Gaston I. de Foix-Grailly

Gaston I. de Foix-Grailly († after 1455) was from 1412 to 1451 Captal de Buch , Count of Bénauges and Vice-Count of Castillon , Lord of Grailly. Since 1438 he was a Knight of the Order of the Garter . Gaston was the second son and heir to Archambaud de Grailly and his wife, Countess Isabelle von Foix .

Through his father, Gaston came from the Grailly family , which was originally based on Lake Geneva . In the service of the English king, this family took the governorship of England in Gascony as Captale de Buch for several generations . In this function, the Grailly took a leading role in the Hundred Years War against France. However, through the marriage of his father to the heiress of the house of Foix , the family became dependent on the war opponent France. The French crown was unwilling to accept the loss of Foix's extensive inheritance to a family loyal to England. After Gaston's parents were unable to counter the military pressure from France, they submitted to the French king in the Treaty of Tarbes , concluded on May 10, 1399 .

According to this contract, Gaston had to move to the royal court in Paris together with his older brother Johann . There, as hostages, they were supposed to guarantee their parents' loyalty to France and receive a proper upbringing. But after Gaston's father died in 1412, he inherited his possessions, including the Captalat von Buch, for which he had to recognize the English king as feudal lord, while his older brother should receive the maternal inheritance, for which in turn the French king had to be paid homage. Thus, the Foix-Grailly family was represented in both camps of the Hundred Years War, because Gaston was to fight for England in this, like his ancestors.

In the late summer of 1415 Gaston was a member of the army with which the English King Henry V landed on the coast of Normandy and conquered most of this region in the following years. Gaston also took part in the victorious Battle of Azincourt on October 25 of the same year. His brother Count Johann I von Foix fought on the opposite side of France. In the early morning of July 31, 1419 Gaston captured Pontoise after a night march, whose defender, the Sire de l'Isle-Adam , was surprised by this fast train and surrendered the city without a fight. This opened the gate for the English army to the Île-de-France . After King Henry was recognized as the legitimate heir to the throne of France in the Treaty of Troyes in 1420 , Gaston received the county of Longueville as a fief in 1421 , which he lost again after the king's death in 1422. After the appearance of the Maid of Orléans , the fortunes of war turned in France's favor, and Gaston's property also fell into the hands of the French in Gascony. Nevertheless, on June 12, 1451, he refused to sign the Treaty of Pons, which regulated the relationship between the French crown and the Gascon nobility, as well as paying homage to King Charles VII of France . Instead, he sold the captalate in equal parts to his nephew Count Gaston IV of Foix and Count Jean de Dunois .

Gaston took his exile in Meilles, Aragon, where he died.

Marriage and offspring

Gaston I. de Foix-Grailly was married to Marguerite, a daughter of Sire Arnaud-Amanieu d'Albret and his wife Marguerite de Bourbon , since 1410 . From this marriage there were three children:

• Jean IV. († 1485), Earl of Kendal , from 1461 Captal de Buch, Count of Béanuges, Vice-Count of Castillon and Meilles
• Isabelle († 1504)

∞ I) Jacques de Pons, vice-count of part of Turenne

∞ II) 1462 Don Pedro de Peralta y Ezpeleta , Conde de Santiseban y Lerín (probably a great-grandson of King Charles II of Navarre ) ( House of France-Évreux )

• Agnes, married to Pey Poton de Lamensan

Furthermore, four illegitimate children of Gaston are known:

• Gaston, head of the Cistercian abbey of Belleperche near Cordes-Tolosannes ( Tarn-et-Garonne department )
• Jeannette
• Marguerite
• Jeanne