Toulouse, an important city in the south of France, the capital anciently of Languedoc, and now of the department of Haute-Garonne, 160 miles SE. of Bordeaux and 466 S. by W. of Paris. It is situated in a broad and pleasant plain, on the right bank of the river Garonne, with the Canal du Midi sweeping round its eastern and northern sides. The Garonne is crossed here by a beautiful bridge (1543–1626), nearly 300 yards long, which connects Toulouse with the suburb of St Cyprien. The city, with the exception of the southern faubourg, is not particularly handsome (though the broad quays have rather an imposing appearance), nor has it many fine public buildings. One may note, however, the cathedral, containing the tombs of the Counts of Toulouse; the Cupitole, or town-hall (1769); the church of St Sernin (11th to 15th century); and the Musée, with its interesting collection of antiquities, forming an almost uninterrupted chain in the history of art, from the Gallo-Roman to the Renaissance period. Toulouse is the seat of an archbishop, has a university academy, an academy of 'floral games' (Société des Jeux Floraux), claiming to date from a troubadours' contest in 1323, academies of arts, sciences, antiquities, &c., schools of law, medicine, and artillery, an observatory, botanic garden, and a public library of 60,000 volumes. Toulouse manufactures woollens, silks, leather, cannon, steam-engines, tobacco, brandy, &c., and carries on a great trade with Spain. Its liver and truffle pies are celebrated throughout the south of France. Pop. (1872) 114,025; (1896) 149,963.
Tolosa was, in Cæsar's time, a city within the limits of the Roman provincia, and had been originally the capital of the Volcæ Tectosages, a Gallic tribe noted for its wealth and consequence. Under the empire its importance continued. Ausonius describes it as surrounded by a brick wall of great circuit, and so populous that it had founded four colonies. In 412 A.D. the Visigoths made it the capital of their kingdom (see GOTHS); and after the time of Charlemagne it was under the sway of counts, who made themselves independent about 920, but in 1271 the 'county of Toulouse' was reunited to the crown of France by Philippe le Hardi. Its literary celebrity reaches as far back as the Roman empire. Ausonius speaks of the toga docta of 'Palladian' Tolosa, and the favourite deities of the city were Jupiter, Minerva, and Apollo. At a neighbouring village a multitude of cinerary urns, statuettes, Phœnician, Celtiberian, Gallic, Greek, and Roman medals, fragments of buildings, and an entire paved street have been discovered. Early in the middle ages, under the Counts of Toulouse, it became a seat of Provencal poetry, and it suffered terribly in Simon de Montfort's pitiless papal crusade against the Albigenses (q.v.). The parliament of Toulouse had a great reputation, but unhappily it is likely to be best remembered by one of its most iniquitous decisions, that delivered in the case of the Calas (q.v.) family. In the battle of Toulouse (10th April 1814) the French under Soult were defeated by Wellington. Cujacius was born, and Fermat died, at Toulouse. The floods of 1855 and 1875 were specially disastrous.
See works by Aldeguier (1835) and Jourdan (1877), and Toulouse: Histoire, Archéologie, &c. (1887).