were detached from Comminges in the 11th century and were divided between the counts of Aure, vassals of the kings of Aragon, and the counts of Astarac (in Gascony). The line of the counts of Aure ended in 1242 without a male heir, and the county of Aure was inherited by the counts of Labarthe (residing in La Barthe-de-Neste), who by then possessed the three other valleys of Neste, Barousse, and Magnoac. Thus, the four valleys were unified under the counts of Labarthe, and began to be known as Quatre-Vallées. The counts of Labarthe were vassals of the kings of Aragon, and so Quatre-Vallées was part of the kingdom of Aragon. In June 1300, Count Bernard of Labarthe granted the 53 articles of the "Statutes, Customs, and Privileges of the Country of Quatre-Vallées". These statutes, written in the native Romance language of the inhabitants, were quite ahead of their time: they granted full liberty to the inhabitants of the Quatre-Vallées, free ownership of land, free use of communal ovens, free usage of the forests, and so on, as well as the right to be ruled by consuls representing the people. All these privileges and liberties were unprecedented in rural areas of medieval Europe, and were normally found only in chartered cities. The Statutes of 1300 are the origin of the special privileges and distinct character that the Quatre-Vallées kept until the French Revolution. The Quatre-Vallées were a buffer zone between the county of Comminges and the powerful county of Armagnac (in Gascony), and were coveted by both, until eventually in 1398 they became a possession of the counts of Armagnac. In 1462, Count Jean V of Armagnac ceded the fief of Quatre-Vallées to his incestuous sister Isabelle of Armagnac. Isabelle, who had given her fortune to charities, ended up in utter poverty, and on top of it she became paralyzed with hemiplegia. Taking advantage of her weakness, Gaston de Lyon, Lord of Bezaudun and seneschal of Toulouse, lured the poor Isabelle into selling him the Quatre-Vallées against 5,127 gold crowns (écus d'or), which he never paid, always postponing payment in the hope of a rapid death of Isabelle. At the same time, in 1475, as the king of France obtained Roussillon from the king of Aragon, the Quatre-Vallées were officially detached from the kingdom of Aragon and entered the kingdom of France. However, they were still not part of the