Matthew, Count of Foix
Mathieu ( * after 1363; † August 1398 ) was since 1381 Viscount of Castelbon and also since 1391, Count of Foix, Viscount of Béarn, Marsan and Lautrec and Co - Lord of Andorra.
He was the youngest son of the Viscount Roger Bernard IV of Castelbon and his wife Geraude de Navailles. After Mathieu's older brother Roger Bernard V. died young, he inherited the paternal Vizagrafschaft Castelbon.
1390 Mathieu participated in the campaign of the Duke Louis II of Bourbon against Tunisia (see crusade against Mahdia ) had to be canceled but which after the unsuccessful siege of al - Mahdiya. On the way back home to the army conquered the city of Cagliari in Sardinia for the Republic of Genoa.
After 1391, the Count of Foix -Béarn Gaston Febus died Mathieu was the last legitimate male members of the house of Foix. Mathieu was a second cousin of the dead Count, but since Gaston Febus had appointed the French crown bequeathed to his heirs whose extensive possessions were on the northern slope of the Pyrenees to King Charles VI. of France. For Mathieu, however, partisans appeared who registered a claim to the great legacy for him. On the one hand there were the bastard of the dead Count Yvain de Foix, who held control of the Count's residence to Orthez, continue to Mathieu's lord and father- to-be King John I of Aragon who wanted to prevent a strengthening of the French Pyrenees authority in the area. The influence of the Duke of Berry on the king was won over to Mathieu's case, after allowing this to get a high financial allowance. After several negotiations was King Charles VI. finally ready to use Mathieu in the claimed heritage and waived his hand on December 20 in Tours on his rights. So Mathieu came into the possession of the county of Foix, the vice- counties of Béarn, Marsan and Lautrec and the co- sovereignty over Andorra. While he had to pay homage to the King of France for Foix and Lautrec, he could take Béarn and Marsan as a sovereign prince in possession.
After the May 1396 died Mathieu's father King John I of Aragon, he rose in the name of his wife, who was the eldest daughter of the king, a claim to the Aragonese throne. However, he could not assert this claim after his army was defeated by Count Peter of Urgell. Instead, Martin I. was crowned as the new king of Aragon. This was all possessions that had Mathieu in Aragon seize.
Count Mathieu but did not have time to reconcile with Aragon because he died in August 1398. He was married since 1392 with the Aragonese Princess Juana, with whom he had no children. So that his older and only sister Isabelle stepped up to the total heritage of the house of Foix.