County of Rodez

The county of Rodez is a stronghold belonging to the old province of the Rouergue, today in Aveyron, and whose capital is Rodez. Its weapons are “ mouths, with the léopardé gold lion”

History

With the fall of the Roman Empire, the Rouergue often changed Master: it belonged successively to the Visigoths in 472; with the Frank in 507; again with the Visigoths in 512; with the kings of Austrasie in 533; in 588 with the dukes of Aquitaine, which were stripped by it by Pépin the Brief in 768. Charlemagne incorporated it in 778 in the Royaume of Aquitaine and establishes there counts who, initially for life, set up thereafter as hereditary lords of their county.

The county of Rouergue

About the middle of IXe century, Charles the Bald person confirmed the counts de Rouergue in their possessions and added to it the Comté of Toulouse which it detached from the Duché of Aquitaine.

With died of Hugues, eleventh count de Rouergue (1053), Berthe, his daughter, lives himself to dispute his heritage by Guillaume IV, count de Toulouse, and his brother Raymond of Saint-Gilles. The weapons were taken; but Berthe having died in 1065, the two brothers turned one against the other. After fifteen years of fights, they were appropriate that Guillaume would have the county of Toulouse, and Raymond that of Rouergue, of which it had taken the title with died of Berthe. Raymond succeeded his brother in his county, and Rouergue became the prerogative of puînés wire of the counts de Toulouse. In 1105, Raymond found death in Palestine, leaving two wire, Bertrand and Alphonse two years old. Then claims burst. Raimond-Berenger III, count de Barcelone, Viscount of Millau, and Guillaume, count de Poitiers, benefitting from the minority of Alphonse, entered to weapons its States. Too much weak to resist, AIphonse was withdrawn in Provence and its two counties only in 1120 reconquered. Jeanne, single heiress of this house and woman of Alphonse, count de Poitiers, having died without posterity, Rouergue returned to the crown in 1271.

The county of Rodez

However, Raymond of Saint-Gilles, while leaving for the crusade, had engaged with Richard III , wire puîné dd Béranger Viscount of Millau and of Rodez, the part of the town of Rodez called the Borough and some castles. From there the origin of the County of Rodez, because the Viscount Richard III took the title of count de Rodez in 1112, benefitting from the fights between Guillaume IX of Aquitaine and Alphonse the Jordan, count de Toulouse.

To died from Henri II of Rodez, in 1304, the county passed to Bernard VI , count d' Armagnac, by its marriage with Cécile , one of the girls of Henri II. Cecile, with died of her father, had taken the title of countess of Rodez; it was disputed to him by his sisters. Cecile died in 1313, leaving for heir Jean, her son, who links the counties of Armagnac and Rodez.

Counts of Armagnac and Rodez

Jean Ier the Good had married in first Reine weddings of Goth, small-niece of the pope Clément V. After the death of this one, it remaria with Béatrix de Clermont, countess of Charolais, princess of the blood of France. This marriage was one of the leading causes of the power of the counts d' Armagnac, since it raised them with the row of lords of the blood of France. Jean was distinguished in the wars from his time, under the reigns of Philippe de Valois and of king Jean.

Jean II the Fat also called the Uneven one, wire of Jean Ier and Béatrix de Clermont, employed most of its reign to deliver Rouergue of the English companies which afflicted it. He died in 1384, with Avignon, from where its body was transported in the church cathedral of Auch. He left of his wife, Jeanne de Périgord, two wire, Jean and Bernard, who succeeded to him, and a girl, Beatrix, which were married in second weddings with Barnabé Visconti, lord of Milan.

Jean III, lieutenant general of the armies of the king in Languedoc, managed to drive out, in 1387, the Routiers of Rouergue. Having wanted to give help to Florentins against Galéas Visconti, duke of Milan, it was wounded in this countryside, and it died little of time after its wounds.

Bernard VII, the famous constable, was massacred in Paris in 1418. It was a large captain and a man of genius; but its excessive pride, its inflexibility, its despotism, defects hereditary in its family, lost it. One preserved of him a word which depicts it entire. Its officers having come to say to him that the people of Rodez were at the time of mutiner: ley dabale! (If I go down there! ) was its answer. Bernard had all that it was necessary to be the benefactor of its fatherland; but it put in its control too stiffness, in its measurements too much negligence; it did nothing but worsen evils that it could have cured.

Jean IV was the heir and the successor of Bernard, his father, not only in the counties of Rodez and Armagnac, but still in all its other fields, which were immense. He lived Languedoc where he was lieutenant for his father in time that this one was occupied making the war with the duke of Burgundy; but as soon as he had learned his fine tragedy he withdrew himself in Rouergue, where he tried to reconcile, by his benefits, the benevolence of his vassal. Although it lived withdrawn there, its enemies showed it several objections near the king Charles VII, which declared the war in 1444 to him and entrusted the command of its army to the dolphin, later Louis XI. This prince entered to shift, besieged Entraygues, then Rodez and Sévérac-the-Castle and subjected finally all the places of the county. Having made his peace with the king, Jean died in 1450, with the castle of the Isle-Jordan (Gers).

Jean V, his son and successor, attracted itself, by its scandalous life, the indignation of the king Charles VII, with whom, moreover, it made shade because of his power and his richnesses. It was made guilty of treason towards the king Louis XI, who declared the war to him. Continued in all his retirements, Jean was locked up in Lectoure and supported a long seat there; but the city capitulated, and the count was massacred in his castle with all his children. It is with the castle of Busset and not in that of Castelnau-Bretenoux, as several wrote, than its widow accepted from three empoisonneurs, the lord of Castelnau, Olivier the Russet-red one and Guiraudon, the beverage intended to strike in her sides the child of which it was to be mother.

Charles, last count of the name of Armagnac, succeeded in 1484 Jean V, his brother, but only for the useful field. He died in 1497, leaving for only heir Charles d' Alençon, his great nephew, who married Marguerite de France, sister of François I {{er}}, substituted for the rights of the king on the goods of the house of Armagnac. He died in 1525, without posterity. The county passed then to Henri d' Albret, the second husband of its widow. Its grandson, in devenat king de France under the name of Henri IV joins together the county of Rodez in France.

The fastening of the county to the crown was the occasion for the bishops of Rodez, which divided the town of Rodez with the counts (the bishops were lords of “the City”, while the counts were lords of the “Borough”) to take again on their account the title of count de Rodez .

See too

List of the counts de Toulouse
List of the counts de Rouergue
List of the counts de historical Rodez
List of the French counties

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