Duchy of Limburg | |||||||||
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| 1065–1797 | |||||||||
 Coat of arms | |||||||||
.svg) Duchy of Limburg around 1350 | |||||||||
| Status | State of theHoly Roman Empire part of theBurgundian Netherlands(1430–1482) part of theHabsburg Netherlands(1482–1581) part of theSouthern Netherlands(1581–1795) | ||||||||
| Capital | Limbourg | ||||||||
| Common languages | Limburgish,Walloon | ||||||||
| Religion | Roman Catholicism | ||||||||
| Government | Monarchy | ||||||||
| Duke | |||||||||
• 1065–1082 | Waleran I,Count of Limburg | ||||||||
• 1082–1119 | Henry I, Duke of Limburg andLower Lorraine | ||||||||
• 1288–1294 | John I,Duke of Brabant, Limburg andLothier | ||||||||
• 1494–1506 | Philip III,Duke of Burgundy, King ofCastile–León etc | ||||||||
• 1792–1794 | Francis I,Duke of Lorraine,Holy Roman Emperor etc. | ||||||||
| Historical era | Middle Ages | ||||||||
• Established | 1065 | ||||||||
| June 5, 1288 | |||||||||
| 1406 | |||||||||
• Peace of Westphalia | 1648 | ||||||||
| 1713 | |||||||||
• Disestablished | 1797 | ||||||||
| 1797 | |||||||||
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TheDuchy of Limburg orLimbourg was animperial estate of theHoly Roman Empire. Much of the area of the duchy is today located withinLiège Province ofBelgium, with a small portion in the municipality ofVoeren, anexclave of the neighbouringLimburg Province. Its chief town wasLimbourg-sur-Vesdre, in today's Liège Province.
The duchy evolved from a county which was first assembled under the lordship of a junior member of theHouse of Ardenne–Luxembourg,Frederick. He and his successors built and apparently named the fortified town which the county, and later the duchy, were named after. Despite being a younger son, Frederick had a successful career and also became duke ofLower Lotharingia in 1046.[1] Lordship of this county was not originally automatically linked with possession of a ducal title (Herzog in German,Hertog in Dutch), and the same title was also eventually contested by thecounts of Brabant, leading to the invention of two new ducal titles: Brabant and Limbourg.
The extinction of the line of Frederick's grandson Henry in 1283 sparked theWar of the Limburg Succession, whereafter Limburg was ruled by thedukes of Brabant inpersonal union, eventually being grouped together with the Brabantian "Overmaas" territories bordering it (includingDalhem,Valkenburg, and's-Hertogenrade), to be one of theSeventeen Provinces of theBurgundian Netherlands. Unlike other parts of this province, the lands of the duchy stayed intact within the Southern Netherlands, underHabsburg control, after the divisions caused by theEighty Years' War and theWar of the Spanish Succession. However finally, after the failedBrabant Revolution in 1789, the duchy's history was terminated with the occupation byFrench Revolutionary troops in 1793. The easternmost lands were reunited within modern Belgium only afterWorld War I.
The duchy was multilingual, being the place where Dutch, French, and German dialects border upon each other and coexist at their geographical extremes, both now and in medieval times. Its northern and eastern borders are the approximate boundaries of the modern state of Belgium with the Netherlands andGermany, at their "tripoint". The eastern part, which includesEupen, is the administrative capital and northernmost part of the modernGerman-speaking Community of Belgium. The duchy also included the main part of thePays de Herve, famous for its pungent-smelling soft cheese known asLimburger orHerve.
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The state's territory was situated in theLow Countries between the riverMeuse (Maas) in the west and theImperial city ofAachen in the east. These lands had formed a very large lordship under Baelen on the route between the important imperial centres of Liège and Aachen. They had chiefly been used for hunting, and not yet developed very much for agriculture. Frederick selected a natural prominence at an important intersection of roads which had probably been called "Heimersberch" or Hèvremont, and built his new comitalcaput there in about 1030.[2] Kupper has proposed that the new name for this place, Limburg, was taken from the name of the fort of the rulingSalian dynasty who had in about the same period given their possession to becomeLimburg Abbey.
The most important towns in the eventual duchy were Limbourg, the capital, andEupen. The Limburg estates were commonly divided into fivelegal districts (Hochbänke):
The territory of Limburg formed a complex patchwork with those of thePrince-Bishopric of Liège, based to the west, thePrincipality of Stavelot-Malmedy to the south, and theCounty of Luxembourg, to the south. In the east the main neighbour was the RhenishDuchy of Jülich. To the north were the smaller lordships such as Slenaken, and Wittem and the lordships of Dalhem and Rolduc ('s-Hertogenrade), today in the Dutch province of Limburg, which came under Brabant control and were referred to in that context as the "Overmaas" territory, or even Limburg. In the northeast was the imperial city ofAachen.
Linguistically Limburg was situated on the border ofGermanic withRomance Europe. While in the northern and eastern districtsLimburgish andRipuarian dialects were spoken, the southwestern part aroundHerve was dominated byWalloon.
The territory of the duchy of Limburg was formed in the 11th century around the town ofLimbourg in present-dayWallonia. About 1020, DukeFrederick of Lower Lorraine, a descendant of Count PalatineWigeric of Lotharingia, had Limbourg Castle built on the banks of theVesdre river. His estates then comprised the districts ofBaelen (with Limbourg), Herve, Montzen (since 1975 part ofPlombières),Walhorn, and the southwestern exclave ofSprimont. Frederick's eventual successor (probably a grandson) wasHenry, although between them wasCount Udon, who about 1065 was also called a "count of Limburg". (It has been proposed that he married Frederick's daughter, and was the father of Henry.)[3]
Henry also claimed Frederick's ducal title, which was finally acknowledged by EmperorHenry IV in 1101. The Duchy of Limburg, like most of modern Belgium, was originally within the Duchy ofLower Lorraine. For a while, Lower Lorraine had its ownduke. It is from this duchy that the Duchy of Limbourg derived its ducal status (as did the Duchy of Brabant, in a competitive claim to succession). This meant that Lower Lorraine came to have two duchies, that of Brabant, and that of Limburg, and the title ofDuke of Lothier, still held by Brabant, eventually became ineffective. As the Lorrainian ducal dignity was contested the title "duke of Limburg" arose, achieving confirmation from EmperorFrederick Barbarossa in 1165.
The rise of the Limburg dynasty continued, when DukeWaleran III in 1214 became Count ofLuxembourg by marriage with the heiressErmesinde[4] and his sonHenry IV in 1225 became Count ofBerg as husband of heiressIrmgard.
However, upon the death of Henry's sonWaleran IV in 1279, leaving only one heiress Irmgard, who had married CountReginald I of Guelders but died childless in 1283, theWar of the Limburg Succession broke out. Theduke of Brabant won the finalBattle of Worringen in 1288, thereby gaining control of the Duchy of Limburg with the consent of KingRudolph I of Germany. Though it shared the fate of Brabant, Limburg remained a separateImperial State, which in 1404 passed fromJoanna of Brabant toAnthony of Valois, son of theBurgundian dukePhilip the Bold. After the death ofMary of Burgundy in 1482, it passed to her descendants from the AustrianHouse of Habsburg. Combined with theLands of Overmaas (the lands beyond the Meuse:Dalhem,Herzogenrath andValkenburg) andMaastricht, the duchy became one of theSeventeen Provinces held by the Habsburgs within theBurgundian Circle established in 1512. Significant towns in Limburg proper were Herve, Montzen,Lontzen,Eupen, Baelen andEsneux.
After the abdication of EmperorCharles V in 1556, the Burgundian fiefs passed to his son KingPhilip II of Spain. The measures of theCouncil of Troubles implemented by Philip's stern governor,the duke of Alba, sparked theEighty Years' War, ended by the 1648Peace of Westphalia. An area known asLimburg of the States, consisting of parts of Overmaas (but no part of the Duchy of Limburg itself), was ceded to theDutch Republic. In 1661, the Dutch and the Spanish agreed on a re-partition of the county ofDalhem. The Duchy of Limburg itself remained undivided under Spanish Habsburg rule as part of theSouthern Netherlands, passing to the Austrian Habsburgs under theTreaty of Utrecht in 1713.
When the region was occupied by theFrench in 1794, the Austrian Duchy of Limburg proper was disbanded and was incorporated into the département ofOurthe, while most of the Overmaas lands became part of the departmentMeuse-Inférieure, which is the basis of today's Belgian and Dutch provinces called Limburg. After the defeat of the French empire, the eastern, German-speaking part of duchy's lands were given toPrussia in theCongress of Vienna along with several other territories along what is today the Belgian-German border, but after theFirst World War, these lands became Belgian, re-uniting the original parts of the old duchy.
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