Foix

Foix, an old French family, which took the title of count from the district of Foix (now the department of Ariège), in the south of France. The first who bore the title was Roger, who died in 1064. Roger Raymond accompanied King Philip Augustus to Palestine and distinguished himself at the taking of Acre. Afterwards, on his becoming an adherent of the Albigenes, his estates were confiscated by Simon de Montfort. He was a patron of the Provençal poets, and died in 1223. The next succeeding counts held their lands of the king of France; they were principally engaged in waging a feud against the House of Armagnac, and in fighting for the French king in the English wars. Gaston III. (1331-91), called, on account of the beauty of his person, Phœbus, was noted for his knightly love of splendour and military prowess. For his assistance to the king against the English in 1345, he was made governor of Languedoc and Gascony. In 1356 he took part in a crusade against the heathen Letts of Prussia, and in 1358 rescued certain members of the royal family out of the hands of the Jacquerie insurgents. On being supplanted in the governorship of Languedoc by the Duc de Berri, Gaston maintained his position by force of arms, and defeated the duke at Revel. He left a work on hunting, Miroir de Phœbus, whose bombastic style became a byword (faire du Phœbus). After his death without children, in 1391, the estates and title went to a collateral branch of the family. Gaston IV. rendered good service to Charles VII. in his wars against England. In 1455 his father-in-law, John II., king of Navarre, named him his successor, and the French king invested him with the seignory of Carcassonne and the countships of Roussillon and Cerdagne. He died in 1472, when the family possessions were again divided. His grandson, Gaston (1489-1512), whose mother was Marie d'Orléans, sister of Louis XII. of France, received from his uncle the title of Duc de Nemours in 1505. In the Italian wars Gaston displayed such brilliant genius and bravery as to earn the title of 'Thunderbolt of Italy.' He twice overthrew the Swiss, at Como and Milan (1511); chased the papal troops from Bologna; seized Brescia from the Venetians; and won the battle of Ravenna over the Spaniards, 11th April 1512, in which, however, he fell, at the early age of twenty-three. On his death the estates and title went to the king of Navarre. Finally Henry IV. of Navarre attached the county of Foix to the French crown.