royal domain, and were just one of the many independent fiefs of the kingdom of France. Eventually, the maneuvering of Gaston de Lyon alerted higher authorities. Gaston de Lyon then sent his private doctor to Isabelle, and this one saw to it that she would not live long enough to embarrass his master. In August 1476, the paralyzed and forlorn Isabelle of Armagnac, who in her youth had been promised to the king of England, died in horrible pain after drinking a potion prepared by the doctor to "cure" her. She was only 45. Gaston de Lyon immediately claimed the Quatre-Vallées. His attitude was so revolting that the duke of Alençon and the duke of Vendôme, relatives of Isabelle of Armagnac, sued Gaston de Lyon to prevent him from obtaining the Quatre-Vallées. The trial lasted for more than a century. At last, ruined and discouraged, the descendants of Gaston de Lyon ceded the Quatre-Vallées to Henry III of Navarre, who owned many Pyrenean fiefs (Béarn, Lower Navarre, Bigorre, County of Foix, Nébouzan). In 1589, Henry III of Navarre became king Henry IV of France. In 1607, he united to the French crown those of his personal fiefs that were under French sovereignty (i.e. County of Foix, Bigorre, Quatre-Vallée, and Nébouzan, but not Béarn and Lower Navarre, which were sovereign countries outside of the kingdom of France), and so Quatre-Vallées became part of the royal domain. Nonetheless, Quatre-Vallées kept all its privileges granted in the Middle Ages, and it also kept its provincial states until the French Revolution, which decided freely what was the level of taxation and how much was given to the king. The provincial states of Quatre-Vallées, made up of only ten members, met once a year in an inn at Garaison, a famous pilgrimage center where the Virgin Mary was said to have appeared in the beginning of the 16th century. Garaison is located in the commune of Monléon-Magnoac, in the Magnoac valley. However, Arreau, the capital of the Aure valley, is often considered by local people to be the capital of Quatre-Vallées. At the start of the French Revolution, the Quatre-Vallées remained quiet. They had been freed and exempted from feudal taxes and corvées for centuries already, and so they did not demand equality and the end of privileges like the other parts of France did. At first it was planned that Quatre-Vallées would gather with