Princes of Orange: a Franco-German-Dutch family (part I)

If you had to choose the most trans-national princely dynasty in all of European history, who would you choose? I’d certainly go for the House of Orange-Nassau, the current royal family of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, who, if their history is looked at from a long perspective, are revealed to be a blended French (Provençal and Burgundian) and German (Rhenish) family who shifted their primary zone of operation to the Low Countries in the 16^th century. Several sub-lineages retained a separate identity as princes of the German Empire in the 18^th and 19^th centuries including the House of Nassau-Weilburg who currently reign in the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg. To complete the total trans-national picture of this dynasty, we see cousins of the family that ruled the principality of Orange as powerful lords in Naples and Sicily in the 13^th and 14^th centuries, and even illegitimate branches established within the British peerage, as the earls of Rochford and Grantham in the 18^th century. In the 17^th century, you might ask: how is it that a family from Germany, whose sovereign status derived from a small enclave in southern France, now governed the United Dutch Provinces, and even briefly the kingdoms of England, Scotland and Ireland? This post will focus on the title ‘Prince of Orange’, and the ever-shifting dynasties that held it across the centuries (from Nice to Baux to Chalon to Nassau). I will leave the story of the House of Nassau itself and all its princely branches—and there are several!—for a separate post. In the end, we shall see that, although the current heir to the throne of the Netherlands, Catharina Amalia, is styled ‘Princess of Orange’, by strict lineal descent she is not the best claimant to the title.

The Principality of Orange is one of the most interesting anomalies in European history: a fragment of an ancient kingdom that disintegrated in the 13^th century; a tiny sovereign territory surrounded by French and Papal power; a Protestant enclave in a sea of Catholicism; an empty title claimed by French, Dutch and Prussian princes well into the modern age. And none of it has anything to do with fruit.

The orange fruit takes its name from Persian and Arabic words nārang/nāranj, and gave its name to the colour once it started to circulate in Europe in the late Middle Ages. The principality, and its chief town, takes its name—possibly—from a Celtic water god, Arausio, or maybe from a pre-Celtic word for ‘high place’. It was an important Roman town in south-eastern Gaul, with a grand theatre and a triumphal arch, both of which survive today. By the end of the 3^rd century it was the seat of a Christian bishop, and hosted several important synods in the 5^th and 6^th centuries. When you walk its streets, it feels like an ancient place. The Roman name gradually morphed into Aurengie and later Orenga by the late 12^th century.

After the fall of the Roman Empire in the West, the region of the Rhône Valley between the Mediterranean and the Alps was formed into the Kingdom of the Burgundians, a Germanic people who had come from the north and settled here in the 5^th century. It formed one of the component kingdoms of the empire of the Franks, but by the 11^th century ceased to be part of the emerging French kingdom of the Capetians and was instead part of the Holy Roman Empire. By the 12^th century, Burgundy’s centre of power shifted to the south, to the city on the Rhône called Arles, which the Kingdom took as its name (and ‘Burgundy’ became associated with the lands much further north, as we know them today). The southern part of this kingdom maintained the old identification as the ‘Roman Province’ and we now simply call it Provence.

Provence emerged as an autonomous county as the Kingdom of Arles disintegrated in the late 13^th century. France started to annex parts of it (Lyonnais, Vivarais, Dauphiné), while the Papacy established in the 1270s its own direct rule over a county (or ‘comtat’) in the Rhône valley known as the Venaissin, to which the city of Avignon was added in the 1340s. Within this comtat, the ancient city of Orange retained its own independence as the seat of powerful Frankish lords who resisted absorption into any of these polities.

Who exactly these earliest lords of Orange were is a bit difficult to discern, as this is also the land of legends, particularly those recounted in song. The famous Provençal troubadours sing of a William of Orange, or Guillaume ‘au Court Nez’ (the short-nosed), who was a knight of Charlemagne, a grandson of Charles Martel, married a Saracen queen (Orable), defeated her son, Arragon, King of Orange, then founded and abbey at Gellone and retired there. He was later named a saint. It is also from this semi-mythical ancestor-hero that derives the very recognisable coat-of-arms of the princes of Orange, the blue hunting horn, or bugle, on a gold field. Though coats-of-arms did not formally emerge in Europe until the 1250s, it was possibly inspired by from a misreading of the name ‘au Court Nez’ as ‘au Cornet’, a small trumpet, or more likely, from the battle horns used by the Gauls as seen on the triumphal arch in Orange still today.

The events of the legendary capture of Orange are meant to take place about 801, but the ‘Chanson de Guillaume’ did not appear until the mid-12^th century and the events recounted are pretty much pure fiction. One of the most famous ‘prince-troubadours’ of 12^th century, Raimbaut, Lord of Orange, maintained his own ‘Court of Love’, a centre of music and art, in one of the family’s castles, Courthézon, just outside the ancient city.

The connection between Guillaume ‘au Court Nez’ and Raimbaut d’Orange is tenuous, and the former is in fact more closely linked to the dynasty who ruled further west in Toulouse and Aquitaine, not in Provence. There were lords of Orange in the 9^th century, but the first really traceable dynasty arose in the 10^th century in the hills above the Rhône valley, at a castle called Mévouillon. Early members of this family rose to prominence by filling senior church roles, as was common for noble families of this era—it is the bishops who matter, and this family (according to medieval genealogies, which may be exaggerated) frequently held the sees of Vaison, Gap, Sisteron and even Avignon in the 10^th and 11^th centuries. One of the non-clerical members of the clan married a daughter of the local overlord, the Count of Provence, in 1012, and obtained the important post of vice-count of Nice. His son, Rambaut, also vice-count (or ‘vicomte’) of Nice became connected with Orange through marriage to an heiress of properties there, notably the aforementioned castle of Courthézon. This castle remained one of the primary seats of the dynasty (now referred to as ‘Orange-Nice’), but declined in the early modern period and was demolished in the 1760s. Today there are only vestiges of its medieval town walls.

Raimbaut II took the title ‘Count of Orange’, and went on the first Crusade in 1096. He is said to have taken part in the siege of Antioch of 1098, and stayed in Palestine where he died sometime in the 1120s. A statue of him was erected in Orange in the 1840s, at the height of France’s renewed passion for medieval history. He too features in an epic poem, La Gerusalemme liberate, written by Torquato Tasso in the16^th century.

Count Raimbaut had no sons, so his daughter, Tiburge, took over the rule of Orange, and was one of the first to use a ‘princely’ title. Some sources say it was recognised as a principality in 1163 by Emperor Frederick Barbarossa to act as a counter-balance to Papal power in this corner of the Empire. By the middle of the century, her family had already shed its connections with the city of Nice, and focused their energies on the city of Orange instead. The Princess expanded the town and rebuilt its château within the ruins of the old Roman castrum on the hill above the theatre. She married twice, to powerful local lords in the neighbouring provinces, first Dauphiné (Adhémar de Monteil) then Languedoc (Aumelas). Her son, Raimbaut, Lord of Orange and Aumalas, is the troubadour noted above (died 1173), but his sister and heir, Tiburge II (also known as Tibors), was also known as a poet and singer (a trobairitz, the female equivalent to a troubadour). In 1173, she married Bertrand des Baux, and another chapter starts in the history of the Principality of Orange.

The House of Baux was one of the grandest noble families in Provence. They took their name from their chief seat, the impregnable Château des Baux, which towers over the southern plains of Provence near Arles, built into the rocky outcroppings of the Alpilles. The Old French word baux (or Provençal baou) means cliffs or escarpment. There is evidence of a fort here as early as the 970s, but the current remains originate from the 11^th century, when this family took over. Most of the castle was dismantled on orders of the King of France following one of the last pushes for independence by the people of Provence in the 1630s.

There are various origin stories for the House of Baux: they claimed descent from King Balthazar (of the Three Wise Men), and some heraldry writers linked this to the use of the star in their coat of arms. Some theorise that the first known founding member, Pons the Younger, was a son of Pons de Marseille (d. 979), of the royal house of Arles, whose older son continued the line of vicomtes of Marseilles (an office similar to that of vicomte of Nice).

Certainly the family did put forward strong claims to rule either the County of Provence, or more widely the old Kingdom of Arles. Raymond-Raimbaud, Seigneur des Baux, was a contender for the throne of Provence in his wife Stephanie’s name (while her sister and rival, Dulcia, married Raymond-Berenguer of Barcelona, and would ultimately link the history of Provence to Barcelona and Aragon for several centuries) and fought for them in what became known as the Baussenque Wars (‘Wars of Baux’), 1144-62. Emperor Conrad III, as ‘King of Burgundy’, recognised Stephanie’s rights in 1145, and granted the couple the power to coin money in Arles. Peace was forged in 1150 in Barcelona (where Raymond-Raimbaud died), but was soon broken by their son Hughes, who was once again recognised as ‘Count of Provence’ (or even as ‘King of Arles’) by Emperor Frederick I in 1155, to little effect. It was into this conflict that Princess Tiburge II brought the wealth and power of the House of Orange through marriage to Hugh’s younger brother, Bertrand, who soon made peace by recognising King Alfonso of Aragon as Count of Provence, and became as a result one of his chief advisors in the region. In return, his and his wife’s sovereignty in Orange was recognised (some sources say formally by the Emperor in 1181, but I’ve not seen any proof of this).

Subsequent generations nevertheless used the title ‘prince’ to indicate that they were direct vassals of the Emperor, not of any of their neighbouring princes, though they did hold lands as fiefs of both the Count of Provence to the south and the Dauphin of Dauphiné (or the Viennois) to the north. It is this vague intermediate status between these competing powers that allowed them to maintain their autonomy.

Bertrand de Baux and Tiburge d’Orange had several sons. The eldest, Hugh, received the fortress at Baux and married an heiress of the viscounty of Marseille in about 1200. The second, Bertrand, was given large lordships in Provence (notably Meyrarges and Marignane in the area outside the cities of Aix and Marseille). The third, Guillaume, succeeded as Prince of Orange in 1182. Like his mother and uncle, he too was known as a troubadour. In 1215, at Metz, Emperor Frederick II offered him all of the ancient Kingdom of Arles and the Viennois (aka Dauphiné), again as part of the long-running rivalry between emperors and popes for control of the Rhône Valley. But by 1216 Guillaume was in prison in Avignon, where he died—his descendants continued to claim the kingdom of Arles as late as the 1390s.

Guillaume’s son, Raymond I was prince of Orange for many decades, and ruled jointly with his brothers, then their sons and grandsons—as was practice for many of these fiefs in Provence, like most parts of the Empire. Until the 1340s all of them used the title ‘Prince of Orange’ and rule was shared by all males in the family.

But by the 1240s, the landscape of Provence shifted dramatically once more, and the House of Baux was deeply affected. The last Count of Provence from the House of Barcelona died in 1245, leaving only daughters. The eldest and youngest of these were married to the King of France and his brother Charles of Anjou, while the middle two were married to the King of England and his brother Richard of Cornwall. You can see a clash coming. The late Count’s will left Provence to the youngest, Beatrice. so in 1246, she and her husband set out to establish their court in Aix. In 1257, the Prince of Orange ceded his family’s old claims to the Kingdom of Arles to Beatrice and Charles, and peace was maintained. But Charles of Anjou’s ambitions lay further south in Italy, and the House of Baux was pulled along with him to Naples and Sicily. A new pope, with roots in the south of France, was elected in 1265: Clement IV invited Charles to take the throne of Sicily, to drive out the Germans. By 1266, he had taken over both kingdoms of Naples and Sicily, and installed a large number of Provençal lords in his new government, including those of the elder two lines of the House of Baux (Hugh and Bertrand’s sons) and the younger line of Orange as well. Hugh’s son Barral, Vicomte de Marseille, was the Podestà of the Army of Charles d’Anjou in his conquest, and was named Grand Justiciar of the Kingdom of Sicily.

The story of the House of Baux in southern Italy, where they adapted their name to Del Balzo, is dramatic and stormy, but will be told in a separate blog post. They soon became leading members of the Neapolitan nobility, first as Counts of Avellino, in Campania (the region around Naples), from 1272; then Counts of Soleto, in Puglia (the ‘heel’ of Italy) from 1299, and later as Dukes of Andria, 1373 (the first ducal title in the Kingdom of Naples). Several of them held the highest offices of the Kingdom, from Grand Justiciar to Grand Admiral and even Regent. The Del Balzos married members of the ruling Angevin dynasty itself, and briefly held titles Prince of Taranto and Achaia (in Greece), and Lord of Albania (and a purely titular title, ‘Emperor of Constantinople’)—in Balkan history they have yet another surname, the Balschides, or the House of Balscha. The eldest line (Avellino) died out in the early 15^th century, followed by the dukes of Andria following a stunning double murder of brothers in 1487. A cadet branch continued the ducal family of Del Balzo into the modern era, with dukedoms created on fiefs at Schiavi, Caprigliano and Presenzano (created in the 17^th and 18^th centuries—the latter two continue at present).

Returning to Provence, the branch of the family that remained at Orange accumulated more lordships in the region through good marriages to local heiresses, as well as lordships in the neighbouring provinces of Languedoc (integrated into France in the 1200s) and Dauphiné (not part of France till the 1350s). Prince Raymond V worked to expand the economy of his principality, especially in its wine trade, and founded a university in 1365, officially sanctioned by Emperor Charles IV, who had come to the region to be crowned King of Arles. The University of Orange would function until 1793 (having become a Protestant university in the 1570s, then Catholic again from the 1720s), when it was closed by the Revolutionary authorities. Back in the 14^th century, Raymond V fell foul of the Angevin regime of Queen Giovanna of Naples (aka, Jeanne, Countess of Provence). His ties with the Empire angered her (as did his marriage to the daughter of another imperial prince in the region, the Count of Geneva), and in 1366, she demanded he do homage to her for Orange, which he refused to do. She temporarily confiscated his lands in Provence, but returned them by 1370. After Giovanna’s death in 1382, she was succeeded by her cousin, Louis of Anjou, and the Prince of Orange once again asserted his independence through the marriage of his only daughter and heir, Marie, to a member of the Burgundian nobility, Jean de Chalon, Lord of Arlay. The House of Chalon were vassals of the Duke of Burgundy who was a great rival of his brother Louis of Anjou, so when the Prince of Orange died in 1393, his vast estates in Provence thus passed into a rival political camp. And so we need to switch families once again, and look at the House of Chalon.

The Lords of Arlay were a junior branch of the counts of Chalon who were themselves a junior branch of the counts of Burgundy, one of the two successor states that formed in the north when the ancient Kingdom of Burgundy disintegrated in the 10^th and 11^th centuries. The overall family, one of those super-clans that medieval genealogists love to piece together, is known either as the Anscarids or the House of Ivrea, and they gave Europe not just this powerful Burgundian ruling clan, but also several kings of Italy in the 10^th/11^th centuries, and even spawned the royal dynasty of Castile and Leon in the early 12^th century (known as the Casa de Borgoña), which went on to rule Aragon as well (as the House of Trastamara) until the early 16^th century. The founder of this super-cluster, Count Anscar, came from a region of Burgundy near Dijon, and in the 880s, he and his brother Fulk, Archbishop of Reims, tried to install their kinsman, Guy of Spoleto, on the Frankish throne. Failing that, Anscar went with Guy to Italy where the latter was crowned King of Italy in 889, and in thanks, the new king created Anscar margrave, or marcher lord, of Ivrea, a town that guarded the important passes across the Alps from France into Italy.

The next three generations of Anscarids increased their hold over northern Italy, and several were crowned king. The last of these, Adalberto, was deposed by the Emperor Otto in 961, and retreated to his wife’s estates back in Burgundy. There is some confusion around Gerberga’s identity and possessions, but ultimately her son Otto-William inherited the County of Mâcon, one of the southernmost districts of what was now formally the Duchy of Burgundy, part of the Kingdom of France; and the lordship of Besançon, one of the chief towns on the far side of the River Saône, a river that divided Burgundy into east and west. In about 972, Gerberga remarried Henri, Duke of Burgundy, the brother of the King of France, who adopted her son as his heir, and although Otto-William was unable to successfully claim the Duchy of Burgundy, he was able to use his connections to the Emperor in Germany to proclaim his lands east of the Saône—those around Besançon—as its own separate County of Burgundy. In later generations this county even asserted its independence from the Empire, and earned the nickname ‘Free County’, which stuck, and to this day, this region of France is known as the ‘Franche-Comté’.

Otto-William’s elder son, Guy, founded a line of counts of Mâcon, which lasted for a century; the second son, Renaud, continued as Count of Burgundy. Renaud’s grandsons might be called the ‘greatest generation’ of this family: the eldest, Renaud II, died on the First Crusade, in 1097, as did the second son, Etienne I ‘Tête-Hardi’ (‘Headstrong’) in 1102; the third son, Raimond, went to fight the Moors in Spain and in 1087 married Princess Urraca of Castile and Leon and was named Count of Galicia. His sister, Berta, was possibly one of the later queens of Urraca’s father, Alfonso VI, but this is uncertain. Urraca herself later became Queen of Castile, Leon and Galicia in her own right, and her and Raimond’s son Alfonso VII founded the House of Burgundy in Castile, as above. But this Burgundian ‘greatest generation’ had two more brothers: Hugues, whose election to the see of the Archbishopric of Besançon in 1085 helped solidify this region’s independence from the rest of Burgundy (and thus France); and Guy, who was Archbishop of Vienne from 1088, then elected Pope Calixtus II in 1119. Pretty good for one generation of fairly middle-ranking nobles.

The main line of counts of Burgundy continued for a few more generations, then passed the County by marriage to the Emperor, Frederick Barbarossa, in 1156 (and then on to other families, notably Merania, see below). A younger branch ruled the County of Mâcon and added the County of Chalon, a bit to the north, by marriage in 1186. Chalon-sur-Saône was an ancient capital of the Celtic Aedui people, and was given the name Cabillonum by the Romans (probably from the Gallic word for horse). It later became one of the capitals of the ancient Kingdom of Burgundy, from the 6^th century, an early seat of a Christian bishop, and remained one of the most important towns and crossroads at the centre of the Duchy of Burgundy. It formed a separate county from the late 8^th century.

The most famous member of this new House of Chalon was Jean I, known either as ‘the Old’ or ‘the Wise’. In 1236 he arranged the marriage of his eldest son Hugues to Adelaide of Merania, Countess of Burgundy, and began calling himself Count of Burgundy once more, though really he ruled it in his young daughter-in-law’s name. A year later, he ceded the County of Chalon and other properties on the right bank of the Saône (ie, in ducal Burgundy) to the Duke of Burgundy (his father-in-law), and in exchange received the lordship of Salins, in the Free County of Burgundy, and several other important castles. Salins was one of the most important sources of salt in the region (hence its name, from sel in French) and brought him vast wealth. He and his descendants were allowed to keep the title ‘Count of Chalon’ though they no longer possessed it.

Jean de Chalon purchased forests on the slopes of the Jura mountains in the eastern parts of the County to supply fuel for the saltworks, and built the château of Nozeroy halfway between to serve as a fortified residence from which to watch over the roads for the supply and the trade with nearby districts. It became the dynasty’s principal residence and is known as the ‘Pearl of the Jura’. It was rebuilt on a grander scale in the 1430s by Prince Louis de Chalon (see below), and would be the main seat of the court of the princes of Orange in the 15^th century. It was grand enough to host the meetings of the local estates of Franche-Comté. In the 16^th century, however, the family base was moved to Arlay, and Nozeroy was mostly dismantled.

The House of Chalon thus reclaimed the title ‘Count Palatine’ (a count with semi-royal powers) of Burgundy, but not for very long. Jean the Old’s great-grandson Robert died in 1315 as a teenager, and his sister Jeanne took the County in marriage to the House of France, as queen-consort to Philip V. For good measure, her sister Blanche had married the King’s younger brother, Charles, who succeeded him as king. Both sisters were caught up in the Tour de Nesle Affair of 1314; Blanche was found guilty of adultery and Jeanne of being complicit in it.

By this point there were several cadet branches of the House of Chalon: one line were counts of Auxerre and Tonnerre (in the northwest borderlands of the Duchy of Burgundy) until 1424; another were lords of Montaigu (in the southern part of the County of Burgundy) until 1373. Still another was founded by Jean, one of the youngest of the (many) sons of Jean ‘the Old’. He was born from a third marriage, and while a younger brother, Hugues, was given a great position in the church—first as Prince-Bishop of Liège, 1295, then as Prince-Archbishop of Besançon, 1301—Jean was married to a daughter of the Duke of Burgundy (Hugues IV) who brought as a dowry the lordship of Viteaux in the Duchy, and he was given military command over his brother’s episcopal territories in Liège. Jean was also given one of his father’s newer castles, Arlay, which became his seat.

Arlay had been a Roman town and later a centre of settlement of the Burgundian tribes, situated as it was on an important salt road where it crossed the river Seille (pretty much right in the very centre of the Free County). Its ancient fortification was rebuilt as a château by Jean ‘the Old’ and remained a family stronghold until its destruction was ordered by the French king in 1637. A later château of Arlay was built in the 18^th century at the foot of the hill by the heirs of the Chalon family, first Gand-Villain, then Brancas-Lauragais (and the castle is sometimes called the château Lauragais), then the Arenbergs in the 19^th century, and today is held by the counts of Laguiche, who maintain one of the most prized vineyards in the region.

Jean I de Chalon-Arlay’s second son, Jean, maintained the family connection with the high episcopacy, first as Prince-Bishop of Basel, 1325, then Bishop of Langres, one of the six ecclesiastical peers of France. The family then kept a fairly low, regional, profile until 1386 when Jean III, Lord of Arlay, married the heiress Marie des Baux, Princess of Orange, from above. He added her vast patrimony to his own, and quartered her arms with his (her blue cornet on gold; his gold band on red), but they also added an escutcheon for the County of Geneva (gold and blue checks) which she claimed through her mother. They never took over the lands of the Counts of Geneva (mostly to the south of the city and lake), which were sold by the other heirs to the dukes of Savoy in the early 15^th century.

The princes of Orange were thus now firm allies of the dukes of Burgundy (who were by now the counts of Burgundy as well). In the first decades of the 15^th century, Jean and Marie’s son, Louis de Chalon, Prince of Orange, led troops against the Duke of Burgundy’s rivals, the Armagnac party (or supporters of the Duke of Orléans) in the far south of France, and against the Countess of Holland in the Low Countries. He also fought for his mother’s rights to the County of Geneva, and failed, and also fell foul of the Duke of Burgundy when he was appointed Vicar of the Empire in the County of Burgundy by Emperor Sigismund, which the Duke saw as an encroachment on his own rights there. When Louis de Chalon retired from politics in 1435, he was trusted by no one, and a will he made before he died in 1463 managed to confuse the succession for future generations by naming the children of his second marriage over those of the first. At the time, this was ignored, but we will return to it later.

The eldest son and heir, Guillaume VII, Prince of Orange, left a much more impressive legacy. As a warrior he accompanied Charles, Duke of Orléans, in his conquest of Milan in 1446, then in the 1460s fought with Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, in his war against Liège. He abandoned his Duke at a key moment, however, and his lands in Burgundy were temporarily confiscated. Therefore focusing on his lands in Provence, he re-organised the government of the Principality of Orange, and notably, in 1470, created a separate supreme law court, or parlement. This was annoying to the French king, Louis XI, whose jurisdiction in the region—through the Parlement of Grenoble—was threatened. When Guillaume de Chalon joined his brother-in-law, François II, Duke of Brittany, in fighting to maintain Breton independence, he was defeated in battle by French troops, and arrested by the King’s agents. He was held for two years in a royal prison in Lyon, until in 1474 he agreed to swear allegiance to the King of France for his principality, agreed to submit his Parlement of Orange to the jurisdiction of the Parlement of Grenoble, and to pay a ransom of 40,000 gold écus. He was allowed to retain regalian rights, such as coining money and pardoning criminals, as well as the right to use ‘gratia dei’ on his seals and coins (as if he was a sovereign). Jurists at the time argued that this recognition of French suzerainty was legally invalid, since Orange had always been a vassal of the Count of Provence, which in 1474 was still independent of the French Crown (but only for another 6 years, as it turned out). In any case, Guillaume VII died a year later.

His son, Jean II (or Jean IV of Chalon-Arlay), not only Re-asserted his independence as Prince of Orange but also reclaimed the family’s lands in the Free County of Burgundu after the death of Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy (killed in battle in 1477). He stayed loyal to the heiress of the late Duke, Marie of Burgundy, and worked with her new husband, Maximilian of Austria, to keep Burgundy from falling entirely into the hands of the French king—for which his estates were confiscated again and he was legally hanged in absentia. Maximilian then sent Orange to the court of his uncle, François II, Duke of Brittany, to help the Austrian archduke (now a widower) obtain the hand of the Breton duke’s heir, Anne. Jean de Chalon helped his uncle put down an internal rebellion in Brittany and was awarded some lordships there, including Lamballe. Anne of Brittany’s marriage was hotly contested, and Jean himself was at one point considered, as he was himself heir presumptive to the still independent duchy. To boost his claims, he added the Breton ermine pattern to his coat-of-arms. He soon added another heraldic quarter, the red lion of Luxembourg, due to his marriage in 1483 to a different heiress, Philiberte de Luxembourg-Ligny, whose family links were very much aligned with those of the House of Chalon, as long-time intermediaries between France and the Holy Roman Empire. Philiberte brought as her dowry the County of Charny, a significant fief in the Duchy of Burgundy, thus augmenting those of the Chalon-Arlay on the other side of the Saône in the Free County.

After Duke François’ death in 1488, the Prince of Orange stayed in Brittany to aid his young cousin Anne as a member of her ruling council. Facing defeat by the forces of the invading King of France, in 1491, he negotiated her marriage with the King (Charles VIII) to secure the peace. In the marriage contract, he renounced his own claims to the succession to the Duchy and was promised 100,000 livres and the job of Lieutenant-General of Brittany, a position he maintained until his death in 1502.

A son, Philibert, was born only three weeks before his father’s death. After leaving his mother’s tutelage, he tried to maintain his family’s precarious balance between French and Imperial power, between loyalties to the Valois and Habsburg dynasties. So it is perhaps ironic that he was the originator of the motto of the princes of Orange, ‘Je maintiendrai’ (‘I will maintain’), still used today by the royal family of the Netherlands. The original motto, however, was ‘Je maintiendrai Chalon’ which makes a bit more sense if you study the border nobility as I’ve done these past few decades: the one thing that trumps loyalty to any of the great powers is loyalty to your own dynasty—family was everything.

When Philibert de Chalon was about 20, he supposedly received a rude reception by King François I of France when he went to his court to complain about French raids into his territories in Orange. As a result of this snub, by 1523 he was firmly in the enemy camp, supporting Emperor Charles V’s campaigns, first against the remains of the Kingdom of Navarre in the Pyrenees, then leading troops in an invasion of the old family homeland, Provence, in 1524. The Prince of Orange took command of the Imperial armies besieging Rome in 1527, and forced the Pope to capitulate to the Emperor’s demands. In gratitude Charles V named the Prince Governor and Captain-General of Naples in 1528, but he died only two years later in the Battle of Gavinana, leading Imperial troops against the city of Florence. He was fatally shot in the chest by two arquebus balls; aged only 28.

Philibert de Chalon’s sister Claude had married another of Charles V’s generals, Heinrich III, Count of Nassau-Breda, who also fought in the Italian Wars, and whose family similarly had a history of walking the tightrope between Habsburg and Valois power in the border zones between France and the Empire. Claude predeceased her brother, but her son, René of Nassau, as principal heir, was charged with taking on the name and arms of the House of Chalon, which he did. But before we move forward to his story, we need to back up one last time and see how the House of Nassau, an ancient dynasty from the Rhineland, became so deeply entwined with the history of the Low Countries. (TO BE CONTINUED)