Burgundian Circle

Composition

After the 1548 Diet of Augsburg, the circle was made up of the following territories:

Netherlands

County of Burgundy

History

The Imperial Seventeen Provinces emerged from the Burgundian Netherlands ruled in personal union by the French Dukes of Burgundy. Most of the seventeen had been fiefs of the Holy Roman Empire on the territory of Lower Lorraine, except for Flanders and Artois. In 1482, they fell to the House of Habsburg.

In 1363, the French King John II of Valois enfeoffed his youngest son Philip the Bold with the Duchy of Burgundy (Bourgogne). Philip in 1369 married Margaret of Dampierre, the only child of Count Louis II of Flanders (d. 1384), whose immense dowry not only included Flanders and Artois but also the Imperial County of Burgundy. He thereby became the progenitor of the House of Valois-Burgundy, which systematically came into possession of different Imperial fiefs: his grandson Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy from 1419, purchased Namur in 1429, and inherited the duchies of Brabant and Limburg from his cousin Philip of Saint-Pol in 1430. In 1432, he forced Jacqueline of Wittelsbach to cede him the counties of Hainaut and Holland along with Zeeland, under the Treaty of Delft, and finally occupied Luxembourg, exiling Duchess Elisabeth of Görlitz in 1443.

The Burgundian State then bore a faint resemblance to the early medieval Lotharingia, but fell suddenly with the death of the ambitious Charles the Bold. In 1473, he had agreed with Frederick III, Holy Roman Emperor to marry his daughter Mary the Rich to the Emperor's son Archduke Maximilian I of Austria in exchange for the elevation of his Imperial territories to a "Kingdom of Burgundy", co-equal to the French kingdom of his Valois cousins. The Prince-electors, however, forestalled these plans, and Duke Charles started a desperate campaign against the Duchy of Lorraine and was killed at the 1477 Battle of Nancy. To secure her heritage against King Louis XI of France, his daughter Mary nevertheless married Maximilian the same year. The Archduke defeated the French troops at the 1479 Battle of Guinegate and by the 1493 Treaty of Senlis annexed the Seventeen Provinces – including the French fiefs of Flanders and Artois – for the House of Habsburg. The sovereignty finally passed to the Empire in the Treaty of Cambrai in 1529. The Duchy of Burgundy proper was seized as a reverted fief by the French crown.

Maximilian's grandson and successor, Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor eventually won the Guelders Wars and united all seventeen provinces under his rule, the last one being the Duchy of Guelders in 1543. The Burgundian treaty of 1548 shifted the seventeen provinces from the Lower Rhenish–Westphalian Circle to the Burgundian circle, resulting in a significant territorial gain for the latter and increased tax obligation. The Pragmatic Sanction of 1549 determined that the Provinces should remain united in the future and inherited by the same monarch. After Charles V's abdication in 1556, his realms became divided between his son, King Philip II of Spain, and his brother, Emperor Ferdinand I. The Seventeen Provinces went to his son Philip. Meanwhile, a common political representation was established through the States General of the Netherlands.

Conflicts between Philip II and his Dutch subjects led to the Eighty Years' War, which started in 1568. The seven northern provinces gained their independence as a republic called the Seven United Provinces. They were:

1. the Lordship of Groningen and of the Ommelanden
2. the Lordship of Friesland
3. the Lordship of Overijssel
4. the Duchy of Guelders (except its upper quarter) and the County of Zutphen
5. the Lordship of Utrecht
6. the County of Holland
7. the County of Zeeland

The southern provinces – Flanders, Brabant, Namur, Hainaut, Luxembourg and so forth – were restored to Spanish rule thanks to the military and political talent of the Duke of Parma, especially at the siege of Antwerp (1584-1585). Hence, these Provinces became known as the Spanish Netherlands.

The northern Seven United Provinces kept parts of Limburg, Brabant and Flanders during and after the Eighty Years' War (see: Generality Lands), which ended with the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648.

Artois, and parts of Flanders and Hainaut were ceded to France in the treaties of the Pyrenees and Nijmegen in the course of the 17th century.

References

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