Coucy

The sires de Coucy held the barony of Coucy-le-Château in Picardy; the house probably descended through the female line from the counts of Vermandois. Entitled to call themselves barons, they preferred the rarer title of Sire and ranked among the great magnates of western Europe in the thirteenth century.

Enguerrand III the Great built the enormous castle of Coucy that became the seat of the house. In 1337 the lordship belonged to Enguerrand VI.

His son Enguerrand VII, the last of the line, married a daughter of Edward III of England, helped crush the Jacquerie in 1358, and died a captive at Bursa in 1397 after the disaster of Nicopolis in 1396. His daughter Marie sold Coucy to Louis I, duke of Orléans, in 1400, and it reached the French crown with Louis XII in 1498.