County of Hainaut

The County of Hainaut (Comté de Hainaut; Graafschap Henegouwen; comitatus hanoniensis), sometimes spelled Hainault, was a territorial lordship within the medieval Holy Roman Empire that straddled what is now the border of Belgium and France. Its most important towns included Mons (Bergen), now in Belgium, and Valenciennes, now in France. The core of the county was named after the river Haine. It stretched southeast to include the Avesnois region and southwest to the Selle (Scheldt tributary). In the Middle Ages, it also gained control of part of the original pagus of Brabant to its north and the pagus of Oosterbant to the east, but they were not part of the old pagus of Hainaut. In modern terms, the original core of Hainaut consisted of the central part of the Belgian province of Hainaut, and the eastern part of the French département of Nord (the arrondissements of Avesnes-sur-Helpe and Valenciennes). Hainaut already appeared in 8th-century records as a Frankish gau or pagus, which included the Roman towns of Famars and Bavay. In the 9th century, if not earlier, it was also described as a county, which implies that it had a single count governing it. As with many counties of the region, there was apparently a 10th-century fragmentation of territories among different counts, which is difficult to reconstruct. A single large territorial county was given its more-or-less final form in 1071 that lasted throughout the middle ages. For much of its existence Hainaut was a frontier territory, bordering upon the kingdom of France. From 843 it was part of the "middle kingdom" of Lotharingia. After about 925 Lotharingia was definitively attached to the eastern Frankish realm that would become the Kingdom of Germany. Hainaut and its neighbourhood remained an important frontier area, or "march", during the High Middle Ages. Though it was part of the Holy Roman Empire, which ruled from what is now Germany, it was culturally and linguistically French and part of the Catholic Archdiocese of Reims.

About this result

This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.

Related concepts (23)

Nord (French department)

Nord (nɔʁ; officially département du Nord; départémint dech Nord; Noorderdepartement, Northern Department) is a département in Hauts-de-France region, France bordering Belgium. It was created from the western halves of the historical counties of Flanders and Hainaut, and the Bishopric of Cambrai. The modern coat of arms was inherited from the County of Flanders. Nord is the country's most populous département. It had a population of 2,608,346 in 2019.

County of Flanders

The County of Flanders was one of the most powerful political entities in the medieval Low Countries, located on the North Sea coast of what is now Belgium. Unlike its neighbours such as the counties of Brabant and Hainaut, it was within the territory of the Kingdom of France. The counts of Flanders held the most northerly part of the kingdom, and were among the original twelve peers of France. For centuries, the economic activity of the Flemish cities such as Ghent, Bruges and Ypres made Flanders one of the most affluent regions in Europe, and also gave them strong international connections to trading partners.

Cambrai

Cambrai (USkæmˈbreɪ,_kɑ̃ˈ-, kɑ̃bʁɛ; Kimbré; Kamerijk), formerly Cambray and historically in English Camerick or Camericke, is a city in the Nord department and in the Hauts-de-France region of France on the Scheldt river, which is known locally as the Escaut river. A sub-prefecture of the department, Cambrai is a town which had 32,501 inhabitants in 2018. It is in the heart of the urban unit of Cambrai with 46,772 inhabitants. Its functional area, a more extensive range, included 94,576 inhabitants in 2018.