County of Loon

The County of Loon (Graafschap Loon ˈɣraːfsxɑp ˈloːn, Graafsjap Loeën ˈʝʀaːfʃɑp ˈluən, Comté de Looz) was a county in the Holy Roman Empire, which corresponded approximately with the Belgian province of Limburg. It was named after the original seat of its count, Loon, which is today called Borgloon. During the middle ages the counts moved their court to a more central position in Kuringen, which is today a part of Hasselt, the modern capital of the region. From its beginnings, Loon was associated with the Prince-bishop of Liège and by 1190 the count had come under the bishop's overlordship. In the fourteenth century the male line ended for a second time, at which point the prince-bishops themselves took over the county directly. Loon approximately represented the Dutch-speaking (archaic thiois) part of the princedom. All of the Dutch-speaking towns in the Prince-Bishopric, with the status of being so-called "Good Cities" (bonnes villes), were in Loon, and are in Belgian Limburg today. These were Beringen, Bilzen, Borgloon, Bree, Hamont, Hasselt, Herk-de-Stad, Maaseik, Peer and Stokkem. Like other areas which eventually came under the power of the Prince Bishop of Liège, Loon never formally became part of the unified lordship of the "Low Countries" which united almost all of the Benelux in the late Middle Ages, and continued to unite almost all of today's Belgium under the ancien regime. Loon and other Liège lordships only joined their neighbours when they all became part of France during the French revolution. After the Battle of Waterloo, they remained connected in the new United Kingdom of the Netherlands. In 1839, the old territory of Loon became the approximate basis of a new province, Limburg, within the new Kingdom of Belgium. From its earliest times as a county Loon had lordships in three distinct geographical areas which are also mentioned in early medieval administrative records. An eastern part of Loon was in the Maas river valley, the Frankish Maasau, on the western bank north of Maastricht, included Maaseik.