County of Toulouse

The County of Toulouse was the great Occitan principality of southern France, lasting from 778 to 1271. Charlemagne planted Frankish counts in Toulouse to hold Septimania; by the ninth century's end their heirs answered to no one, ruling the city and its country as sovereign princes of the langue d'oc. The counts' power peaked under the Raymonds, crusaders and troubadour-patrons whose court at Toulouse shone over the south. Then came the Albigensian Crusade: Rome declared war on the Cathar heresy nested in Toulousain lands, northern barons under Simon de Montfort ravaged the country for twenty years, and in 1229 the Treaty of Paris forced Toulouse to submit to the French crown. The counts kept their title and town until 1271, when the last of the line died and the county passed outright to the king. With it died Occitan independence; the south's language of troubadours yielded to the administration of Paris, and Toulouse became a provincial capital with an imperial memory.