March. The March included various outlying smaller territories, each ruled by a lesser miles with his armed retainers and who theoretically owed allegiance through the Count to the Emperor. The rulers were called counts; when they governed several counties they often took the name duke (Dux Gothiae). When the county formed the border with the Muslim Kingdom, the Frankish title marquis (Marquis de Gothie) was chosen. Besides, certain counts aspired to the Frankish title "Prince of Gothia". A margrave or Marcgravi is a Graf ("duke") of the March. The first Toulousains and Catalan lords who held the title of Counts of Barcelona, Bernard of Septimania, Humfrid, Bernard of Gothia, Borrell II and Ramon Borrell carried these titles. In the early 9th century, Charlemagne began issuing a new kind of land grant, the aprisio, which reallocated land previously held by the imperial crown fisc in deserted or abandoned areas. This included special rights and immunities that allowed considerable independence from the imperial control. Historians have interpreted the aprisio both as an early form of feudalism and in economic and military terms as a mechanism to entice settlers to a depopulated border region. Such self-sufficient landholders would aid the Counts in providing armed men to defend the Frankish frontier. Aprisio grants (the first ones were in Septimania) were given personally by the Carolingian king, so that they reinforced loyalty to central power, to counterbalance the local power exercised by the Marcher Counts. However poor communications and a distant central power allowed basic feudal entities to develop often self-sufficient and heavily agrarian. Each was ruled by a small hereditary military elite. These developments in the territories that later would become Catalonia followed similar patterns in other borderlands and March. For example, the first Count of Barcelona Bera was appointed by the King in 801, however subsequently strong heirs of Counts were able to inherit the title such as Sunifred, fl. 844–848. This gradually became custom until Countship became hereditary (for Wifred the Hairy in 897). The County became de facto independent under count Borrell II, when he ceased to request royal charters after the kings Lothair and Hugh Capet failed to assist him in the defense of the County against Muslim leader al-Mansur, although the change of dynasty may have played a part in that decision. The early history of Andorra in the Pyrenees provides a fairly typical example of a lordship of