Roussillon

Roussillon was the Catalan county of the far French south, named for Ruscino, a small fortified place near modern Perpignan where Gaulish chiefs once parleyed with Hannibal, Rome's Narbonensis, Visigoth Septimania, crossed by Saracens in 719, with Perpignan as its head. In 893 Sunyer II became its first hereditary count, though his writ ran only over the east, and his house spent centuries fencing with greater neighbors. Count Girard marched on the First Crusade behind Raymond of Toulouse and stood among the first into the Holy Land. The last count, Girard II, childless and pressed by bastard brothers, willed every acre to Alfonso of Aragon, who took possession in 1172 and folded Roussillon into the Catalan-Aragonese crown. Under Aragon the ports and mountain passes prospered, Collioure fattened with them, until the French cannons of 1659 carried the province to Paris, Northern Catalonia to its Catalans, with Cerdagne, Capcir, Vallespir, Conflent and Fenouilledes in today's Occitanie.