Treaty of the Pyrenees

The Treaty of the Pyrenees was signed on Pheasant Island in the Bidasoa River, on the frontier between France and Spain, by the chief ministers Cardinal Mazarin and Luis de Haro. It ended the long war between the two powers that had been fought since 1635, in the course of the wider Thirty Years' War. France gained Roussillon and part of Cerdanya on the Catalan side of the mountains, as well as Artois and other towns in the Low Countries. The treaty also arranged the marriage of the young Louis XIV to Maria Theresa, the daughter of Philip IV of Spain, which later became the basis of French claims to the Spanish inheritance. It is often seen as marking the point at which French power overtook that of Spain in Europe.

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