century. From 1470 until the Revolution the province was under the jurisdiction of the parlement of Paris. Several communes of France are named similarly: Marches, Drôme in the Drôme département La Marche in the Nièvre département Germany and Austria The Germanic tribes that Romans called Marcomanni, who battled the Romans in the 1st and 2nd centuries, were simply the "men of the borderlands". Marches were territorial organisations created as borderlands in the Carolingian Empire and had a long career as purely conventional designations under the Holy Roman Empire. In modern German, "Mark" denotes a piece of land that historically was a borderland, as in the following names: Later medieval marches Nordmark, the "Northern March", the Ottonian empire's territorial organisation on the conquered areas of the Wends. In 1134, in the wake of a German crusade against the Wends, the German magnate Albert the Bear was granted the Northern March by the Holy Roman Emperor Lothar II. the March of the Billungs on the Baltic coast, stretching approximately from Stettin (Szczecin) to Schleswig; Marca Geronis (march of Gero), a precursor of the Saxon Eastern March, later divided into smaller marches (the Northern March, which later was reestablished as Margraviate of Brandenburg; the Lusatian March and the Meißen March in modern Free state of Saxony; the March of Zeitz; the Merseburg March; the Milzener March around Bautzen); March of Austria (marcha Orientalis, the "Eastern March" or "Bavarian Eastern March" () in modern lower Austria); the Carantania march or March of Styria (Steiermark); the Drau March (Marburg and Pettau); the Sann March (Cilli); the Krain or March of Carniola, also Windic march and White Carniola (White March), in modern Slovenia. three marches were created in the Low Countries: Antwerp, Valenciennes, Ename. Other The Margraviate of Brandenburg, its ruler designated (margrave, literally "march-count"). It was further divided into regions also designated "Mark": Altmark ("Old March"), the western region of the former margraviate, between Hamburg and Magdeburg. Mittelmark ("Central March"), the area surrounding Berlin. Today, this region makes up for the bulk of the German federal state of Brandenburg, and thus in modern usage is referred to as Mark Brandenburg. Neumark ("New March") since the 1250s was Brandenburg's eastern extremity between Pomerania and Greater Poland. Since 1945, the area is a part of Poland. Uckermark, the Brandenburg–Pomeranian borderland. The name is still in use for the region as well as for a Brandenburgian district. Mark,