First War of the Geldrian Succession

The First War of the Geldrische Succession was a military dispute over the succession in the Duchy of Geldern between 1371 and 1379. After the death of the last Duke from the House of Flamenses , the sisters Mechthild and Maria fought over the rule. The conflict was fueled by opposites in the Geldrischen nobility and led to the intervention of all neighboring princes and counts. The younger sister Maria finally won the argument because the emperor had enfeoffed her son with funds and Mechthild had remained childless.

prehistory

On August 22, 1371, the ruling Duke of Geldern Eduard was hit in the eye by a last bow shot after the Battle of Baesweiler and died two days later. His older brother Rainald III. Eduard, who was deprived of power and imprisoned in 1361 after an eleven year fratricidal war due to incompetence, only survived a few months - the imprisonment had ruined his health too much. On December 4, 1371, the last duke of the Flamenses family died and was buried with sword and shield next to his brother in the Cistercian Abbey of Graefenthal .

The two sisters of the last dukes, daughters from Rainald's first marriage, were now entitled to inheritance . II with Sophia Berthout , Mistress of Mechelen : Mechthild , wife of the late Count Johann von Kleve , and Maria, wife of Duke Wilhelm von Jülich . Mechthild was the older of the two sisters, but childless, while Maria had two sons, seven-year-old Wilhelm and six-year-old Rainald .

The sisters submitted to the judgment of the Geldern estates on Christmas 1371. However, these were divided, which was due to a dispute between the two most important noble families of Geldern, the Bronkhorsten and the Heeckeren . The Bronkhorsten had become powerful under Duke Rainald II and supported his policy of alliance with King Edward of England - Rainald had married Edward's sister Eleonore -, with Emperor Ludwig the Bavarian and with Count Wilhelm of Holland against the French King in the Hundred Years War . After Rainald's death, his wife finally disempowered the French party at the duke's court and leaned heavily on the Count of Holland. However, as soon as Rainald III. Having been declared of full age, he married the daughter of the Duke of Brabant and went over to the French camp, which caused considerable trouble among the Geldern nobility. The Bronckhorsten were the losers of this political change. When the new Bishop of Utrecht released the Oberstift Overijssel , which had been pledged in Geldern , the Bronckhorsten, as the largest pledgee, were damaged by the Bishop's Geldrischen partisans, the Heeckeren, which resulted in a two-year feud. When Rainald decided this feud in favor of the Heeckeren, the Bronkhorsten went into open opposition and tried with the younger duke brother Eduard Rainald III. to fall. An eleven-year civil war was the result, with Eduard being able to rely on the capital Nijmegen, the upper quarter of Geldern, the Duke of Jülich and the Count of Moers, while the noble families in Zutphen and the Veluwe as well as the Duke of Brabant, the Count of Kleve and the bishop of Utrecht held to Rainald. Eduard finally succeeded in asserting himself, which restored the regional political order from the time of Rainald II: Holland, Jülich and Geldern based on England against Brabant and Liège based on France.

The parties

Due to the internal contradictions of the nobility in Geldern, a military conflict became more and more likely from January 1372, which is why both sides were looking for allies.

Mechtild von Geldern joined forces with the Duchess Johanna von Brabant , whose husband Wenzel had been imprisoned by Wilhelm von Jülich since the defeat of Baesweiler. In order to improve her position and perhaps have a son after all, Mechthild married Johann II , Count of Blois and Dunois, on February 14, 1372 , who was also wealthy in Holland and Zeeland . However, Mechthild only paid homage to the royal seat of Arnhem and the Heeckeren in Geldern . Because Wilhelm's son would later rule Jülich and Geldern in personal union, all of the Dutch-Lower Rhine Counts supported Mechthild more or less openly. Exceptions were the Count von Moers and the Archbishop of Cologne Friedrich III. von Saar Werden , but did not give any active support.

The capital Nijmegen and most of the other cities turned to Maria von Jülich with the Bronkhorsten. This was able to legally enforce her son's claim to money on June 22nd, when Emperor Karl enfeoffed the still underage Wilhelm with the Duchy of Geldern and at the same time appointed his father Wilhelm von Jülich as regent - that was the price for the release of Karl's half-brother Wenzel the Jülich captivity. In fact, for Maria the recognition by the cities meant much more than the imperial enfeoffment. Geldern was one of the richest urban territories in the empire - in this it was only surpassed by the county of Kleve - and the city of Nijmegen played the decisive role in this dispute as the only city down the Rhine from Cologne with more than 10,000 inhabitants.

The history

The Duke of Jülich initially occupied the closest part of the duchy, the upper district of Geldern with the cities of Roermond (district capital), Venlo and Geldern as well as Montfort Castle. Jean de Châtillon and the Utrecht Bishop Arnold II von Horn besieged the city of Geldern for 16 weeks in vain, which meant that Wilhelm von Jülich's possession of the upper quarter was secured for the time being. In the Nijmegen district, John II of Blois won the town of Lobith , but lost Arnhem. His partisan Goswin von Varick, on the other hand, won Tiel, but immediately lost it again to the Duke of Jülich. This in turn lost it - like the cities of Venlo and Haderwyck - to Bishop Arnold. Duke Wilhelm invaded Utrecht and plundered Amerongen, Doorn, Zeist and de Bild. Count Johann took Zaltbommel in return and plundered the city. The Duke of Jülich received a respite when the Bishop of Utrecht fell out as an opponent due to a feud with Albrecht of Holland in 1373 and 1374. The Bronckhorsten changed sides several times, partly as a favor for a small release from captivity, partly out of calculation.

But since Mechthild no longer had any prospect of children - she was around fifty - the prospects for Maria improved from year to year. A comparison from the year 1374 between Mechthild and Maria was supposed to divide the country into spheres of influence: The Nijmegen district north of the Rhine and Waal and the Veluwe were to belong to Mechthild, Zutphen and Obergeldern to Maria. Very few cities showed their agreement with this regulation, Arnhem neither and neither does Zutphen. Rather, a consensus was reached that this transitional regulation should only apply until Wilhelm von Jülich came of age.

When Emperor Charles IV enfeoffed the now fourteen-year-old Wilhelm von Jülich with the Duchy of Geldern and the County of Zutphen on November 29, 1377 , the favor finally turned to the House of Jülich. Because in the same year Bishop Arnold was transferred from Utrecht to Liège and John II of Blois withdrew to his Dutch estates. From then on, Mechthild fought alone, but because of the personal appearance of Wilhelm von Jülich on the scene, he was completely on the defensive. In addition, Walter von Voorsts' death in battle robbed her of her most decisive support within the money. In this way Wilhelm succeeded in occupying a superior position between the Heeckeren and Bronckhorsten, a position that no duke had had since Rainald II. Finally, in the battle of Hönnepel , the Jülich troops managed to take Mechthild's partisans by surprise and to break any military resistance. Therefore, on March 24, 1379, Mechthild gave up her claims to the Duchy of Geldern and the County of Zutphen, in exchange for compensation for an annual pension of 33,000 gold shields and the Lobith customs for life - how much she actually received is questionable. She died five years later in Huissen on September 21, 1384.

consequences

In terms of foreign policy, Wilhelm I von Geldern took over the legacy of Rainald II and Edward von Geldern by marrying Edward's fiancée, Katharina von Bayern-Holland, on September 18, 1379 and continuing the anti-Brabant policies of these two predecessors. With the death of his father, Wilhelm also became Duke of Jülich and ruled over both duchies. However, there was no union of the two territories, rather the only cohesion lay in the person of the duke. Like Rainald II, Wilhelm also tried to expand funds at the expense of Kleves and Brabant. In front of the walls of Kleve, however, he failed in the Battle of Kleverhamm in 1397 and had to cede the city of Emmerich forever to the Kleve-Mark dynasty . He was more successful against Brabant. At the end of his reign the acquisition of Grave and Cuik in the Nijmegen district stood, although it also appears questionable here whether this profit outweighed the costs of the long-term feuds that particularly affected the Jülich area.

Since he himself remained childless and his brother Rainald had no legitimate offspring either, the Jülich-Geldern family died out after a generation in 1423. In the Second War of the Geldrian Succession, Wilhelm's great-nephew Adolf , Duke von Berg and Count von Ravensberg as the closest male relative of the Jülich family, fought for the succession - both lines had promised mutual succession - against Johann von Loon, Herr zu Heinsberg , as another great-nephew - however only about Wilhelm's aunt, Philippina von Jülich - and finally Arnold von Egmond , Herr von Arkel , whose mother Maria was Johann von Arkel's heir and Wilhelm's sister Johanna. While the former was able to prevail in Jülich and compared with the latter, the latter fought for the Duchy of Geldern, which is why the two countries are still separated today, although the Dutch province of Gelderland still has the ducal coat of arms of Wilhelm with the two lions of Jülich (black on gold) and Geldern (blue on gold) leads.

literature

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