This early county comprising the historic comarques of Plana del Roselló, Conflent, and Vallespir was created by Visigothic king Liuva I in 571.
[2] By that point, Roussillon had been nearly completely depopulated, was not widely cultivated, and land use was very inefficient, which has often been explained by Moorish razzias and Frankish reprisals over a span of forty years.
Beginning in 780, Charlemagne started granting aprisiones of unpopulated land in Roussillon and around Narbonne to incoming spani (or hispani, that is, Christian Spaniards of Gothic, Roman, and Basque origin).
[4] These spani migrants, along with the native Gothic aristocracy, took part in the reconquest of the southern slopes of the Pyrenees and the Tarraconensian littoral which formed the new Marca Hispanica.
As late as 878, Louis the Stammerer could enforce his will in the selection of Roussillon's count, but by the end of the 9th century the royal writ rarely ran as far south as the Pyrenees.
The counties of Roussillon and Empúries became relatively stable, hereditary possessions of the Bellonid family; Gausfred I even took the title dux (duke) in 975.
It was only when Viking and Moorish pirates forced him to move from the coast to the more easily defensible inland that Gausfred I made his capital at Castelló d'Empúries.
In 1027, a council of Elna was held in the meadow of Toulouges, because the throng of attendees was so great: clergymen, aristocrats, and poor men and women.
The council first decreed a series of canons in keeping with the Peace of God (pax Dei) movement inaugurated at Charroux Abbey in 989 and which had spread across Aquitaine, Gascony, the Languedoc, and Catalonia like wildfire.
"[12] The truce spread rapidly through Languedoc and was soon extended so that it was generally understood that fighting was prohibited between Wednesday evening and dawn Monday.
[13] In the mid-12th century, under Gausfred III, Roussillon experienced an epoch of turbulence with increased attacks from both Empúries and Moorish pirates.
Surely as a reaction to the threat posed by the anti-Cathar crusade in Languedoc led by French nobles, King Peter II of Aragon granted around 1209 to his uncle Sancho the county of Roussillon, including Conflent and those territories of upper Roussillon and Vallespir that had been part of the County of Besalú.
John II of Aragon invaded Roussillon and Cerdagne to expel the French, but didn't succeed after 3 years of fighting.