Aquitania, the Latin name of a part of Gaul, originally including the country between the Pyrenees and the Garonne, peopled by Iberian tribes, and by Celtic families who settled among them.
Augustus, when he divided Gaul into four provinces, added to Aquitania the country lying between the rivers Garonne and Loire. Afterwards it passed into the hands—first, of the West Goths, and then of the Franks; and during the Merovingian dynasty, became an independent duchy. Gascony, a duchy in the extreme SW., became in 1054, through the extinction of the male line, a part of Aquitania, which had come in the 10th century to be called Guicnne, a corruption of its original name. In 1137 it was united to the crown of France by the marriage of Louis VII. with Eleanor, heiress of Aquitania. In 1152 it became an English possession, through the marriage of Henry II. with Eleanor, whom Louis had divorced, and it remained an appanage of the English crown until, in 1452, Charles VII. finally united it to France by the capture of Bordeaux.