Word Finder - duchy

definition

A dominion or region ruled by a duke or duchess. (A grand duchy may be a self-governing state. A simple duchy tends to be a part of a larger kingdom or empire.)

In 1814-1815, before the decrees of the Vienna Congress were known, an extraordinary attempt was made by Philippe d'Auvergne of the British navy, the cousin and adopted son of the last duke, to revive the ancient duchy of Bouillon.

Weissenfels is a place of considerable antiquity, and from 1656 till 1746 it was the capital of the small duchy of Saxe-Weissenfels, a branch of the electoral house of Saxony, founded by Augustus, second son of the elector John George I.

In 1619 he received by bequest, ratified in 1620 by royal grant, the duchy of Angouleme.

In 1394 the countship came to the house of Orleans, a member of which, Francis I., became king of France in 1515 and raised it to the rank of duchy in favour of his mother Louise of Savoy.

The duchy afterwards changed hands several times, one of its holders being Charles of Valois, natural son of Charles IX.

From 1594 to 1641 the duchy remained vested in the French family of La Tour d'Auvergne, one of whom (Henry, viscount of Turenne and marshal of France) had married in 1591 Charlotte de la Marck, the last of her race.

Otto died at Pfullendorf in 1183, and was succeeded in the duchy by his son, Louis I.

Some of them were baptized; the territory which was afterwards known as the duchy of Normandy was ceded to them; but the story of the marriage of their chief Rollo with a sister of the king, related by the chronicler Dudo of Saint Quentin, is very doubtful.

Throughout the revolutionary years he supported his brother's policy, became a member of the Erfurt parliament, and, after the collapse of the national movement, returned to the service of the duchy of Nassau.

It then passed to the counts of La Marck and was made a duchy in 1417, being united with the neighbouring duchies of Jiilich and Berg in 1521.

The French held Cleves from 1757 to 1762 and in 1 795 the part of the duchy on the left bank of the Rhine was ceded to France; the remaining portion suffered a similar fate in 1805.

This treaty provided that Maximilian's daughter Margaret should marry Charles, the dauphin of France, and have for her dowry Artois and FrancheComte, two of the provinces in dispute, while the claim of Louis on the duchy of Burgundy was tacitly admitted.

At this time Bianca's uncle, Ludovico Sforza, was invested with the duchy of Milan in return for the substantial dowry which his niece brought to the king.

The three succeeding years were mainly occupied with quarrels with the diet, with two invasions of France, and a war in Gelderland against Charles, count of Egmont, who claimed that duchy, and was supported by French troops.

The barony of Widnes in1554-1555was declared to be part of the duchy of Lancaster.

It again returned, however, to the Lacys in 1287, was granted in parcels, and like their other lands became merged in the duchy of Lancaster.

It fell into the power of Alboin in 569 and became the seat of a Lombard duchy; it was still one of the wealthiest cities of Aemilia in the Lombard period.

Antonio and Francesco both having died childless, the duchy passed to Charles of Bourbon (Don Carlos), infante of Spain, who, becoming king of Naples in 1734, surrendered Parma and Piacenza to Austria, but retained the artistic treasures of the Farnese dynasty which he had removed from Parma to Naples.

The new duke, unwilling to yield to the wishes of his people for greater political liberty, was soon compelled to take flight, and the duchy was for a time ruled by a provisional government and by Charles Albert of Sardinia; but in April 1849 Baron d'Aspre with 15,000 Austrians took possession of Parma, and the ducal government was restored under Austrian protection.

Avranches, an important military station of the Romans, was in the middle ages chief place of a county of the duchy of Normandy.

About the middle of the 12th century the country was subdued by the duke of Saxony, Henry the Lion, who founded a bishopric at Ratzeburg, and after Henry's fall in 1180 it formed part of the smaller duchy of Saxony, which was governed by Duke Bernhard.

Lauenburg, or Saxe-Lauenburg, as it is generally called, became a separate duchy ruled by his son John, and had its own lines of dukes for over 400 years, one of them, Magnus I.

The reigning family, however, became extinct when Duke Julius Francis died in September 1689, and there were at least eight claimants for his duchy, chief among them being John George III., elector of Saxony, and George William, duke of Brunswick-Luneburg-Celle, the ancestors of both these princes having made treaties of mutual succession with former dukes of Saxe-Lauenburg.

In 1803 the duchy was occupied by the French, and in 1810 it was incorporated with France.

Having nominally become king in 1799, that prince created the estate of Ile-Jourdain a duchy, under the title of Avaray, in favour of the comte d'Avaray,, whom he termed his "liberator."

The convex side rests upon the duchy of Coburg and is in part bounded by Bavaria, while the concave side, turned towards the north, contains portions of four other Thuringian states and Prussia between its horns, which are 46 m.

The chief streams are the Werra, which traverses the south and east of the duchy, and various tributaries of the Main and the Saale, so that Saxe-Meiningen belongs to the basins of the three great rivers Weser, Rhine and Elbe.

The raising of cattle, pigs and sheep is a fairly important branch of industry throughout the duchy; horses are bred in Kamburg.

The mineral wealth of the duchy is not inconsiderable.

The capital of the duchy is Meiningen; the other principal towns are Salzungen, Hildburghausen, Eisfeld, Sonneberg, Saalfeld, Pdssneck and Kamburg.

By this time the duchy had increased considerably in extent, but petty wars with the other Saxon princes combined with the extravagance of the court and the desolation caused by the Seven Years' War to plunge it into distress and bankruptcy.

With the exception of Wangeroog, which belongs to the grand duchy of Oldenburg, the East Frisian Islands belong to Prussia.

In the triple partition of the Carolingian empire at Verdun in 843, the central portion was assigned to the emperor Lothaire, separating the kingdoms of East Francia (the later The duchy Germany) from West Francia (the later France).

The history of the Netherlands from this time forward - with the exception of Flanders, which continued to be a fief of the French kings - is the history of the various feudal states into which the duchy of Lower Lorraine was gradually broken up.

Chief among these states were the duchy of Brabant, the counties of Flanders, Hainault, Holland, Gelderland, Limburg and Luxemburg, and the bishoprics of Utrecht and Liege.

On the death in 1430 of his cousin Philip, duke of Brabant, he took possession of Brabant and Limburg; the duchy of Luxemburg he acquired by purchase, 1 443.

Not long after it had been sacked by Totila Benevento became the seat of a powerful Lombard duchy and continued to be independent until 1053, when the emperor Henry III.

The Terre d'Auvergne was first an appanage of Count Alphonse of Poitiers (1241-1271), and in 1360 was erected into a duchy in the peerage of France (duch y -pairie) by King John II.

Hesse-Nassau was formed in 1867-1868 out of the territories which accrued to Prussia after the war of 1866, namely, the landgraviate of Hesse-Cassel and the duchy of Nassau, in addition to the greater part of the territory of Frankfort-on-Main, parts of the grand-duchy of Hesse, the territory of Homburg and the countship of HesseHomburg, together with certain small districts which belonged to Bavaria.

In 1801 Austria was forced to cede it to Ercole III., duke of Modena, in compensation for the duchy of which Napoleon had deprived him.

The duchy of Benevento remained tributary, but independent.

It saved Rome from becoming a duchy in the hands of the Tusculum house.

Sicily in the hands ot the Mussulmans, the Theme of Lombardy abandoned to the weak suzerainty of the Greek catapans, the Lombard duchy of Benevento slowly falling to pieces and the maritime republics of Naples, Gaeta and Amalfi extending their influence by commerce in the Mediterranean, were in effect detached from the Italian regno, beyond the jurisidiction of Rome, included in no parcel of Italy proper.

This, while the elder branch of the Hauteville family still held the title and domains of the Apulian duchy; but in 1127, upon the death of his cousin Duke William, Roger united the whole of the future realm.

She was the last heiress of the great house of Canossa, whose fiefs stretched from Mantua across Lombardy, passed the Apennines, included the Tuscan plains, and embraced a portion of the duchy of Spoleto.

This is the meaning of the three leagues, in the March, in the duchy of Spoleto and in Tuscany, which now combined the chief cities of the papal territory into allies of the holy see.

These five powers were the kingdom of Naples, the duchy of Milan, the republic of Florence, the republic of Venice and the papacy.

The last member of the Visconti family of whom we had occasion to speak was Azzo, who bought the city in 1328 from Duchy of Louis of Bavaria.

Gian Galeazzos duchy was a masterpiece of mechanical contrivance, the creation of a scheming intellect and lawless will.

Giovanni, a monster of cruelty and lust, was assassinated by some Milanese nobles in 1412; and now Filippo set about rebuilding his fathers duchy.