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CHÂTILLON
. Taking its name from the castle of Châtillonsur-Marne (Marne), the Châtillon family
served as castellans there for the counts of Champagne, who held the fortress in fief from
the archbishops of Reims. The first member of the family known to hold this office was
Gui (fl. 1059–87), from whom descended a line of knights whose sphere of activity and
influence soon passed beyond the borders of Champagne. By 1127, Henri I de Châtillon
was lord of Montjay, located about 18 miles from Paris.
The office of castellan of Châtillon was hereditary and included rights and property
that formed the nucleus of a castellany that must be distinguished from the more
important count’s castellany of Châtillon, which included the donjon and the town and
continued to exist as a separate entity. The holdings at Châtillon eventually were among
the less important possessions of the family, which advanced to a higher social level
through the marriage, in the early 1160s, of Gui II to Adèle de Dreux, granddaughter of
King Louis VI. At the time, Gui was already lord of strategically located Montjay, and
the marriage served a political purpose for both Adèle’s uncle, Louis VII, and her father,
Robert I de Dreux.
The children of Gui II and Adèle included Gaucher III, who married the heiress to the
county of Saint-Pol, and Robert (d. 1215), who became bishop of Laon in 1210. Gaucher
III was bouteiller of Champagne, seneschal of Burgundy by 1193, and in 1210 one of the
leaders of the royal army. He fought heroically at Bouvines in 1214. His sons, Gui III and
Hugues I, married descendants of Louis VI, heiresses, respectively, to the counties of
Nevers and Blois. Gui III (d. 1226) left a son who died childless, but from his daughter
Yolande, countess of Nevers and wife of the lord of Bourbon, descended the dukes of
Bourbon and Bar and the later dukes of Burgundy. From Hugues I descended the counts
of Porcien and the counts of Saint-Pol. The latter line ended with another Gui, who died
in England as a hostage ca. 1363. His sister’s marriage brought Saint-Pol into the house
of Luxembourg.
Gaucher de Châtillon (d. 1329), called (perhaps erroneously) Gaucher V, was a
grandson of Hugues I. He united the two castellanies of Châtillon by receiving from
Philip IV in 1290 the rights that had belonged to the counts of Champagne, whose heiress
was Philip’s queen. By the end of 1303, he had returned the count’s castellany to the king
in exchange for other lands and rights, some of which were combined with his newly
purchased lordship of Château-Porcien to form, by royal grant, the county of Porcien.
Gaucher also held the office of constable, both for Champagne and for France. The
counts of Porcien and the lords of Dampierre were descended from his son Gaucher.
Jacques de Châtillon, lord of Dampierre and admiral of France, died at Agin court in
1415. From Constable Gaucher’s son Jean, lord of Châtillon (d. 1363), descended a line
that died out in the second half of the 15th century.
Richard C.Famiglietti
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