Scarponnois

The House of Scarponnois was a Lotharingian noble dynasty named after the Scarponnois, its homeland in what is now the French department of Meurthe-et-Moselle; its branches ruled the counties of Ferrette, Lutzelbourg and Montbeliard and the County, later Duchy, of Bar. The first attested member was Richwin, count in the Scarponnois, who married Hildegard of Egisheim, sister of Pope Leo IX. His son Louis of Mousson, castellan of Montbeliard, Altkirch and Ferrette, married Sophia of Bar in 1038 and inherited Bar, Amance and Sarreguemines, making his house one of the greatest in Lotharingia. Louis's son Dietrich I married the heiress of Montbeliard, and a partition between his three sons split the lands into Ferrette under Frederick I, Bar under Rainald I and Montbeliard under Dietrich II; the Montbeliard line died out in 1148 and passed to the House of Montfaucon.

The Ferrette branch ended when Count Ulrich III died without sons in March 1324. His daughter Joanna, countess in her own right, married Duke Albert II of Austria in Vienna on 26 March 1324 and carried the Sundgau lands, including Belfort, to the Habsburgs; she died in 1351 and her sister Ursula in 1367. The Bar branch, raised to a duchy in 1354, lost its duke Edward and other princes at Agincourt in 1415; Cardinal Louis of Bar then transferred the duchy to Rene of Anjou by the Treaty of Saint-Mihiel in 1419, and with the death of Johanna of Marle in 1462 the entire dynasty became extinct.