The Kingdom of Burgundy, known from the 12th century as the Kingdom of Arles,
was a realm established in 933 by the merger of the kingdoms of
Upper and
Lower Burgundy under King
Rudolf II. It was incorporated into the
Holy Roman Empire
The Holy Roman Empire, also known as the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation after 1512, was a polity in Central and Western Europe, usually headed by the Holy Roman Emperor. It developed in the Early Middle Ages, and lasted for a millennium ...
in 1033 and from then on was one of the empire's three constituent realms, together with the
Kingdom of Germany and the
Kingdom of Italy
The Kingdom of Italy (, ) was a unitary state that existed from 17 March 1861, when Victor Emmanuel II of Kingdom of Sardinia, Sardinia was proclamation of the Kingdom of Italy, proclaimed King of Italy, until 10 June 1946, when the monarchy wa ...
.
By the mid-13th century at the latest, however, it had lost its concrete political relevance.
Its territory stretched from the
Mediterranean Sea
The Mediterranean Sea ( ) is a sea connected to the Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by the Mediterranean basin and almost completely enclosed by land: on the east by the Levant in West Asia, on the north by Anatolia in West Asia and Southern Eur ...
to the
High Rhine River in the north, roughly corresponding to the present-day
French regions of
Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur,
Rhône-Alpes and
Franche-Comté, as well as western
Switzerland
Switzerland, officially the Swiss Confederation, is a landlocked country located in west-central Europe. It is bordered by Italy to the south, France to the west, Germany to the north, and Austria and Liechtenstein to the east. Switzerland ...
. Until 1032 it was ruled by independent kings of the
Elder House of Welf.
[''The New Columbia Encyclopedia'' 1975, 150]
Carolingian Burgundy
Since the conquest of the
Ancient Kingdom of Burgundy by the
Franks
file:Frankish arms.JPG, Aristocratic Frankish burial items from the Merovingian dynasty
The Franks ( or ; ; ) were originally a group of Germanic peoples who lived near the Rhine river, Rhine-river military border of Germania Inferior, which wa ...
in 534, its territory had been ruled within the
Merovingian
The Merovingian dynasty () was the ruling family of the Franks from around the middle of the 5th century until Pepin the Short in 751. They first appear as "Kings of the Franks" in the Roman army of northern Gaul. By 509 they had united all the ...
state, and later the
Carolingian Empire
The Carolingian Empire (800–887) was a Franks, Frankish-dominated empire in Western and Central Europe during the Early Middle Ages. It was ruled by the Carolingian dynasty, which had ruled as List of Frankish kings, kings of the Franks since ...
. In 843, the three surviving sons of Emperor
Louis the Pious
Louis the Pious (; ; ; 16 April 778 – 20 June 840), also called the Fair and the Debonaire, was King of the Franks and Holy Roman Emperor, co-emperor with his father, Charlemagne, from 813. He was also King of Aquitaine from 781. As the only ...
, who had died in 840, signed the
Treaty of Verdun
The Treaty of Verdun (; ), agreed to on 10 August 843, ended the Carolingian civil war and divided the Carolingian Empire between Lothair I, Louis the German, Louis II and Charles the Bald, Charles II, the surviving sons of the emperor Louis the ...
which partitioned the Carolingian Empire among them: the former Burgundian kingdom became part of
Middle Francia, which was allotted to Emperor
Lothair I
Lothair I (9th. C. Frankish: ''Ludher'' and Medieval Latin: ''Lodharius''; Dutch and Medieval Latin: ''Lotharius''; German: ''Lothar''; French: ''Lothaire''; Italian: ''Lotario''; 795 – 29 September 855) was a 9th-century emperor of the ...
(''Lotharii Regnum''), with the exception of the later
Duchy of Burgundy, the present-day ''
Bourgogne'', which went to
Charles the Bald
Charles the Bald (; 13 June 823 – 6 October 877), also known as CharlesII, was a 9th-century king of West Francia (843–877), King of Italy (875–877) and emperor of the Carolingian Empire (875–877). After a series of civil wars during t ...
, king of
West Francia. King
Louis the German
Louis the German (German language, German: ''Ludwig der Deutsche''; c. 806/810 – 28 August 876), also known as Louis II of Germany (German language, German: ''Ludwig II. von Deutschland''), was the first king of East Francia, and ruled from 8 ...
received
East Francia, comprising the territory east of the
Rhine
The Rhine ( ) is one of the List of rivers of Europe, major rivers in Europe. The river begins in the Swiss canton of Graubünden in the southeastern Swiss Alps. It forms part of the Swiss-Liechtenstein border, then part of the Austria–Swit ...
River.
Shortly before his death in 855, Emperor Lothair I divided his realm among his three sons in accordance with the
Treaty of Prüm. Much of his Burgundian domains would pass to his younger son
Charles of Provence, who ruled
Lower Burgundy with Provence as a king (855–863), while
Upper Burgundy was given to his brother, king
Lothair II. Upon the death of Charles in 863, his domains were divided between his brothers: Emperor
Louis II took Provence, while Lothair II received the rest. In 869, Lothair II died without legitimate children, and in 870 his uncles Charles the Bald and Louis the German concluded the
Treaty of Meerssen and partitioned his territory: much of the Upper Burgundy, the territory north of the
Jura mountains
The Jura Mountains ( ) are a sub-alpine mountain range a short distance north of the Western Alps and mainly demarcate a long part of the French–Swiss border. While the Jura range proper (" folded Jura", ) is located in France and Switzerla ...
(''Bourgogne Transjurane''), went to Louis the German. The western regions went to Charles the Bald, while emperor Louis II kept Provence and parts of Lower Burgundy. In 875, the emperor died, and his domains in Lower Burgundy and Provence were taken by Charles the Bald and incorporated into his domains.
Formation of the kingdom

In the confusion after the death of Charles' son, the West Frankish king
Louis the Stammerer in 879, one of his most powerful nobles - count
Boso of Provence (d. 887) refused to submit to Louis' heirs. At the
Synod of Mantaille, Boso was proclaimed king, thus establishing a distinctive Kingdom in the regions of Provence and
Lower Burgundy (''Bourgogne Cisjurane''), centered at Arles and
Vienne, but his realm was much reduced by 882. His son and heir, king
Louis the Blind (d. 928) succeeded to consolidate the realm in 890, and even managed to capture northern Italy, becoming the emperor in 901. Blinded in 905, he gradually transferred the governance to his cousin, count
Hugh of Arles.
In the meanwhile, a separate kingdom was created in Upper Burgundy. In 888, upon the death of the Emperor
Charles the Fat
Charles the Fat (839 – 13 January 888) was the emperor of the Carolingian Empire from 881 to 887. A member of the Carolingian dynasty, Charles was the youngest son of Louis the German and Hemma, and a great-grandson of Charlemagne. He was t ...
, count
Rudolph of Auxerre,
Count of Burgundy
This is a list of the County of Burgundy, counts of Burgundy, i.e., of the region known as Franche-Comté, not to be confused with the Duchy of Burgundy, from 982 to 1678.
House of Ivrea (982–1184)
House of Hohenstaufen (1190–1231)
...
, founded the Kingdom of Upper Burgundy at
Saint-Maurice which included the County of Burgundy, in northwestern Upper Burgundy.
In 933,
Hugh of Arles ceded Lower Burgundy to
Rudolph II of Upper Burgundy in return for Rudolph relinquishing his claim to the
Italian throne. Rudolph merged both Upper and Lower Burgundy to form the Kingdom of Arles (''Arelat'').
In 937, Rudolph was succeeded by his son
Conrad the Peaceful. Inheritance claims by Hugh of Arles were rejected, with the support of Emperor
Otto I. The kingdom was simulteously invaded by
Magyar and Arab raiding parties in 954 and Conrad sent envoys to both parties to attack one another and sent expeditions to
Provence in raiding Arab settlements in the 960s.
In 993, Conrad was succeeded by his son
Rudolph III, who in 1006 was forced to sign a succession treaty in favor of the future Emperor
Henry II. Rudolph attempted to renounce the treaty in 1016 without success.
Imperial kingdom
In 1032, Rudolph III died without any surviving heirs, and, in accordance with the 1006 treaty, the kingdom passed to Henry's successor,
Emperor Conrad II from the
Salian dynasty, and Arelat was incorporated in the
Holy Roman Empire
The Holy Roman Empire, also known as the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation after 1512, was a polity in Central and Western Europe, usually headed by the Holy Roman Emperor. It developed in the Early Middle Ages, and lasted for a millennium ...
, though the kingdom's territories operated with considerable autonomy.
Though from that time the emperors held the title "King of Arles", few went to be crowned in the cathedral of Arles. An exception was
Frederick Barbarossa, who in 1157 held
a diet in Besançon and in 1178 was crowned King of Burgundy by the
archbishop of Arles.
The
Vivarais
Vivarais (; ; {{cite web , url=http://www.columbia.edu/acis/ets/Graesse/orblatv.html , title = ORBIS LATINUS - Letter V) is a traditional region in the south-east of France, covering the ''département'' of Ardèche, named after its capital Vivier ...
see of
Viviers was the first of the kingdom's territories to be annexed to the
Kingdom of France
The Kingdom of France is the historiographical name or umbrella term given to various political entities of France in the Middle Ages, medieval and Early modern France, early modern period. It was one of the most powerful states in Europe from th ...
, gradually during the 13th century with formal recognition in 1306. The
Lyonnais had been practically beyond the reach of the Empire since the late 12th century. Its incorporation into France was the result of internal conflicts between the
Archbishop of Lyon, the cathedral chapter and the city council. It was cemented in the early 14th century and formalized in a 1312 treaty between
Archbishop Peter of Savoy and
Philip IV of France
Philip IV (April–June 1268 – 29 November 1314), called Philip the Fair (), was King of France from 1285 to 1314. Jure uxoris, By virtue of his marriage with Joan I of Navarre, he was also King of Navarre and Count of Champagne as Philip&n ...
.
Emperor Henry VII protested against this but did not seriously challenge it. The
Dauphiné
The Dauphiné ( , , ; or ; or ), formerly known in English as Dauphiny, is a former province in southeastern France, whose area roughly corresponded to that of the present departments of Isère, Drôme and Hautes-Alpes. The Dauphiné was ...
was effectively annexed by France through a series of largely accidental developments between 1343 and 1349, but the issue of whether the king or emperor had ultimate sovereignty over it was left unclear until well into the 15th century.. The
County of Provence was ruled by junior branches of the
House of France from 1246 onwards, but only became formally part of the Kingdom of France with the death of
Charles du Maine on 11 December 1481.
A stillborn attempt to revive the kingdom of Burgundy/Arles was made by
Charles of Anjou in coordination with
Pope Nicholas III. Between 1277 and 1279, Charles, at that time already
King of Sicily
The monarchs of Sicily ruled from the establishment of the Kingdom of Sicily in 1130 until the "perfect fusion" in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies in 1816.
The origins of the Sicilian monarchy lie in the Norman conquest of southern Italy which oc ...
,
Rudolf of Habsburg, King of the Romans and aspirant to the Imperial crown, and
Margaret of Provence, queen dowager of France, settled their dispute over the County of Provence, and also over Rudolf's bid to become the sole Imperial candidate. Rudolf agreed that his daughter
Clemence of Austria Clemence, or Clémence, is a name. It may refer to:
* Louise Michel (1830–1905), a French anarchist who used Clémence as a pseudonym
Given name
* Clémence d'Aquitaine (1060–1142)
* Clemence of Austria (1262–1293 or 1295)
* Clemence of Hung ...
would marry Charles's grandson
Charles Martel of Anjou, with the whole Arelat kingdom as her dowry. In exchange, Charles would support the imperial crown being made hereditary in the House of Habsburg. Nicholas III expected Northern Italy to become a kingdom carved out of the Imperial territory, to be given to his family, the Orsini. In 1282, Charles was ready to send the child couple to reclaim the old royal title of Kings of Arles, but the
War of the Sicilian Vespers frustrated his plans.
On 4 June 1365,
Charles IV was the last emperor to be crowned king at Arles, after a gap of nearly two centuries following the previous Arlesian coronation of
Frederick I in 1178. That attempt to revive the imperial hold on the kingdom did not succeed, however, and as a consequence Charles annexed the
County of Savoy to the
Kingdom of Germany. Charles IV ceded his rights to the crown of Arles to
Louis I of Anjou the following year. During his visit to Paris in early 1378, Charles IV granted the title of
Imperial vicar over the Kingdom of Arles to the nine-year-old
Dauphin Charles of France, later King Charles VI, but only for his lifetime (i.e. not
lineally). This was seen as an effective renouncement of imperial authority over the old Burgundian regions, thus initiating the final stage of institutional dissolution of the Kingdom as a distinct entity. The core of the Kingdom, the County of Provence (without the
County of Nice, which had been passed to the
House of Savoy
The House of Savoy (, ) is a royal house (formally a dynasty) of Franco-Italian origin that was established in 1003 in the historical region of Savoy, which was originally part of the Kingdom of Burgundy and now lies mostly within southeastern F ...
), would eventually be united with the French crown in the 1480s, after it was willed to the French king by
Charles IV of Anjou, Count of Provence.
In 1421, Emperor
Sigismund appointed
Louis II of Chalon-Arlay as the
Imperial vicar of Burgundy, in hope to restore some imperial authority over Dauphiny, Viennois and Provence. Those efforts were directed against rising ambitions of powerful Burgundian Duke
Philip the Good. In 1463, the title of Imperial vicar was offered to Duke Philip himself, by Emperor
Friedrich III, as part of a proposed dynastic alliance between the houses of Burgundy and Austria, but no final agreement was reached, and thus the appointment was not accepted. The Dauphiny and the Provence were annexed into the
Crown lands of France by the end of the 15th century, but those changes were not formally sanctioned by the Holy Roman Emperors. Unlike other non-
German states, the
County of Burgundy and the
Savoyard state were
encircled during the
Imperial Reform.
Thus in 1524, imperial troops invaded Provence during the
Italian War of 1521–1526
The Italian War of 1521–1526, sometimes known as the Four Years' War, () was a part of the Italian Wars. The war pitted Francis I of France and the Republic of Venice against the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V ...
, but failed to capture the region. In 1525, during the peace negotiations between Emperor
Charles V and French King
Francois I, it was proposed that a realm centered on Arles and Provence could be renewed for
Charles III, Duke of Bourbon (d. 1527), but those plans were abandoned and not included into the
Treaty of Madrid (1526). In the summer of 1536, during the
Italian War of 1536–1538, Emperor Charles V personally led the invasion of Provence. He took
Aix-en-Provence
Aix-en-Provence, or simply Aix, is a List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, city and Communes of France, commune in southern France, about north of Marseille. A former capital of Provence, it is the Subprefectures in France, s ...
on August 5, affirming there his rights to the Kingdom of Arles, but those gains were soon lost, and the war ended by the
Treaty of Nice (1538).
Burgundian royal traditions were briefly revived in 1784, following the
War of the Bavarian Succession (1777-1779), when emperor
Joseph II (d. 1790) proposed to the new Bavarian prince-elector
Charles Theodore to exchange
Bavaria
Bavaria, officially the Free State of Bavaria, is a States of Germany, state in the southeast of Germany. With an area of , it is the list of German states by area, largest German state by land area, comprising approximately 1/5 of the total l ...
for the
Austrian Netherlands
The Austrian Netherlands was the territory of the Burgundian Circle of the Holy Roman Empire between 1714 and 1797. The period began with the acquisition by the Austrian Habsburg monarchy of the former Spanish Netherlands under the Treaty of Ras ...
, offering him the title "King of Burgundy". While the
Low Countries
The Low Countries (; ), historically also known as the Netherlands (), is a coastal lowland region in Northwestern Europe forming the lower Drainage basin, basin of the Rhine–Meuse–Scheldt delta and consisting today of the three modern "Bene ...
were not part of the Kingdom of Arles, they were part of the
Burgundian State and the
Burgundian Circle. The proposal was not accepted, and thus the plan failed.
By that time, the title of Imperial vicar of Burgundy became extinct, while the title "King of Arles" remained one of the Holy Roman Emperor's official subsidiary titles until the dissolution of the Empire in 1806. The
Archbishop of Trier continued to act as the
Imperial Archchancellor of Burgundy/Arles, as codified by the
Golden Bull of 1356. The remnants of the Kingdom of Arles became part of the
imperial circles unlike Italian,
Bohemian or
Swiss
Swiss most commonly refers to:
* the adjectival form of Switzerland
* Swiss people
Swiss may also refer to: Places
* Swiss, Missouri
* Swiss, North Carolina
* Swiss, West Virginia
* Swiss, Wisconsin
Other uses
* Swiss Café, an old café located ...
territories. All remaining Imperial states but Savoy were conquered by
Louis XIV
LouisXIV (Louis-Dieudonné; 5 September 16381 September 1715), also known as Louis the Great () or the Sun King (), was King of France from 1643 until his death in 1715. His verified reign of 72 years and 110 days is the List of longest-reign ...
(r. 1643–1715).
See also
*
Kings of Burgundy
Notes
References
Literature
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Arles, Kingdom of
States and territories established in the 930s
States and territories disestablished in 1378
1030s in the Holy Roman Empire
Former monarchies of Europe
Kingdom of Burgundy
Kingdom of Arles
15th-century disestablishments in Europe
Medieval history of Switzerland
933 establishments
1032 in Europe
Monarchy of the Holy Roman Empire
History of Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur
History of Rhône-Alpes
History of Franche-Comté
10th-century establishments in Europe
de:Königreich Burgund#Königreich Arelat