the provinces of Nébouzan and Comminges, and that the three would elect common representatives to the Estates-General in Versailles. The Quatre-Vallées saw this as a breach of their Statutes and autonomy, and they sent a letter of protest to Versailles. Eventually, they were allowed to send their own representative to the Estates-General. This representative was assigned the task of preserving the privileges of the Quatre-Vallées at all cost. However, there was not much he could do when feudalism and all the privileges were abolished by the French National Constituent Assembly in the night of 4 August 1789, and so the Quatre-Vallées lost their old privileges. In 1790, when the départements were created, the Quatre-Vallées were too small to become a département, and against the wishes of their inhabitants, who wished to join with Comminges and Nébouzan to form a département, the Quatre-Vallées were joined with Bigorre, as well as with a fragment of Nébouzan and parts of Gascony, to form the département of Hautes-Pyrénées. The people of Quatre-Vallées objected bitterly, stressing the old historical and economic ties with Comminges, but it was to no avail. After that, the people of the Quatre-Vallées returned to their isolated and self-supporting lifestyle, away from the new trends and political changes that France experienced in the 19th century. The area remained very traditional well into the 20th century, and modernity progressed only slowly. Like the rest of the Pyrenees, Quatre-Vallées suffered a lot from rural exodus. Today, the low population density of the Quatre-Vallées have turned them into a haven for nature lovers and people wishing to discover some of the wildest parts of the Pyrenees, where a spectacular landscape is combined with a rich historical heritage and many old monuments. Former provinces of France Geography of Hautes-Pyrénées History of Occitania (administrative region)