PROVENCE (Lat. Provincia, province). For merly a province of Southeastern France, com prising the present departments of Basses-Alpes, Var, and Bouches-du-Rh4ne, and parts of the de partments of Vancluse and Alpes-Maritimes. The name Gallia Provineia or simply Provincia was given to the country by the Romans, who. about n.c. 120, subdued the territory later constituting Provence, Dauphine. and Languedoc. Aqme Sex tiae (Aix) was the capital of the new province. During the movement of Germanic peoples in the fourth century the Roman power and the name Provineia were restricted to the southeastern por tions of this territory lying between the Rhone. the Durance, and the Mediterranean Sea, and with the fall of Arles about 410 this portion, too, passed into the hands of the Visigothic in vaders:. After being held from 5'10 to 5:36 by the great Theodorie, King of the ostrogotbs, the region passed to the Frankish kings, in whose many partitions it was repeatedly par celed out. It was saved from the Saracens by the famous victory of Charles Martel (732 1. By the partition of Verdun Provence fell to Lothair it was seized by Charles the Bald in 563. and in S/9 attained the rank of a kingdom under Bose,. being "mown as the Kirmdom of Provence or Cisjurane Burgundy. (See BURGUNDY.) This was united with Transjurane Burgundy in 933 to form the Kingdom of Arles, which existed for 100 years. Soon after the extinction of the Ar
letan realm the counts of Provence became hered itary feudal princes. They ruled in practical in dependence until 1112, when, upon the failure of male issue, the county passed to Ramon Beren guer (Raymond Berengar ), Count of Barcelona, whose male line became extinct in 1245, in the person of Ramon Berenguer IV. His daughter, Beatrice, brought Provence in marriage to Charles of Anjou (q.v.), whose last direct de scendant, Joanna 1. of Naples. made Louis of Anjou her heir (1382). Best known among the counts of the House of Anjou was Rene I. (Tv.). the last of the troubadours, whose Court became the home of a splendid cul ture. Rene left an only daughter. Margaret of Anjou, and in 1481 Provence fell to France. be ing formally reunited in 1486. In the life of the French nation the inhabitants of Provence have played their full share, exercising no inconsider able influence on the development of politics, art, and literature. With the shrewd Norman. the wily Ga-con, and the well-fed burgher of Ton raine. the hot-blooded, poetic. eloquent Proven cal ranks as one of the great national types. which has received concrete form in Alphonse Daudet's undying Tartarin.