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Alphonse, Count of Toulouse and of Poitiers (November 11, 1220 – August 21, 1271).

Coat of arms of Alphonse: Per pale azure semé-de-lis or (France ancient) dimidiating gules semé of castles or (Castile)

Alphonse was a son of Louis VIII, King of France and Blanche of Castile. He was a younger brother of Louis IX of France and an older brother of Charles I of Sicily.

He joined the county of Toulouse to his appanage of Poitou and Auvergne, on the death, in September 1249, of Raymond VII of Toulouse, whose daughter Joan of Toulouse Alphonse had married in 1237. He took part in two crusades with his brother, St Louis, in 1248 (the Seventh Crusade) and in 1270 (the Eighth Crusade).

In 1252, on the death of his mother, Blanche of Castile, he was joint regent with Charles of Anjou until the return of Louis IX. During that time he took a great part in the campaigns (including the Battle of Taillebourg in the 'Saintonge War') and negotiations which led to the Treaty of Paris in 1259, under which King Henry III of England recognized his loss of continental territory to France (including Normandy, Maine, Anjou, and Poitou) in exchange for France withdrawing support from English rebels.

His main work was on his own estates. There he repaired the evils of the Albigensian war and made a first attempt at administrative centralization, thus preparing the way for union with the crown. The charter known as "Alphonsine," granted to the town of Riom, became the code of public law for Auvergne. Honest and moderate, protecting the middle classes against exactions of the nobles, he exercised a happy influence upon the south, in spite of his naturally despotic character and his continual and pressing need of money. He is noted for ordering the first recorded local expulsion of Jews, when he did so in Poitou in 1249.

He died without heirs on his return from the Eighth Crusade, in Italy, probably at Savona, on August 21, 1271. As part of his bequest, he left his lands in the Comtat Venaissin to the Holy See and it became a Papal territory in 1274, a status that it retained until 1791.

• B. Ledain, Histoire d'Alphonse, frère de S. Louis et du comte de Poitou sous son administration (1241-1271) (Poitou, 1869)
• E. Bourarie, Saint Louis et Alphonse de Poitiers (Paris, 1870)
• A. Molinier, Etude sur l'administration de S. Louis et d'Alphonse de Poitiers (Toulouse, 1880)
• * A. Molinier, Correspondence administrative d'Alphonse de Poitiers in the Collection de documents inedits pour servir à l'histoire de France (Paris, 1894 and 1895).
• http://www.davidsconsultants.com/jewishhistory/history.php?startyear=1240&endyear=1249 (Retrieved February 16, 2005)

• Coat of Arms in the Walford Roll

This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.