DOMBES, a district of eastern France, formerly part of the province of Burgundy, now comprised in the department of Ain, and bounded on the west by the Saone, south by the Rhone, east by the Ain and north by the district of Bresse. The region forms an undulating plateau with a slight slope towards the north west, the higher ground bordering the Ain and the Rhone attain ing an average height of about i,000ft. The Dombes once formed part of the kingdom of Arles. In the 11th century, when the kingdom began to break up, the northern part of the Dombes came under the power of the lords of Bauge, and in 1218, by the marriage of Marguerite de Bauge with Humbert IV. of Beaujeu, passed to the lords of Beaujeu. The southern portion was held in succession by the lords of Villars and of Thoire. In 1400, Louis II., duke of Bourbon, acquired the northern part of the Dombes, together with the lordship of Beaujeu, and two years later bought the southern part from the sires de Thoire, forming the whole into a new sovereign principality of the Dombes, with Trevoux as its capital. The principality was confiscated by King Francis I. in 1523, along with the other possessions of the Con stable de Bourbon, was granted in 1527 to the queen-mother, Louise of Savoy, and after her death was held successively by kings Francis I., Henry II. and Francis II., and by Catherine de'Medici. In 1561 it was granted to Louis, duke of Bourbon Montpensier, by whose descendants it was held till, in 1682, "Mademoiselle," the duchess of Montpensier, gave it to Louis XIV.'s bastard, the duke of Maine, as part of the price for the release of her lover Lauzun. The eldest son of the duke of Maine, Louis Auguste de Bourbon (1700-55), prince of Dombes, was made colonel-general of the Swiss regiment, governor of Languedoc and master of the hounds of France. He was suc ceeded, as prince of Dombes, by his brother the count of Eu (q.v.), who in 1762 surrendered the principality to the Crown.
See Guichenon, Histoire de Dombes (1863, 1872) ; A. M. H. J. Stokvis, Manuel d'histoire (Leyden, 1889) ; and various works by M. C. Guigue, including Bibliotheca Dumbensis (with Valentin Smith) (1856-85).