A short history of Belgium

by Léon van der Essen

Thus, at the beginning of the feudal system, there existed no political and no linguistic unity in Belgium. Moreover, although Flanders formed a politically united body, Lotharingia was subdivided into several small principalities: the duchy of Brabant, including the actual provinces of Brabant and Antwerp, the county of Limburg, the county of Namur, the duchy of Luxemburg, the county of Hainaut, and two ecclesiastical principalities, Cambrai and Liège.

The absence of political unity was a consequence of the new political constitution of most of the countries of Western Europe in the tenth century—of feudalism, so called. In place of the former despotic and centralized power of the King there was now to be found the locally asserted rule of dukes, counts, viscounts, etc. These public officers who, in the ninth century, were still subordinate agents of the King, without any other power than that delegated to them by their master, had succeeded, partly through the weakness of the heirs of Charles the Great and partly on account of the invasions of the Normans in the ninth century and the incursion of the Hungarians in the tenth, in grasping more firmly their delegated powers and in making their military, political, and financial perquisites hereditary. Thanks to the custom whereby the King granted them a domain, called beneficium, as a reward for their services or to insure their loyalty, they had succeeded in getting a strong political foothold in their respective provinces, and had continuously developed their possessions and their influence. In the tenth century the dukes and counts, formerly officers of the King, had won for themselves an independent and hereditary position. The kingdom was now everywhere broken up into small principalities, practically autonomous, where the King no longer exercised his power and where the people were now dominated by local dynasties. The new political organization, called feudalism, existed, of course, in Belgium also, and contributed in a large measure to the complete absence of political and national unity throughout the country.

Each county, each duchy, became a world apart, had its own politics and made war on the neighboring principality, or aided it in case of attack from others. So Flanders enjoyed friendly relations with Cambrai and Hainaut; Hainaut was on good terms with Namur and Luxemburg. Sometimes they fought one another: Brabant and Limburg were enemies for a long time. Later they became united under the same princes. The same phenomenon existed in the Northern Netherlands: Holland was friendly toward Cleves, but fought against Gueldre on account of Utrecht, against Flanders on account of Zealand, against Utrecht on account of Friesland, etc.

For the most part, Flanders or the western part of Belgium was a vassal of the French King; Lotharingia or the eastern part of Belgium was a vassal of the German Empire. The dependency of Lotharingia, however, was less definite than was that of Flanders to France, for the numerous principalities into which the former was broken up introduced more autonomy for the local dynasties and rendered intervention on the part of the Emperor more difficult. Flanders, on the other hand, as a more homogeneous territory, was more closely united with its feudal lord.

The ultimate fate of Flanders and Lotharingia depended, however, on the degree of independence that their princes would be able to win. In accordance with the general politics of all vassals, the counts of Flanders and the dukes of Lotharingia dreamed of but one thing, namely, of escape from the domination of their feudal lord. The result was that, after some centuries, both parts of Belgium were brought more and more closely together, and from this resulted that much-needed political unity, the only hope of a real independent Belgium.

The political history of the country in feudal times (the tenth to the twelfth century) must now be examined.

Annexed to the German Empire, Lotharingia became from 925 a sort of German province, especially during the reign of Emperor Otto I (962), a man of powerful personality. Otto clearly realized that no layman at the head of Lotharingia would be loyal enough to submit entirely to his own politics and he therefore appealed to the devotion and faithfulness of the bishops. These were to be the agents of the German influence and domination. In 953 Otto appointed his own brother, Bruno, as Duke of Lotharingia and obtained for him at the same time the archbishopric of Cologne. Having thus acquired control of both the political and ecclesiastical power, Bruno became the intermediary by whom not only the duchy but also the Lotharingian church was to be more and more Germanized.

However, the domination of the imperial German church did not succeed in breaking entirely the resistance of the local Lotharingian princes. Those princes had no affection for the Emperor, their overlord; they could not forget their old national dynasty, the Carolingians, who belonged to the country and were not foreigners, as were the German emperors. The people of Lotharingia supported those local dynasties which claimed descent from the old Carolingian national stock; the castles of the local counts of Hainaut, Louvain, and Limburg became centers of political influence, whose object was to check the domination of the feudal German lord. Since the tenth century the local houses of Hainaut and Louvain, of Namur and Luxemburg, had attempted to organize their political power. In the last quarter of the eleventh century, the Germanization of Lotharingia broke down as a result of the so-called “Struggle for the Investitures,” whereby the power of the Emperor over the church in Germany was destroyed. The bishops of the Empire, having to choose between loyalty to their feudal lord and obedience to the pope, were no longer political servants of the Emperor. The downfall of the imperial church meant the end of its influence in Lotharingia. The local princes threw off the feudal yoke and practically divided the whole of Lotharingia among themselves. And thus was witnessed the end of that large imperial province that for so long had covered the western frontier of Germany between the Rhine and the Scheldt. We hear no more of Lotharingia: another name appears in Belgian history, namely, Brabant. It was the Duke of Brabant, of the local house of Louvain, who, from this time on, gradually extended his political influence over the former Lotharingia, in that part of Belgium lying east of the Scheldt.

The German Emperor was now no more the lord of the Lotharingian princes: he was henceforth regarded as an ally or as an enemy, according to the circumstances. The Lotharingian principalities no longer played a part in events occurring on the other side of the Rhine; they no longer sent soldiers to the feudal imperial army; they followed the emperors no more in their expeditions against Italy; and, in the Lotharingian literature, there is to be found hardly a suggestion of a recollection of the existence of the Emperor.

From the middle of the twelfth century on, the national life of the eastern part of Belgium displayed more and more cohesion and individuality; little by little it broke down the geographical barrier of the Scheldt that the Treaty of Verdun had erected between Lotharingia and Flanders.