Duchy of Aquitaine

The Duchy of Aquitaine was the great southwestern fief of France from 841 to 1453, the land of troubadours that England ruled for three centuries. Born from Charlemagne's subkingdom, it passed to the Poitiers counts, and in 1137 its duchess Eleanor, richest heiress in Europe, married Louis of France, then, annulled, Henry Plantagenet in 1152: Aquitaine went with her, and when Henry took England's throne two years later, half of France answered to London. Her sons warred from its castles, Richard Lionheart most beloved of them. The Black Prince ruled from Bordeaux, taxed hearths, and smashed a French king's army at Poitiers in 1356, carrying John the Good to London. For a century the duchy, renamed Guyenne, was England's France: wine fleets sailed from Bordeaux, Gascon archers drew English pay. Joan's war undid it town by town until only Bordeaux held; in 1453 old Talbot fell at Castillon and the city yielded, ending the Hundred Years' War and the duchy together. France folded Aquitaine into Guyenne's government, keeping its wines, its dialect and its memory of Eleanor.