County of Artois

The County of Artois was a historic province of the Kingdom of France centred on Arras, in what is now the Pas-de-Calais department. Inhabited in antiquity by the Belgic Atrebates, whose name it preserves, Artois was a Carolingian county from the late eighth century before being annexed by the County of Flanders. It passed to the French crown in 1180 as the dowry of Isabella of Hainaut and was re-established as a separate county in 1237 for her grandson Robert. Artois was a wealthy grain-growing region and its towns, notably Arras, prospered from cloth and banking. Held by the dukes of Burgundy from 1384, it passed to the Habsburgs and became a state of the Holy Roman Empire in 1493. The county was a frequent battleground in the long struggle between France and the Habsburgs, and its capital Arras was the seat of the provincial estates. By the Treaty of the Pyrenees in 1659 France annexed Artois, which was thereafter administered as a province until the revolutionary reorganization of 1790 abolished the historic provinces.