Gaston IV (Foix)

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Coat of arms of Gaston IV of Foix-Béarn-Bigorre

Gaston IV. (* 1423 ; † July 25, 1472 in Roncevalles ) was from 1436 until his death Count of Foix and Bigorre , Vice-Count of Béarn , Marsan , and Castelbon and co-lord of Andorra . He was also Vice Count of Narbonne by purchase from 1447 . He was the eldest son of his predecessor Count Johann I and his wife Jeanne d'Albret.

In the service of a crown

Death of John Talbot at Castillon

After the death of his father on May 4, 1436, Gaston entered his extensive inheritance, which was mainly on the northern slope of the Pyrenees . He was next to the Count of Armagnac one of the most powerful feudal lords in southern France. For the first few years of his reign, Gaston's uncle Count Mathieu de Comminges led the government for him due to Gaston's underage .

From 1439 Gaston took part in the Hundred Years War against England in the service of the French crown . He was appointed lieutenant general of the French army in the Guyenne after he was able to conquer Tartas in 1442 , Mauléon and the cities of Saint-Sever and L'Isle-en-Dodon there. In 1451 he helped the Bastard of Orléans in the conquest of Dax , Bayonne and Bordeaux and on July 17, 1453 he took part in the victorious Battle of Castillon , the last great battle of the Hundred Years War in which the English general John Talbot was killed has been. Gaston then took a few more towns in Gascony , where he was almost murdered by the town's commanding officer during the handover negotiations for Cadillac , but Gaston got away with minor injuries.

In 1462 the King of France entrusted him with leading an army campaign to Aragon . There Gaston was supposed to free Queen Juana Enríquez, besieged in Girona by the Count of Pallars, and her son Prince Ferdinand . A job that Gaston should complete successfully.

Gaston was richly rewarded for his loyal service, as early as 1458 he was given the dignity of a pair of France for the county of Foix , in the same year his eldest son was betrothed to a daughter of King Charles VII . After the successful mission to Aragon, he was also given control of the city of Carcassonne . An irony of history - Gaston's ancestors once had to give up ownership of this city.

In the fight for a crown

Gaston had been married to the Aragonese Infanta Eleanor since 1436 . This was the youngest child of King John II of Aragon and his wife Queen Blanka of Navarre . Gaston supported his wife's efforts to achieve royal dignity in Navarre. Actually, Eleonore's older brother Carlos de Viana ( Carlos IV ) would have been the rightful king since the death of their mother in 1441, but both father King John usurped the throne in Pamplona and withheld it from his son, allegedly because he had planned to murder his father . Gaston now helped his father-in-law in the civil war against Prince Carlos and was rewarded when the Treaty of Barcelona on December 3, 1455 laid down the succession in Navarre in favor of his wife and their children.

Carlos de Viana died in 1461, presumably through poison, with which Eleonore's older sister Blanca ( Blanka II ) would have moved up in the line of succession, but she was also denied the throne; instead, both father King John is said to have given his youngest daughter permission to lock the sister away in a prison. Blanka died in it a little later. So Eleanor finally became the undisputed contender for the throne of Navarre, where she and Gaston already ruled as King John's deputy. After more than four hundred years of existence, the House of Foix was to rise to royal dignity, even if the Navarre kingship was already a plaything of the surrounding powers at that time.

For and against the crown

The motive for the actions of the Aragonese king is generally regarded as the rich legacy of the House of Foix, which the Aragonese wanted to attract through close family and political ties, but which could only have been achieved at the expense of France's power in the Pyrenees region. Foix, which dominated almost the entire northern slope of the Pyrenees, would have become a buffer state for Aragon. Gaston did not think of giving up his good relationship with France in favor of a unilateral pro-Aragon policy, precisely because France, which emerged victorious from the Hundred Years' War, was now the dominant power in Western Europe, whose opposition the House of Foix could not afford.

Instead, Gaston continued to be a loyal servant of the French king, whom he had supported in the final years of the war against England and thus received the above-mentioned favors from him. Gaston also maintained his neutrality in 1462 when King Ludwig XI. of France exploited the political unrest in Aragon and occupied Roussillon and Cerdanya . During the uprising of the Ligue du Bien public in 1465, Gaston was one of the king's few allies and supported him in the fight against Duke John II of Bourbon .

But also Gaston withdrew the hostility of Louis XI. on himself when he married his daughter to the powerful Count of Armagnac in 1469 and thus became too powerful a threat to the royal authority in southern France from the standpoint of the king. Gaston's father-in-law John II of Aragon also took advantage of this break to relieve him of the post of governor in Navarre, which was handed over to Gaston's eldest son, who had also turned against his father. After the death of Gaston de Viana in a tournament in 1470, the king of Aragon himself took control of Navarre and also withdrew the guardianship of his grandchildren from Gaston. In this situation Gaston sought a closer alliance with Prince Karl, duc de Berry , who was in constant rebellion against his royal brother. Gaston also allied himself with the revolting Duke of Brittany, to whom he gave his daughter Marguerite as his wife. But before there was an armed clash, the revolt collapsed after Prince Charles was poisoned in Bordeaux on May 12, 1472.

Death and conclusion

A few weeks later, on July 9, 1472, the Count of Foix also died at the age of almost 50 after an illness. Since his father-in-law was still alive, Gaston was not allowed to wear the co-royal crown of Navarre as Eleanor's husband.

Foix Castle

Gaston IV was the last important head of one of the most glorious noble families of the French Middle Ages. He was able to preserve the continuation of the legacy of his ancestors and expand it further in the area of ​​tension between France and Spain. In this way, he secured the succession to the Navarre royal dignity for his family, acquired the vice-county of Narbonne through purchase and, by conferring the dignity of peers on his house, achieved its noble recognition in the French feudal world. In addition to the royal family and the Bourbon and Albret houses , the Foix house was one of the last representatives of the medieval feudal order, which was soon to be replaced in France by absolutism .

The succession of Gaston's underage grandson Franz Phoebus also meant the end of his house. After his quick death only ten years later, the rich inheritance of Foix fell to the house of Albret , a family from Gascon. And two more generations later, his possessions were to fall to the Bourbons, and with the accession of their head to the throne in 1589, they were finally united with the French crown domain .

Gaston was also the last count who had his family's ancestral home, the castle of Foix, expanded by giving the castle its present appearance by building the third tower, the tour ronde (the round tower, in the picture on the right) .

Marriage and offspring

Count Gaston IV. Was married to the Infanta Eleonore (Leonor) (* February 2, 1425, † February 12, 1479 in Tudela ), a daughter of King John II of Aragon and Queen Blanka of Navarre , since July 30, 1436 . Both children were:

Web links

predecessor Office successor
Johann I. Count of Foix 1436–1472
Blason ville for Foix (Ariège) .svg
Franz Phoebus
Johann I. Vice Count of Béarn 1436–1472
Blason du Béarn.svg
Franz Phoebus
Johann I. Count of Bigorre 1436–1472
Blason département fr Hautes-Pyrénées.svg
Franz Phoebus
Johann I. Co-Prince of Andorra
1436–1472 		Franz Phoebus
Johann I. Vice Count of Castelbon
1447–1462 		Gaston
William III. Vice Count of Narbonne
1447–1472 		Johann
personal data
SURNAME Gaston IV.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Count of Foix and Bigorre and Vice-Count of Béarn, Nébouzan, Villemeur and Lautrec
DATE OF BIRTH 1423
DATE OF DEATH July 25, 1472
Place of death Roncevalles