Editing March (territory) (section)

===Marca Hispanica===
{{Main|Marca Hispanica}}
In the early ninth century, [[Charlemagne]] issued his new kind of land grant, the ''[[aprisio]]'', which redisposed land belonging to the Imperial ''[[fisc]]'' in deserted areas, and included special rights and immunities that resulted in a range of independence of action.{{sfn|Lewis|1965}} Historians interpret the ''aprisio'' both as the basis 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 in defense of the Frankish [[frontier]]. ''Aprisio'' grants (the first ones were in [[Septimania]]) emanated directly from the Carolingian king, and they reinforced central loyalties, to counterbalance the local power exercised by powerful marcher counts.{{citation needed|date=August 2014}}

After some early setbacks, Emperor [[Louis the Pious]] ventured beyond the province of [[Septimania]] and eventually took [[Barcelona]] from the [[Moors|Moorish]] [[emir]] in 801. Thus he established a foothold in the borderland between the Franks and the Moors. The Carolingian "Hispanic Marches" (''[[Marca Hispanica]]'') became a buffer zone ruled by a number of feudal lords, among them the [[count of Barcelona]]. It had its own outlying territories, each ruled by a lesser ''miles'' with armed retainers, who theoretically owed allegiance through a count to the emperor or, with less [[fealty]], to his Carolingian and Ottonian successors.  Such territory had a ''catlá'' ("castellan" or lord of the castle) in an area largely defined by a day's ride, and the region became known, like Castile at a later date, as "Catalunya". {{Cn|date=January 2021}} Counties in the [[Pyrenees]] that appeared in the 9th century, in addition to the [[County of Barcelona]], included [[Cerdanya]], [[Girona]] and [[Urgell]].

Communications were arduous, and the power centre was far away. Primitive [[feudal]] entities developed, self-sufficient and agrarian, each ruled by a small hereditary military elite. The sequence in the County of Barcelona exhibits a pattern that emerges similarly in marches everywhere: the count is appointed by the king (from 802), the appointment settles on the heirs of a strong count (Sunifred) and the appointment becomes a formality, until the position is declared hereditary (897) and then the count declares independence (by Borrell II in 985). At each stage the ''de facto'' situation precedes the ''de jure'' assertion, which merely regularizes an existing fact of life. This is [[feudalism]] in the larger landscape.{{citation needed|date=August 2014}}

Some counts aspired to the characteristically Frankish (Germanic) title "[[Margrave]] of the Hispanic March", a "margrave" being a ''graf'' ("count") of the march.{{citation needed|date=August 2014}}

The early [[history of Andorra]] provides a fairly typical career of another such march county, the only modern survivor in the Pyrenees of the Hispanic Marches.{{citation needed|date=August 2014}}