
The Coat of Arms used for Guyenne are
the same as for Aquitaine.
Guyenne ( ;
Occitan
Guiana ) is a vaguely defined historic region of
south-western France.
The Province of Guyenne,
sometimes called the Province of Guyenne and Gascony
was
a large province of pre-revolutionary France.
The name
Guyenne comes from the Occitan Guiana, which is itself a
corruption of the word Aquitaine
. However the words Aquitaine and Guyenne
came to indicate different entities.
The region of Guyenne
also became confused with the region of Gascony
until this
took on a distinct identity in the 17th Century. From this
time "Guyenne and Gascony" was a common term corresponding roughly
to modern northern Aquitaine.
The Duchy of Guyenne appears for the first time in the Treaty of
Paris of 1229 which brought an end to the
Albigensian Crusade, and may have been
actually created by that treaty.
The capital was Bordeaux
. The
Duchy was under the Kings of England, as Guyenne had been since
1188, and remained an English vassal until 1453. In 1453 it became
land directly under the French Crown, except from 1469-72 when it
was granted to
Charles
de Valois (until his death).
In 1561,
Guyenne was made a province, and included Bordelais, Bazadais,
Limousin
, Périgord, Quercy, Rouergue, Agenais, Saintonge, and
Angoumois
. The province was abolished with all French
provinces at the time of the
French
Revolution.