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Raymond VII, Count of Toulouse

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Raymond VII of Saint-Gilles (July 1197 – 27 September 1249) was Count of Toulouse, Duke of Narbonne and Marquis of Provence from 1222 until his death.

He was the son of Raymond VI of Toulouse and Joan of England. During the Albigensian Crusade in May of 1216, he set out from Marseille and besieged Beaucaire, which he captured on August 24. He fought to reconquer the county of Toulouse from Simon de Montfort, 5th Earl of Leicester and later Simon's son Amaury VI of Montfort.

Raymond VII married firstly, in March 1211, Sancha of Aragon, the daughter of King Alfonso II of Aragon. They had one daughter, Joan, and were divorced in 1241. In 1243 Raymond married Marguerite de Lusignan, the daughter of Hugh X of Lusignan and Isabella of Angouleme. They had no children and were divorced August 3, 1245.

He succeeded his father in 1222. At the moment of his accession, he and the new count of Foix, Roger Bernard II the Great, besieged Carcassonne. On 14 September 1224, the Albigensian Crusaders surrendered and the war came to an end, each southern lord making peace with the church. However, in 1225, the council of Bourges excommunicated him and launched a crusade against him, the king of France, Louis VIII, called the Lion, wanting to renew the conflict in order to enforce his royal rights in Languedoc. Roger-Bernard tried to keep the peace, but the king rejected his embassy and the counts of Foix and Toulouse took up arms again. The war was largely a discontinuous series of skirmishes and, in January 1229, Raymond, defeated, was forced to sign the Treaty of Meaux, by which he ceded the former viscounty of Trencavel to the king and his daughter Joan was forced to marry Alphonse, brother of the new king, Louis the Lion's successor, Louis IX.

When Raymond died, Alphonse became count of Toulouse, and after Alphonse's death the county was annexed by France. Raymond VII was buried beside his mother Joan in Fontevrault Abbey.

[edit]Sources

Macé, Laurent. "Raymond VII of Toulouse: The Son of Queen Joanne, 'Young Count' and Light of the World." The World of Eleanor of Aquitaine: Literature and Society in Southern France between the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries, edd. Marcus Bull and Catherine Léglu. Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2005. ISBN 1 84383 114 7.