County of Poitou

The County of Poitou was a historical region and county of western France, centred on the city of Poitiers. Its name derives from the Pictones, the Gallic tribe that inhabited the area in antiquity. The county was bounded by Brittany, Anjou and Touraine to the north, La Marche to the east, and Angoulême to the south, and it corresponded roughly to the later province of Poitou, with the modern departments of Vendée, Deux-Sèvres and Vienne. A continuous line of counts can be traced from an appointment by Charlemagne in 778. From the 950s the counts of Poitou were also dukes of Aquitaine, making the county the heartland of one of the great principalities of medieval France. Through the marriage of Eleanor of Aquitaine, Poitou passed to the kings of England in 1154, and it became a contested borderland. Philip II of France conquered it in 1205, and after repeated fighting in the Hundred Years' War it was finally merged with the French crown in 1416.