House of Foix and then that of Béarn. In the 12th century, it went to the house of Marsan and then of Comminges and in the thirteenth to that of Montfort. It was briefly in the hands of the Armagnacs and passed between English and French suzerainty during the Hundred Years' War before finally being recovered by the French. In the 15th century, it fell to the House of Foix again and thence to the crown in an exchange of properties.
List of counts of Bigorre
House of Montfort
1251–1256 Alice with her second husband
1251–1256 Raoul of Courtenay
House of Chabanais
1256–1283 Esquivat
1283–1302 Laura
After this point the succession became disputed and whether the county owes allegiance to England or France was also fought over.
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This entry incorporates text from “County of Bigorre” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.