What was the treaty of pyrenees

Regular demonstrations in Perpignan of various Catalan independence movements prove that there are still activists who have not come to terms with the Treaty of the Pyrenees, signed years ago! Basil Howitt tells us how France acquired the Catalan province of the Roussillon. It was negotiated and signed on neutral territory on the Island of Pheasants in the Bidassoa river near Bayonne.

It was a happy bonus that they clearly fancied each other, since the marriage was an arranged one to cement the peace treaty — which incidentally covered other territorial settlements in addition to the ones detailed here. Such was the bankruptcy of the Spanish court after decades of war that the agreed dowry of , ecus would never be paid. Not only that! The territorial carve-up signed on 7th November was imprecise, and only more accurately defined the following year. France acquired the Catalan province of the Roussillon, whose most northerly military outpost had been the magnificent Moorish fortress of Salses , a few miles north of Perpignan.

This area especially had been the scenario for more than a dozen raids and pillagings by the French during the reigns of Francis I and Henry IV Llivia was excluded from the negotiations, reportedly because it was considered to be a town rather than a village. To this day, it remains a Spanish enclave surrounded by France.

Between and , boundary stones, officially sanctioned by the Treaties of Bayonne and numbered from west to east, were placed along the border. Many are still there. In spite of losing so much territory, the Catalans had been excluded from all the negotiations, only becoming aware of the main Treaty three months after it had been signed. Catalonia had been a county within the Spanish kingdom of Aragon, with its own laws, currency, fiscal administration and customs barriers, and ruled by the Counts of Barcelona.

For the northern part, this autonomy had now ended. Moreover, unpopular laws were brought in. The Treaty of the Pyrenees was the last major diplomatic achievement by Cardinal Mazarin. Map of Catalonia , showing the partition of its territory by means of the Treaty of the Pyrenees. All in all, by , when the Swedish occupation of Poland was over, most of the European continent was at peace Portuguese Restoration War , third stage , and the Bourbons had ended the dominance of the Habsburgs.

In the context of the territorial changes involved in the Treaty, France gained some territory, on both its northern and southern borders. Military Wiki Explore.

Popular pages. Project maintenance. Register Don't have an account? Treaty of the Pyrenees. Edit source History Talk 0. Cooper 20 December CUP Archive. ISBN University of California Press. Europe in the Seventeenth Century Second ed. Martin Collier, Erica Lewis. Spain -