South of the Loire the development of feudal states took even a more decided form than in the north. In these regions feudal separation had the freest field to run riot. There was still a nominal duke of Aquitaine, who might be regarded as having some sort of vague authority over the old Aquitania that was substantially synonymous with south-western France; but neither in Gascony, nor Auvergne, nor in La Marche, nor in the Limousin was any recognition paid to this shadowy potentate. The duchy of Aquitaine seemed on the verge of sharing the fate of the kingdom of France and disappearing altogether because it stood outside the newly grown feudal system, when, like the kingdom of France, it procured a new lease of life by being granted to a house that, like the Robertians of Paris, possessed with great fiefs a firm position in the new system. [Sidenote: Poitou.] In 928 Ebles, Count of Poitou, received a grant of the duchy of Aquitaine, and in 951 William Tow-head, his son by a daughter of Edward the Elder of Wessex, was confirmed in his father’s possession by Louis d’Outremer. The county that took its name from Poitiers was a substantial inheritance. It was the marchland that divided north and south, but its main characteristics were those of the north. Its uplands seldom permit the cultivation of the vine, and its manners, like its climate and tongue, were northern. As the dialects of Romance became differentiated, Poitou spoke, as it still speaks, a dialect of the north French tongue, the _langue d’oil_. Aquitaine proper spoke the southern _langue d’oc_, and differed in a thousand ways from the colder, fiercer, ruder, more martial lands of the north. But the infusion of fresh blood from Poitou saved the Aquitaine duchy from extinction. Eight dukes of Aquitaine and counts of Poitou reigned in succession to William Tow-head, seven of whom were named William. Under this line county after county was gradually added to the original fief of Poitou. At last all the Limousin, Auvergne, and parts of Berri owned them as at least nominal lords. Gascony, in the lands beyond the Garonne, had since 872 been ruled by a hereditary line of dukes, whose favourite name was Sancho. [Sidenote: Gascony.] On the extinction of this family, Gascony, with its dependencies, passed in 1062 to William VIII. of Poitiers, whose grandson William X., the last of the male stock of the house of the Guilhems, died in 1137, leaving the nominal overlordship over the swarm of seigneurs that ruled the district between the Loire, the Pyrenees, and the Cevennes to his daughter Eleanor, whose vast inheritance made Louis VII. of France and Henry II. of England in succession successful suitors for her hand. Under the fostering care of the Williams, Aquitaine had prospered in civilisation and the arts; and their court at Poitiers, whose magnificent series of Romanesque basilicas still attests the splendour of their capital, became the centre of the earliest literary efforts of