ARMAGNAC, formerly a province of France and the most important fief of Gascony, now wholly comprised in the depart ment of Gers (q.v.). In the 15th century, when it attained its greatest extent, it included, besides Armagnac, the neighbouring territories of Fezensac, Fezensaguet, Pardiac, Pays de Gaure, Riviere Basse, Eauzan and Lomagne, and stretched from the Garonne to the Adour. Armagnac is a region of hills ranging to a height of 1,000ft., watered by the river Gers and other rivers which descend fanwise from the plateau of Lannemezan. On the slope of its hills grow the grapes from which the famous Armagnac brandy is made. In Roman Gaul this territory formed part of the diocese of Auch (civitas Ausciorucn), which corresponded roughly with the later duchy of Gascony (q.v.). About the end of the 9th century Fezensac (corsitatus Fedentiacus), was erected into an hereditary countship. This latter was in its turn divided, the south-western portion becoming, about 96o, the countship of Armagnac (pagus Armaniacus). The domain of this countship continued steadily to increase, and about 1140 Count Gerald III. added the whole of Fezensac to his possessions. Under the English rule the counts of Armagnac were turbulent and untrustworthy vassals; and the administration of the Black Prince, tending to favour the towns of Aquitaine at the expense of the nobles, drove them to the side of France.
At the accession of Henry V. Count Bernard VII. was all-pow erful at the French court ; and Charles of Orleans, in order to he able to avenge his father, Louis of Orleans, who had been assassinated in 1407 by John the Fearless, duke of Burgundy, married Bonne, Bernard's daughter. This was the origin of the political party known as "the Armagnacs." With the object of combating the duke of Burgundy's preponderant influence, a league was formed at Gien, including the duke of Orleans and his father-in-law, the dukes of Berry, Bourbon, and Brittany, the count of Alencon, and all the other discontented nobles. The Peace of Bourges, which was confirmed at Auxerre, put an end to the war which followed. But in Aug. 1413 the Armagnacs in their turn became masters of the government and of the king, and the duke of Burgundy, besieged in Arras, only obtained peace on condition of not returning to Paris.
Several months later Henry V. declared war against France; and when, in Aug. 1415, the English landed in Normandy, the Armagnacs and Burgundians united against them, but were defeated in the battle of Agincourt (Oct. 25 1415). John the Fearless then began negotiations with the English, while Bernard VII., appointed constable in place of the count of Saint-Pol, who had been killed at Agincourt, returned to defend Paris. However, the excesses committed by the Armagnacs incensed the populace, and John the Fearless, who was ravaging the surrounding dis tricts, re-entered the capital on May 29 1418, in consequence of the treason of Perrinet Leclerc. On June 12 Bernard VII. and the members of his party were massacred. From this time onward the Armagnac party, with the dauphin, afterwards King Charles VII., at its head, was the national party, while the Burgundians united with the English. This division in France continued until the Treaty of Arras, on Sept. 21 5.
In 1444-45 the emperor Frederick III. obtained from Charles VII. a large army of Armagnac adventurers to enforce his claims in Switzerland, and the war which ensued took the name of the Armagnac War (Armagnakenkrieg). In Germany the name of the foreigners, who were completely defeated in the battle of St. Jakob on the Birs, not far from Basel, was mockingly corrupted into Arme Jacken, Poor Jackets, or Arme Gecken, Poor Fools.
On the death of Charles of Armagnac, in 1497, the countship was united to the crown by King Charles VII., but was again bestowed on Charles, the nephew of that count, by Francis I., who at the same time gave him his sister Margaret in marriage. After the death of her husband, by whom she had no children, she married Henry of Albret, king of Navarre ; and thus the count ship of Armagnac came back to the French crown along with the other dominions of Henry IV. In 1645 Louis XIV. erected a countship of Armagnac in favour of Henry of Lorraine, count of Harcourt, in whose family it continued till the Revolution.
In 1789 Armagnac was a province forming part of the Gou vernernent-general of Guienne and Gascony; it was divided into two parts, High or White Armagnac, with Auch for capital, and Low or Black Armagnac. At the Revolution the whole of the original Armagnac was included in the department of Gers.
See E. Wulcker, Urkunden and Schreiber betreffend den Zug der Armagnaken (1873) ; Rameau, "Guerre des Armagnacs dans le Mâcon nais" (1418-35) in the Rev. soc. lit. de l'Ain (1884) ; Paul Dognon, "Les Armagnacs et les Bourguignons, le comte de Foix et le dauphin en Languedoc" (1416-2o) in Annales du Midi (1889) ; Witte, Die Armagnaken im Elsass, 1439-1445 (1889) ; U. Chevalier, Repertoire des sources hist. du moyen age, s. Armagnac (1894).