Toulouse had by the end of the ninth century become the capital of an independent county, the county of Toulouse, ruled by the dynasty founded by Frédelon, who in theory was under the sovereignty of the king of France, but in practice was totally independent.
The counts of Toulouse had had to fight to maintain their position at first.
They were mostly challenged by the dynasty of the counts of Auvergne, ruling over the northeastern part of the former Aquitaine, who claimed the county of Toulouse as their own, and even temporarily ousted the counts of Toulouse from the city of Toulouse.
However, in the midst of these Dark Ages, the counts of Toulouse had managed to preserve their own, and unlike many local dynasties that disappeared, have achieved survival.
Their county is just a small fraction of the former Aquitaine, the southeastern part of it, in fact.
However, at the death of Count William the Pious of Auvergne (Guillaume le Pieux) in 918, they had come into the possession of Gothia, which had been in the family of the counts of Auvergne for two generations.
Thus, they have more than doubled their territory, once again reuniting Toulouse with the Mediterranean coast from Narbonne to Nîmes.
The county of Toulouse takes its definitive shape, from Toulouse in the west to the Rhone River in the east, a unity that will survive until the French Revolution as the province of Languedoc.
Toulouse will never again be part of the Aquitaine polity, whose capital in later times will become Poitiers, then Bordeaux.
At first though, the memories of Aquitaine live strong in Toulouse.
A sign of William's independence of rule in Aquitaine is that he had a deniers minted in his own name at Brioude.
He is buried in the monastery of Saint-Julien there.
He had no sons of his own and is succeeded by a nephew, William the Younger, son of his sister Adelinda and Acfred I of Carcassonne.
