Armagnac

The counts of Armagnac were a Gascon house at Auch between the Adour and Garonne. The county was carved from Fezensac in 960, and after the 1229 Treaty of Meaux it was Gascony's strongest fief. John I, ruling from 1319 to 1373, enlarged it by marriage and purchase, adding Rodez and Carlat.

Ceded to England with Aquitaine by the 1360 Treaty of Brétigny, Armagnac found the Black Prince's taxes unbearable, and in 1369 its count submitted to Charles V. Bernard VII, who died in 1418, married his daughter to the Duke of Orléans and led the royal party against the Burgundians; the faction came to be called the Armagnacs. Civil war lasted until 1435, and his veterans fought as mercenaries in the Armagnac War in Switzerland in 1444.

John V resisted Louis XI and was killed at the siege of Lectoure in 1473; on the last count's death in 1497 the house lost its lands, joined by Henry IV to the royal domain in 1607.