Duchy of Limburg (1839–67)

The Duchy of Limburg or Limbourg was an imperial estate of the Holy Roman Empire. Much of the area of the duchy is today located within Liège Province of Belgium, with a small portion in the municipality of Voeren, an exclave of the neighbouring Limburg Province. Its chief town was Limbourg-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 the House 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 of Lower Lotharingia in 1046. 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 also eventually contested by counts 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 the War of the Limburg Succession, whereafter Limburg was ruled by the Dukes of Brabant in personal union, eventually being grouped together with the Brabantian "Overmaas" territories bordering it (including Dalhem, Valkenburg, and 's-Hertogenrade), to be one of the Seventeen Provinces of the Burgundian Netherlands. Unlike other parts of this province, the lands of the duchy stayed intact within the Southern Netherlands, under Habsburg control, after the divisions caused by the Eighty Years' War and the War of the Spanish Succession. However finally, after the failed Brabant Revolution in 1789, the duchy's history was terminated with the occupation by French Revolutionary troops in 1793. These lands were reunited within modern Belgium only after World 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 and Germany, at their "tripoint". The eastern part, which includes Eupen, is the administrative capital and northernmost part of the modern German-speaking Community of Belgium. The Duchy also included the main part of the Pays de Herve, famous for its pungent-smelling soft cheese known as Limburger or Herve.

Geography

The state's territory was situated in the Low Countries between the river Meuse (Maas) in the west and the Imperial city of Aachen 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 comital ''caput'' there in about 1030.Kupper, p.617. Kupper has proposed that the new name for this place, Limburg, was taken from the name of the fort of the ruling Salian dynasty who had in about the same period given their possession to become Limburg Abbey.

The most important towns in the eventual Duchy were Limbourg, the capital, and Eupen. The Limburg estates were commonly divided into five legal districts (''Hochbänke''):

*The original manor of Baelen in the southeast with the fortified town of Limburg, and also Eupen, and Welkenraedt;
*Herve in the southwest with Dison, Thimister and Clermont.
*Montzen (today part of Plombières) in the northwest with Kelmis, Moresnet, and Teuven;
*Walhorn in the northeast with Eynatten, Hauset, and Lontzen;
*The southwestern exclave of Sprimont, surrounded by the Prince-Bishopric of Liège.

The territory of Limburg formed a complex patchwork with those of the Prince-Bishopric of Liège, based to the west, the Principality of Stavelot-Malmedy to the south, and the County of Luxembourg, to the south. In the east the main neighbour was the Rhenish Duchy 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 of Aachen.

Linguistically Limburg was situated on the border of Germanic with Romance Europe. While in the northern and eastern districts Limburgish and Ripuarian dialects were spoken, the southwestern part around Herve was dominated by Walloon.

History

The territory of the duchy of Limburg was formed in the 11th century around the town of Limbourg in present-day Wallonia. About 1020, Duke Frederick of Lower Lorraine, a descendant of Count Palatine Wigeric of Lotharingia, had Limbourg Castle built on the banks of the Vesdre river. His estates then comprised the districts of Baelen (with Limbourg), Herve, Montzen (since 1975 part of Plombières), Walhorn, and the southwestern exclave of Sprimont. Frederick's eventual successor (probably a grandson) was Henry, although between them was Count 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.)Jean-Louis Kupper (2007) Les origines du duché de Limbourg-sur-Vesdre", ''Revue belge de Philologie et d'Histoire'' Année 85-3-4 pp. 609-63

Henry also claimed Frederick's ducal title, which was finally acknowledged by Emperor Henry IV, Holy Roman Emperor, Henry IV in 1101. The Duchy of Limburg, like most of modern Belgium, was originally within the Duchy of Lower Lorraine. For a while, Lower Lorraine had its own single Duke. 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 of Duke 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 Emperor Frederick Barbarossa in 1165.

The rise of the Limburg dynasty continued, when Duke Waleran III in 1214 became Count of Luxembourg by marriage with the heiress Ermesinde

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