LORRAINE III., January 15, 1139. His son Gottfrid VI. was the last duke of Lower Lorraine, and second duke of Brabant. Henceforth the duchy split definitely into that of Limburg, the inheritance of the counts of Verdun, and that of Louvain or Brabant, the dominion of the ancient line of the counts of Haspengau. Various fragments remained in the hands of the counts of Luxemburg, Namur, Flanders, Holland, Juliers, &c. Upper Lorraine, a hilly table-land, is bordered on the east by the ridge of the Vosges, on the north by the Ardennes, and on the south by the table-land of Langres. Towards the west the open country stretches on into Champagne. The Meuse and the Moselle, the latter with its tributaries Meurthe and Saar, run through it from S.E. to N.W. in a direction parallel to the ridge of the Argonnes. In this country Duke Frederick was succeeded by his son and grandson till 1033. Afterwards Gozelo I. and Gottfrid the Bearded, Count Albert of Alsace and his brother or nephew Gerard, held the duchy successively under very insecure circumstances. The ducal territories were even then on all sides surrounded and broken in upon, not only by those of the three bishops, but also by the powerful counts of Bar. Moreover, when in 1070 a new dynasty was established in Theodoric, son of Count Gerard of Alsace, his brother Gerard of Vaudemorit became the founder of a separate line. The former political and feudal ties still connected the duchy with the empire. The bishops were the suffragans of the archbishop of Treves, who rose to be one of the prince-electors. The dukes, however, de scending from Theodoric in the male line, though much weakened by the incessant dilapidation of their property, for two centuries adhered generally to the emperor. Duk3 Simon I. was step-brother of the emperor Lothair III.; his son Matthew I. intermarried with the Hohenstaufen family. His son and grandsons appear traditionally on the side of Henry VI., Philip, Frederick II., and but rarely prefer the Welfish opponent. Later on Theobald II. and Frederick IV. supported Albert and Frederick of Austria against Louis the Bavarian. Yet during the same age French feudalism and chivalry, French custom and language, advanced steadily to the disadvantage of German policy and German idioms amongst knights and citizens. King Philip Augustus already promoted Frenchmen to the sees of Cambrai, Verdun, and Toul. Though remaining a fief of the empire, the duchy of Lorraine itself, a loose accumulation of centrifugal elements, was irresistibly attracted by its western neighbour, although the progress of French monarchy for a time was violently checked by the English invasion. Duke Rudolf, a great grandson of Rudolf of Hapsburg, died at Cr6cy among the French chivalry, like his brother-in-law the count of Bar. To his son John, who was poisoned at Paris (1391), Charles, called the Bold, succeeded, while his brother Frederick, who was slain at Agincourt, had annexed the county of Vaudemont by right of his wife. Charles, who died in 1431 without mala issue, had bestowed his daughter Isabella in marriage on Rene , count of Anjou, and titular king of Naples, Sicily, and Jerusalem, and also a French vassal for fragments of the duchy of Bar, and the fiefs of Pont a Mousson and Guise. However, when he obtained by right of his wife the duchy of Lorraine, he was defeated by Anthony, .the son of Frederick of Vaudemont. But by his daughter lolanthe marrying Frederick II., Count Anthony s son and heir, the duchies of Lorraine and Bar were in the end united by Rene" II. with the county of Vaudemont and its dependencies Aumale, Mayenne, and Elboeuf. In the mean time all these prospects were nearly annihilated by the conquests of Charles of Burgundy, who evidently had chosen Lorraine to be the keystone of a vast realm stretching from the North Sea to the Mediterranean. This new border empire, separating Germany from France, fell almost in stantly to pieces, however, when the bold-Burgundian lo&t his conquests and his life in the battle of Nancy, January 4, 1477. After this the duchy tottered on, merging ever more into the stream of French history, though its bishops were princes of the empire and resided in imperial cities. At the death of Rene II. (1508), his eldest son Anthony, who had been educated in the court of France, inherited Lorraine with its dependencies. The second, Claude, was first duke of Guise, and the third, John, alternately or conjointly with his nephew Nicolaus, bishop of Metz, Toul, and Verdun, better known as the cardinal of Lorraine. Still the old connexion reappeared occasionally during the French wars of the emperor Charles V. In 1525 the country was invaded by German insurgents, and Lutheran- ism began to spread in the towns. When Maurice, elector of Saxony, and the German princes rose against the emperor (1552), they sold the three bishoprics and the cities of Toul, Metz, and Verdun, as well as Cambrai, to King Henry II., and hailed him as imperial vicar and vindex libertatis Germanise. In vain did Charles V. lay siege to Metz for nearly three months ; the town, already entirely French, was successfully defended by the duke of Guise. German heresy also lost its hold in these territories owing to the Catholic influence of the house of Guise, which ruled the court of France during an eventful period. Charles II., the grandson of Duke Anthony, who as a descendant of Charles the Caroling even ventured to claim the French crown against the house of Bourbon, had by his wife, a daughter of King Henry II., two sons. But Henry, the eldest, brother-in-law to Henry of Navarre, leaving no sons, the duchy at his death, July 31, 1624, reverted to his brother Francis, who, on November 26, 1625, resigned it in favour of his son Charles III., the husband of Duke Henry s eldest daughter. Siding against Richelieu with the house of Austria and Duke Gaston of Orleans, Charles, after being driven out by the French and the Swedes, resigned the duchy, January 19, 1634; and like the three bishoprics it was actually allotted to France by the peace of Westphalia. The duke, however, after fighting with the Fronde, and with Conde" and Spain against Turenne and Mazarin, and quarrelling in turn with Spain, was nevertheless reinstated by the treaty of the Pyrenees (1659) under hard conditions. He had to cede the duchy of Bar, to raze the fortifications of Nancy, and to yield the French free passage to the bishoprics and Alsace. But, restless as ever, after trying to be raised among the princes of the blood royal in return for a promise to cede the duchy, he broke again with Louis XIV., and was expelled once more together with his nephew and heir Charles IV. Leopold. Both fought in the Dutch war on the German side in the vain hope of reconquering their country. When Charles IV. after his uncle s death refused to yield the towns of Longwy and Nancy according to the peace of Nimeguen, Louis XIV. retained the duchy, while its proprietor acted as governor of Tyrol, and fought the Turks for the emperor Leopold I., whose sister he had married. In the next French war he commanded thj imperial troops. Hence his son Leopold Joseph, at the cost of Saarloui?, regained the duchy once more by the treaty of Ryswick (1697). This prince carefully held the balance between the contending parties, when Europe struggled for and against the Bourbon succession in Spain, so that his court became a sanctuary for pretenders and persecuted partisans. His second son Francis Stephen, by a daughter of Duke Philip of Orleans, and his heir since 1729, surrendered the duchy ultimately, owing to the defeat of Austria in the war for the Polish crown (1735). This being lost by Stanislaus Leszczynski, the father-in-law of Louis XV., the usufruct of Lorraine
and a comfortable residence at Nancy were granted to the