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Bigorre is the historical region in the southwest of France that roughly corresponds to the Hautes-Pyrénées. The region occupied by the Celtic Bigorri was conquered by the Roman general Crassus in 56 BC and incorporated into the Province of Gallia Aquitania. In the 4th century, Aquitania was divided in three, for administration; the region that became Bigorre was part of the southernmost section, Aquitania tertia or Aquitania Novempopulana
After belonging to the Visigothic kingdom, after the Battle of Vouillé (507), Bigorre was held by the Frankish kings at Toulouse, one of whom granted it as a fief in the 9th century to his kinsman Inigo Arista, who later became the first King of Navarre. Bigorre was a County controlled by the Dukes of Gascony in the 9th Century and was briefly incorporated into the County of Béarn, 1080 - 1097, before becoming the seat of an independent Count. The Counts of Bigorre retained independence, though they acknowledged the suzerainty of Alfonso II of Aragon in 1187. By virtue of the Treaty of Brétigny (1360), which marked the end of the first phase of the Hundred Years War, Edward III of England received territory that extended to Bigorre in the farthest south. Recaptured by Jean, comte de Foix in 1407, Bigorre was reincorporated into the Béarn in 1429. thus it passed to France with the inheritance of Henri IV.
Under the Ancien Régime Bigorre was a généralité of the Province of Gascony. The French Revolutionaries created the new département, Hautes Pyrenées, in 1790, closely following the lines of ancient Bigorre.
Geographically, Bigorre consists of two distinct areas: the plains to the north around Tarbes rising into the foothills and the high mountain slopes to the south, rising to the Pic_du_Midi_de_Bigorre, with the mineral spa of Bagnères-de-Bigorre at its foot. Although Tarbes is the capital of the Hautes Pyrenees, the nearby town of Lourdes has eclipsed it since the apparitions of the Virgin in 1858, becoming the largest modern pilgrimage center of Western Europe: 12 million people visit the religious shrines annually.
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