An unknown achievement of the last Capetians: The annexation of the Lusignan estates and the use of the concept of lèse-majesté (1308–1327)
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The dynasty of the counts of La Marche and Angoulême, of the Lusignan family, ended at the beginning of the fourteenth century, leaving its estates to the king of France. The intrafamilial conflicts between its members caused repeated succession crises, leading to the increasing interference of Philip the Fair. He seized the entirety of Lusignan land just before the death of the last count, Guy de Lusignan, who tried to ally himself with the king of England in order to offset Capetian authority. The French royal officers began a series of negotiations with all the deceased’s beneficiaries, using the legal idea of “lèse-majesté” to justify the seizure and the royal refusal to return the lands in order to force them to abandon their claims. Thus, Philip the Fair annexed all the Lusignan estates in Poitou and Brittany, as well as the counties of La Marche and Angoulême, to the royal demesne. It was one of the main territorial acquisitions of his reign and the most successful, but, as he immediately took advantage of it to assign an appanage to his third son, it has remained scarcely known. Moreover, taking place just after the great political trials against Bernard Saisset, Boniface VIII, and the Knights Templar, this use of lèse-majesté to seize land put an end to the shifting meaning of this concept and represents a little known milestone in the formation of the idea of high treason and the constitution of the legal apparatus of the state.
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