County of Flanders


The County of Flanders was one of the most powerful political entities in the medieval Low Countries, located on the North Sea coast of modern-day Belgium and north-eastern France. Unlike the neighbouring states of Brabant and Hainaut, it was within the territory of the Kingdom of France. The counts of Flanders held the most northerly part of the kingdom, and were among the original twelve peers of France. For centuries, the economic activity of the Flemish cities, such as Ghent, Bruges and Ypres, made Flanders one of the most affluent regions in Europe, and also gave them strong international connections to trading partners.
Up to 1477, the core area under French suzerainty was west of the Scheldt and historians call this "Royal Flanders". Aside from this, the counts, from the 11th century onward, held land east of the river as a fief of the Holy Roman Empire, and this is referred to as "Imperial Flanders". From 1384, the county was politically united to the Duchy of Burgundy, and it formed the starting point for more acquisitions in the area, and the eventual creation of the Burgundian Netherlands. The expansion of Flemish power deep into the Holy Roman Empire further complicated the relationship between Flanders and France, but reinforced the connections with Brabant, Hainaut, Holland and other parts of the Low Countries. The link to the empire was strengthened even more when the Burgundian Netherlands came into the hands of the imperial Habsburg dynasty in 1477. Most of Flanders became part of the empire after the Peace of Madrid in 1526 and the Peace of the Ladies in 1529, although it came to be ruled under the Habsburg crown of Spain. Most of the old county's territory lies outside of present-day France, one of only two parts of medieval France that are no longer part of the country; the other being Catalonia, renounced in 1258.
By 1795 the entire Austrian Netherlands, the successor of the Spanish Netherlands, was acquired by France under the French First Republic, and this was recognized by treaty in 1797. After the Battle of Waterloo in 1815, these territories, including most of the old county of Flanders, passed to the newly established United Kingdom of the Netherlands, which was split up between 1830 and 1839 into the modern countries of Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands. Although the French Republic had avoided using the names of the great medieval counties for their administrative départements, the Dutch and Belgian regimes brought back such names, and as a consequence the two westernmost provinces of the Flanders region of modern Belgium are now called West Flanders and East Flanders.

Etymology

The term Flanders originally referred to the area around Bruges. It is first mentioned in the biography of Saint Eligius, the Vita sancti Eligii. The work was written before 684 but has been known only since 725. This work mentions only the place "in Flandris".
A Germanic etymology for Flanders and Flemish was proposed by Maurits Gysseling in 1948, based upon an article by René Verdeyen in 1943.
According to this proposal, the terms Flanders and Flemish are likely derived from words derived from Proto-Germanic *flaumaz, meaning stream, current, flood or eddy. Based on this, it is proposed that there was a proto-Germanic term *flaumdra which referred to waterlogged land. According to Toorians, the strength of this proposal is that it would describe the salt marshes and mud flats of this low-lying coastal region. It was regularly inundated, before the development of dykes which started around 1050. However, a weak point of the proposal is that the Germanic wordforms which it requires are not found in any records of Dutch or its dialects. Comparison was instead based upon Old High German flewen and flouwen, and Old Norse flaumr.

Geography

The geography of the historic County of Flanders only partially overlaps with the present-day region of Flanders in Belgium, but even there, it extends beyond the present provinces of West Flanders and East Flanders. Some of the historic county is now part of France and the Netherlands. The land covered by the county is spread out over:
The arms of the County of Flanders were allegedly created by Philip of Alsace, count of Flanders from 1168 to 1191; a climbing or rampant black lion on a gold field. In the story about the Battle of the Golden Spurs, the arms and its corresponding battlecry Vlaendr'n den leeuw plays a crucial role in the forming of a Flemish consciousness, which was popularised in the 19th century by the book De Leeuw van Vlaanderen by Hendrik Conscience. As a result, the arms of the county live on as arms of the Flemish community.
It is said that Philip of Alsace brought the lion flag with him from the Holy Land, where, in 1177, he supposedly acquired it in battle with a Saracen knight, but this is a myth. The simple fact that the lion appeared on his personal seal since 1163, when he had not yet taken one step in the Levant, disproves it. In reality Philip was following a West-European trend. In the same period lions also appeared in the arms of Brabant, Luxembourg, Holland, Limburg and other territories. The lion as a heraldic symbol was mostly used in border territories and neighbouring countries of the Holy Roman Empire. It was in all likelihood a way of showing independence from the emperor, who used an eagle in his personal arms. In Europe the lion had been a well-known figure since Roman times, through works such as the fables of Aesop.

History

Prehistory and antiquity

The future county of Flanders had been inhabited since prehistory. During the Iron Age the Kemmelberg formed an important Celtic settlement. During the times of Julius Caesar, the inhabitants were part of the Belgae, a collective name for all Celtic and Germanic tribes in the north of Gaul. For Flanders in specific these were the Menapii, the Morini, the Nervii and the Atrebates.
Julius Caesar conquered the area around 54 BC and the population was partially romanised from the 1st to the 3rd century. The Roman road that connected Cologne with Boulogne-sur-Mer was used as a defense perimeter. In the south the Gallo-Romanic population was able to maintain itself, while the north became a no-mans land that also suffered from regular floods from the North Sea.
In the coastal and Scheldt areas Saxon tribes gradually appeared. For the Romans, Saxon was a general term, and included Angles, Saxons, Jutes and Erules. The coastal defense around Boulogne and Oudenburg, the Litus Saxonicum, remained functional until about 420. These forts were manned by Saxon soldiers.
From their base land Toxandria the Salian Franks further expanded into the Roman empire. The first incursion into the lands of the Atrebates was turned away in 448 at Vicus Helena. But after the murder of the Roman general Flavius Aëtius in 454 and Roman emperor Valentinianus III in 455, the Salic Franks encountered hardly any resistance. From Duisburg, king Chlodio conquered Cambrai and Tournai, and he reached the Somme. After his death two Salic kingdoms emerged. Childeric is recorded in 463 as king of Tournay and ally of the Romans against the Visigoths. He was also administrator of the province of Belgica Secunda. His son Clovis I conquered from 486 on all of Northern France.

Early Middle Ages

The abandoned coast and Scheldt region had been partially repopulated since the 4th century by Saxons and Franks from the east of the Rhine that retained their Germanic culture and language. In the 5th century Salic Franks settled in present-day Northern-France and Wallonia, primarily around the cities of Courtrai, Tournai and Bavay. They adapted to the local Gallo-Romanic population. From the 6th century on the no-mans-land farther north was filled by Franks from the Rhinelands and other Germanic groups from the Netherlands and Germany.
The first wave of immigration in the present day Flemish territory was accompanied by limited Christianisation. In the wake of the immigrants, missionaries tried to convert the heathen population, but had little success. The bishoprics were reinstated, usually with the same natural borders of the Late-Roman era; the Silva Carbonaria separated the Bishopric of Cambrai from the Bishopric of Tongeren, while the Scheldt again became the border between the bishoprics of Cambrai and Tournai. Vedast and Eleutherius of Tournai were assigned to reinstate the bishoprics of Arras and Tournai. However, these bishoprics failed to survive independently. In the late 6th century the bishopric of Arras was connected to that of Cambrai, and at the start of the 7th century the same was done to the bishoprics of Tournai and Noyon.
At the end of the 6th century, the duchy of Dentelinus was created in the north of what would later constitute Neustria. The duchy presumably included the bishoprics of Boulogne, Thérouanne, Arras, Tournai, Cambrai and Noyon: thus, the northwestern region between the North Sea and the Silva Carbonaria, an area the outlines of which were very similar to the later Flanders. The duchy was primarily intended to serve as a military and strategic deterrent against Frisian and Saxon invasions, and was a cornerstone in the military defense of the Merovingian Empire. In 600, Chlothar II was forced to temporarily cede the duchy to Austrasia, but after the restoration of the Austrasian dual-monarchy in 622–623, the duchy was returned.