Duke William was able, restless and adventurous, an ideal knight of the palmy days of chivalry. He took part in no less than five crusades with the Teutonic order against the heathen Lithuanians and Prussians. In 1393 he inherited the duchy of Jülich, and died in 1402. He was succeeded by his brother, Reinald IV. (d. 1423), in the united sovereignty of Gelderland, Zutphen and Jülich, who, in accordance with a promise made before his accession, ceded the town of Emmerich to Duke Adolf of Cleves. He took the part of his brother-in-law, John of Arkel, against William VI. of Holland, and in a war of several years’ duration was not successful in preventing the Arkel territory being incorporated in Holland. On his death without legitimate issue, Gelderland passed to the young Arnold of Egmont, grandson of his sister Johanna, who had married John, lord of Arkel, their daughter Maria (d. 1415) being the wife of John, count of Egmont (d. 1451). Arnold was recognized as duke in 1424 by the emperor Sigismund, but in the following year the emperor revoked his decision and bestowed the duchy upon Adolf of Berg. Arnold in retaliation laid claim to the duchy of Jülich, which had likewise been granted to Adolf by Sigismund, and a war followed in which the cities and nobles of Gelderland stood by Arnold; it ended in Arnold retaining Gelderland and Zutphen, and Gerard, the son of Adolf (d. 1437), being acknowledged as duke of Jülich. To gain the support of the estates of Gelderland in this war of succession, Arnold had been compelled to make many concessions limiting the ducal prerogatives, and granting large powers to a council consisting of representatives of the nobles and the four chief cities, and his extravagance and exactions led to continual conflicts, in which the prince was compelled to yield to the demands of his subjects. In his later years a conspiracy was formed against him, headed by his wife, the violent and ambitious Catherine of Cleves, and his son Adolf. Arnold was at first successful and Adolf had to go into exile; but he returned, and in 1465, having taken his father prisoner by treachery, interned him in the castle of Buren. Charles the Bold of Burgundy now seized the opportunity to intervene. In 1471 he forced Adolf to release his father, who sold the reversion of the duchy to the duke of Burgundy for 92,000 golden gulden. On the 23rd of February 1473 Arnold died, and Charles of Burgundy became duke of Gelderland. His succession was not unopposed. Nijmwegen offered an heroic resistance and only fell after a long siege. After Charles’s death in 1477 Adolf was released from the captivity in which he had been held, and placed himself at the head of a party in the powerful city of Ghent, which sought to settle the disputed succession by forcing a match between him and Mary, the heiress of Burgundy. On the 29th of June 1477, however, he was killed at the siege of Tournai; and Mary gave her hand to Maximilian of Austria, afterwards emperor. Catherine, Adolf’s sister, made an attempt to assert the rights of his son Charles to the duchy, but by 1483 Maximilian had crushed all opposition and established himself as duke of Gelderland.

Charles of Egmont, however, did not surrender his claims, but with the aid of the French collected an army, and in the course of 1492 and 1493 succeeded in reconquering his inheritance. The efforts of Maximilian to recover the country were vain, and the successive governors of the Netherlands, Philip the Fair and his sister Margaret, fared no better. In 1507 Charles of Egmont invaded Holland and Brabant, captured Harderwijk and Bommel in 1511, threatened Amsterdam in 1512, and took Groningen. It was, undoubtedly, a great and heroic achievement for the ruler of a petty state like Gelderland thus to assert and maintain his independence for a long period against the overwhelming power of the house of Austria. It was not till 1528 that the emperor Charles V. could force him to accept the compromise of the treaty of Gorichen, by which he received Gelderland and Zutphen for life as fiefs of the Empire. In 1534 the duke, who was childless, attempted to transfer the reversion of Gelderland to France, but this project was violently resisted by the estates of the duchy, and Charles was compelled by them in 1538 to appoint as his successor William V.—the Rich—of Cleves (d. 1592). Charles died the same year, and William, with the aid of the French, succeeded in maintaining his position in Gelderland for several years. The Habsburg power was, however, in the end too great for him, and he was forced to cede the duchy to Charles V. by the treaty of Venloo, signed on the 7th of September 1543.

Gelderland was now definitely amalgamated with the Habsburg dominions in the Netherlands, until the revolt of the Low Countries led to its partition. In 1579 the northern and greater part, comprising the three “quarters” of Nijmwegen, Arnhem and Zutphen, joined the Union of Utrecht and became the province of Gelderland in the Dutch republic. Only the quarter of Roermonde remained subject to the crown of Spain, and was called Spanish Gelderland. By the treaty of Utrecht (1715) this was ceded to Prussia with the exception of Venloo, which fell to the United Provinces, and Roermonde, which, with the remaining Spanish Netherlands, passed to Austria. Of this, part was ceded to France at the peace of Basel in 1795, and the whole by the treaty of Lunéville in 1801, when it received the name of the department of the Roer. By the peace of Paris of 1814 the bulk of Gelderland was incorporated in the United Netherlands, the remainder falling to Prussia, where it forms the circle of Düsseldorf.

The rise of the towns in Gelderland began in the 13th century, river commerce and markets being the chief cause of their prosperity, but they never attained to the importance of the larger cities in Holland and Utrecht, much less to that of the great Flemish municipalities. They differed also from the Flemish cities in the nature of their privileges and immunities, as they did not possess the rights of communes, but only those of “free cities” of the Rhenish type. The power of the feudal lord over them was much greater. The states of Gelderland first became a considerable power in the land during the reign of Arnold of Egmont (1423-1473). Their claim to large privileges and a considerable share in the government of the county were formulated in a document drawn up at Nijmwegen in April 1436. These the duke had to concede, and to agree further to the appointment of a council to assist him in his administration. From this time the absolute authority of the sovereign in Gelderland was broken. The states consisted of two members—the nobility and the towns. The towns were divided into four separate districts or “quarters” named after the chief town in each—Nijmwegen, Arnhem, Zutphen and Roermonde. In the time of the republic, as has been stated above, the province of Gelderland comprised the three first-named “quarters” only. The three quarters had each of them peculiar rights and customs, and their representatives met together in a separate assembly before taking part in the diet (landdag) of the states. The nobility possessed great influence in Gelderland and retained it in the time of the republic.

(G. E.)

GELDERLAND (Guelders), a province of Holland, bounded S. by Rhenish Prussia and North Brabant, W. by Utrecht and South Holland, N. by the Zuider Zee, N.E. by Overysel, and S.E. by the Prussian province of Westphalia. It has an area of 1906 sq. m. and a pop. (1900) of 566,549. Historically it was part of the duchy of Gelderland, which is treated separately above.

The main portion of Gelderland north of the Rhine and the Old Ysel forms as it were an extension of the province of Overysel, being composed of diluvial sand and gravel, covered with sombre heaths and patches of fen. South of this line, however, the soil consists of fertile river-clay. The northern portion is divided by the New (or Gelders) Ysel into two distinct regions, namely, the Veluwe (“bad land”) on the west, and the former countship of Zutphen on the east. In this last division the ground slopes downwards from south-east to north-west (131 to 26 ft.) and is intersected by several fertilizing streams which flow in the same direction to join the Ysel. The extreme eastern corner is occupied by older Tertiary loam, which is used for making bricks, and upon this and the river-banks are the most fertile spots, woods, cultivated land, pastures, towns and villages. The highlands of the Veluwe lying west of the Ysel really extend as far as the Crooked Rhine and the Vecht in the province of Utrecht, but are slightly detached from the Utrecht hills by the so-called Gelders valley, which forms the boundary between the two provinces. This valley extends from the Rhine along the Grift, the Luntersche Beek, and the Eem to the Zuider Zee, and would still offer an outlet in this direction to the Rhine at high water if it were not for the river dikes. The two main ridges of the Veluwe hills (164 and 360 ft.) extend from the neighbourhood of Arnhem north to Harderwyk and north-east to Hattem. In the south they stretch themselves along the banks of the Rhine, forming a strip of picturesque river scenery made up of the varied elements of sandhills and trees, clay-lands and pastures. A large number of country-houses and villas are to be found here, and the riverside villages of Dieren, Velp and Renkum. All over the Veluwe are heaths, scantily cultivated, with fields of rye and buckwheat, cattle of inferior quality, and sheep, and a sparse population. There is also a considerable cultivation of wood, especially of fir and copse, while tobacco plantations are found at Nykerk and Wageningen.

The southern division of the province presents a very different aspect, and contains many old towns and villages. It is watered by the three large rivers, the Rhine, the Waal and the Maas, and has a level clay soil, varied only by isolated hills and a sandy, wooded stretch between Nijmwegen and the southern border. The region enclosed between the Rhine and the Waal and watered by the Linge is called the Betuwe (“good land”), and gave its name to the Germanic tribe of Batavians, who are sometimes wrongly regarded as the parent stock of the Dutch people. There is here a denser population, occupied in the cultivation of wheat, beetroot and fruit, the breeding of excellent cattle, shipping and industrial pursuits. The principal centres of population, such as Zutphen, Arnhem (the chief town of the province), Nijmwegen and Tiel, lie along the large rivers. Smaller, but of equal antiquity, are the riverside towns of Doesburg, which is strongly fortified; Wageningen, with the State agricultural schools; Doetinchem, with a bridge over the Old Ysel which is mentioned as early as the 14th century; Zalt-Bommel, with an old church (1304), and a railway bridge over the Waal; and Kuilenburg, with a fine railway bridge (1863-1868) over the Rhine. Five m. S. of Zalt-Bommel, on the Maas, is the medieval castle of Ammerzode or Ammersooi, also called Amelroy during the French occupation in 1674. It is in an excellent state of preservation and has been restored in modern times. The first authentic record of the castle is its possession by John de Herlar of the noble family of Loo at the end of the 13th century. In 1480 it passed by marriage to the powerful lords van Arkel, and was partly destroyed by fire at the end of the 16th century. The chapel dates from the 15th century, and the keep from 1564. Among the family portraits are works by Albert Dürer. Zetten, on the railway between Nijmwegen and Tiel, is famous for the charitable institutions founded here by the preacher Otto Gerhard Heldring (d. 1876). They comprise a penitentiary (1849) for women; an educational home (1858) for girls; a theological training college (1864); and a Magdalen hospital. Nykerk, Harderwyk and Elburg are fishing towns on the Zuider Zee. Apeldoorn is situated on the edge of the sand-grounds. Heerenberg on the south-eastern border is remarkable for its ancient castle near the seat of the powerful lords van den Bergh. Other ancient and historical towns bordering on the Prussian frontier are Zevenaar, which was for long the cause of dispute between the houses of Cleves and Gelder and was finally attached to the kingdom of the Netherlands in 1816; Breedevoort, once the seat of a lordship of the same name belonging to the counts van Loon or Lohn, who built a castle here in the beginning of the 13th century which was destroyed in 1646—the lordship was presented to Prince William III. in 1697; Winterswyk, now an important railway junction, and of growing industrial importance; and Borkeloo, or Borkulo, the seat of an ancient lordship dating from the first half of the 12th century, which finally came into the possession of Prince William V. of Orange Nassau in 1777. The castle was formerly of importance.

Gelderland is intersected by the main railway lines, which are largely supplemented by steam-tram railways. Steam-tramways connect Arnhem and Zutphen, Wageningen, Nijmwegen, Velp, Doetinchem (by way of Dieren and Doesburg), whence there are various lines to Emmerich and Gendringen on the Prussian borders. Groenlo and Lichtenvorde, Borkulo and Deventer are also connected.