Duchy of Gascony

The Duchy of Gascony, first called Vasconia, was the Basque frontier duchy of the southwest, lasting from 602 to 1453. The Franks made it a march to hold the Basques, and for centuries it swung between Frankish, Basque and Aquitanian masters, its dukes marrying into every royal house of the west. In 1152 its fate married England: Eleanor of Aquitaine's dowry carried Gascony, with all Aquitaine, to Henry Plantagenet, and for three hundred years Bordeaux shipped wine to London and bowed to a distant English king. The Gascons served England well, fighting in English armies from Wales to Scotland, while French kings schemed to take the country back. The Hundred Years' War decided it. Bit by bit Valois France nibbled the duchy down, and in 1453 Charles VII's armies reconquered Bordeaux itself as the war's last act; the north passed to the French crown outright, and the southern valleys across the Pyrenees became the Kingdom of Navarre. Eight and a half centuries of the duchy ended where French wine country begins.