In France, the third brother, Hugues IX, had become count of La Marche and sought to
join it to Angoulême by betrothing his son and heir, Hugues X, to Isabelle, heiress of
Angoulême. This plan was disrupted when Hugues’s lord, John, king of England and
duke of Aquitaine, married Isabelle himself in 1200, triggering the celebrated conflict
that culminated in the seizure of John’s French fiefs by Philip II Augustus. After John’s
death in 1216, Hugues finally did marry Isabelle. Their sons, the unpopular half-brothers
of Henry III of England, were resented by the English barons, while the refusal of the
Lusignans to render homage to Louis IX’s brother Alphonse of Poitiers was a source of
Anglo-French conflict in Aquitaine until the defeat of Henry III at Taillebourg in 1242.
The turbulent Lusignan family finally sold their rights to La Marche and Angoulême to
Philip IV in 1303.
Their cousins ruled Cyprus until 1474 and Lesser Armenia until 1375, while regaining
the virtually empty title of king of Jerusalem in 1268. Although Acre was lost in 1291
and Armenia conquered by the Mamluks of Egypt in 1375, the Lusignans in Cyprus
maintained these titles in the vain hope that the crusading movement would be revived.
R.Thomas McDonald
[See also: ARRAS, JEAN D’]
Garaud, Marcel. Les châtelains de Poitou et l’avinèment du régime féodale, XIe et XIIe siècles.
Poitiers: Société des Antiquaires de l’Ouest, 1967.
lorga, Nicolae. Brève histoire de la Petite Armenie. Paris: Gamber, 1930.
Poute de Puybaudet, G. Étude sur les sires de Lusignan de Hugues Ier a Hugues VIII (Xe siècle-
1177). Positions des thèses. Paris: École des Chartes, 1896.
Runciman, Steven. A History of the Crusades. 3 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1951–54.
Setton, Kenneth M., ed. A History of the Crusades. 2nd ed. 5 vols. Madison: University of
Wisconsin Press, 1969–89.
LUXEMBOURG
. The territory of Luxembourg, part of the duchy of Lorraine, became a distinct political
entity in 963 under Sigefroid d’Ardenne. It remained in the imperial orbit until the end of
the 12th century, almost completely disintegrating during the long rule of Count Henri IV
l’Aveugle (r. 1136–96). His daughter, Ermesinde (r. 1196–1247), whose first husband
was the count of Bar, was mainly French in culture and outlook. She and her son Henri V
(r. 1247–81) did much to restore the integrity of the county of Luxembourg. Henri’s two
sons, Henri VI and Waleran, lord of Ligny, died at the Battle of Worringen in 1288,
contesting Limbourg against the duke of Brabant. Waleran’s descendants, the French
branch of the family, were counts of Ligny and Saint-Pol. One of them, Waleran III,
served as both Constable and Butler of France in the early 15th century under Charles VI.
Another, Louis de Luxembourg, was executed for treason by Louis XI in 1475 after
serving as constable.
The older branch of the Luxembourgs had a more glorious future. Of Henri VI’s sons,
Henri VII (d. 1313) was elected emperor in 1308 and Baudouin became archbishop of
Trier. In 1309, Henri VII turned Luxembourg over to his son, Jean l’Aveugle (d. 1346),
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