line rulers of western France from the Loire to the Pyrénées. Nonetheless, it was precisely
at this time that the dukes of Aquitaine saw their authority increasingly challenged
internally by the growing power of regional aristocracies centered in the stone castles
built in great numbers during this period. In the end, these feudal nobles seriously
undermined ducal authority.
The 11th and 12th centuries were a time of sustained population and economic
expansion leading to the widespread clearance of previously waste lands, foundation of
new towns, and beginnings of foreign trade. The same period witnessed the introduction
of church reform led by the Gregorian movement and the expansion of Benedictine,
Cluniac, and Cistercian monasticism. Pope Urban II pointedly appealed to and counted
on Aquitanians to support his call for the crusade in 1096. Aquitanian civilization
flowered in two other senses at the end of the 11th century: first, architecturally, in the
appearance of many great Romanesque cathedrals and monastic churches; second, in the
beginning of a new vernacular (Occitan) literature as exemplified by the earliest
surviving troubadour poems of William the Troubadour (Guilhem IX, duke of Aquitaine,
r. 1086–1126). During his reign, Poitiers, the capital of the duchy, became one of the
leading towns of western Europe.
The failure of William X to leave a male heir at his death in 1137 led to foreign
domination from which the Aquitanians never recovered. The marriage of William’s
daughter and heiress, Eleanor, to Louis VII of France placed the duchy under French rule
for fifteen years, but Eleanor did not produce a male heir and their union ended in divorce
in 1152. This Capetian interlude had little impact on the duchy. Within months, however,
Eleanor married the count of Anjou and duke of Normandy, Henry Plantagenêt, and in
1154, when the latter made good his claim to the English throne, Eleanor became queen
for a second time and her duchy fell under English overlordship. Aquitanian resistance
prompted Henry to install their son Richard as duke of Aquitaine, but later familial
rebellions against Henry’s rule compromised the Angevin efforts to subjugate the duchy.
After Richard’s accession to the English throne in 1189, Eleanor became duchess of
Aquitaine once again, but after her death in 1204 the duchy passed to the English crown.
For the next 250 years, English rule in Aquitaine was challenged by the French kings,
who finally, in 1453, succeeded in driving out their perennial foes and imposing their
own authority. Philip Augustus began the French offensive in 1202, when he invoked
feudal custom to disinherit King John, his vassal for Aquitaine, and confiscate his duchy.
In subsequent invasions, royal armies conquered Poitou and Saintonge in northern
Aquitaine as well as Normandy, Anjou, and Maine. The Treaty of Paris of 1259
confirmed these losses and left the English ruling over a duchy of greatly reduced size,
comprising mainly lands south of Bordeaux. Despite these wars, Aquitaine enjoyed a
period of prosperity in the 13th century in the form of rural and urban expansion (e.g., the
founding of the bastides) and above all in the wine trade with England. The volume of
wine exported to England through Bordeaux reached enormous proportions at this time.
The longstanding English-French antagonism erupted in the late 1330s, when Philip
VI and Edward III made aggressive moves against each other, marking the beginning of
the Hundred Years’ War. In the early hostilities, the outcome was indecisive, with
territorial gains for both
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