40 Fun Facts About Duchy of Brabant

Which animal, shown in gold on a black field, is the heraldic emblem of the Duchy of Brabant?

A lion in gold, with red claws and tongue, was Brabant's emblem, and Belgium's flag takes its black, yellow and red from those arms.

In modern Belgium, the revived title Duke or Duchess of Brabant goes to which member of the royal family?

The heir to the throne has carried the title since a royal decree of 1840, even though the northern part of old Brabant has been Dutch soil since 1648.

Which Napoleonic battle was fought near the unwalled town of Braine-l'Alleud, on land of the former Duchy of Brabant?

Waterloo was fought beside Braine-l'Alleud, an old Brabantine market town whose church served as a hospital for the battle's many casualties.

Anthony, Duke of Brabant, arrived late and died in borrowed armour at which battle won by England's Henry V?

Agincourt cost Anthony his life because he wore a trumpeter's banner as a makeshift surcoat, so the archers who captured him never realised he was worth a ransom.

Which famous European statue is linked by legend to the infant Duke Godfrey III, hung in a basket above a 1142 battle?

Manneken Pis, in its best-known legend, honours the two-year-old duke, who is said to have relieved himself on the enemy from his basket before his side won.

Brabant's 1356 Joyous Entry, which barred war or new taxes without consent, is likened to which English document?

Magna Carta is the usual comparison, and dukes renewed the pledge for centuries by making a ceremonial entry into Brabant's main cities.

La Brabançonne, whose title refers to the Duchy of Brabant, has which official role in modern Belgium?

The national anthem dates from the revolution of 1830, and its lyricist, a young actor known as Jenneval, died in the war of independence that followed.

Which emperor abdicated in 1555 in the great hall of the Coudenberg, the Dukes of Brabant's old palace in Brussels?

Charles V handed the Netherlands to his son Philip in a gigantic reception hall added to the palace after Brabant passed to the dukes of Burgundy.

Which medieval poet placed the philosopher Siger of Brabant in Paradise, alongside Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas?

Dante set Siger in the Fourth Sphere of Paradise beside the very scholars who had opposed his Averroist teaching at Paris.

Which legendary icon of beer and brewing is sometimes said to be modelled on John I, a folk-hero Duke of Brabant?

Gambrinus has a hypothetical link to the duke's nickname Jan Primus, and a popular Dutch beer, Hertog Jan, is named after the same man.

What does the name of 's-Hertogenbosch, a northern capital founded by Henry I of Brabant, mean in English?

The Duke's forest is the meaning, a nod to the wooded dunes in a marsh where the new town was planted; locals shorten the name to Den Bosch.

Brabant had four quarter capitals: Leuven, Brussels, 's-Hertogenbosch and which great port on the Scheldt?

Antwerp was the fourth capital and the bishop's seat for its quarter; before 's-Hertogenbosch was founded, little Tienen had filled the last slot.

Which long Dutch war of independence, ending in 1648, left the Duchy of Brabant split between north and south?

The Eighty Years' War left the north, roughly today's Dutch province of North Brabant, in rebel hands, while the south stayed under the Spanish Habsburgs.

Which country's armies overran the Duchy of Brabant in 1794 and formally abolished it a year later?

France annexed the territory in 1795 and replaced the six-century-old duchy with brand-new administrative departments.

The Brabant, a heavy breed named after the old province of central Belgium, is which kind of farm animal?

A horse of this breed is better known abroad as the Belgian Draught, and it descends from the heavy farm animals of what is now central Belgium.

Which Rhine city's citizens fought beside Duke John I of Brabant at Worringen in 1288 to shake off their archbishop?

Cologne gained its independence from the archbishop as a result, and the old battlefield now lies inside the city's northernmost borough.

What destroyed the Coudenberg Palace, the Brussels seat of the Dukes of Brabant, on a February night in 1731?

An accidental fire gutted the palace, and the ruins lay there for decades until the Place Royale was built on top of them.

What did Duke John IV of Brabant found at Leuven in 1425, the oldest institution of its kind in the Low Countries?

A university was his one lasting achievement: John IV became duke at twelve, died at twenty-three, and is otherwise remembered as a weak prince.

Which Wagner opera is set in tenth-century Brabant, where a mysterious knight arrives to defend the duchess Elsa?

Lohengrin opens with King Henry the Fowler arriving in Brabant to raise troops, and its Bridal Chorus became a wedding processional far beyond the opera house.

Which Holy Roman Emperor formally created the Duchy of Brabant in 1183 for Henry I, the first duke?

Frederick Barbarossa granted the title while the new duke's father was away on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, turning a small fief west of Brussels into a duchy.

The 1288 Battle of Worringen ended a succession war by giving Duke John I of Brabant which neighbouring duchy?

Limburg lay along the main trade road towards the Rhine, which is why the duke had bought up a rival claim to it almost five years before the battle.

Which Duke of Burgundy inherited Brabant in 1430, making it part of the Burgundian Netherlands?

Philip the Good was a cousin of the last two dukes, both of whom died young with no son to follow them, and he went on to enlarge the ducal palace in Brussels.

Which Habsburg archduke gained the Duchy of Brabant in 1477 by marrying the heiress Mary of Burgundy?

Maximilian I married Mary months after her father, the last Valois duke, fell at the Battle of Nancy, and Brabant came to the Habsburgs as part of her inheritance.

The Brabant Revolution of 1789 rose against which reforming Habsburg emperor, who had tried to scrap the Joyous Entry?

Joseph II died weeks after the rebels founded a republic, the United Belgian States, which his brother's troops crushed before the year was out.

Wenceslaus, who co-ruled Brabant with his wife from 1355, was the first duke of which neighbouring land?

Luxembourg had been entrusted to him by his half-brother, the future emperor, and he was captured in battle in 1371 while leading Brabant's army.

Which duchess ruled Brabant from 1355 to 1406 and swore the Joyous Entry charter with her husband Wenceslaus?

Joanna outlived her husband by almost twenty-three years, died at 84 and left the duchy to her great-nephew Anthony.

Duke John II of Brabant married Margaret, a daughter of which English king, at Westminster Abbey in 1290?

Edward I was her father and Eleanor of Castile her mother, and the couple's son went on to rule Brabant as John III.

Which Dutch city, today a technology hub, was given city rights by Brabant's first duke in 1232?

Eindhoven was then a small town where the Dommel and Gender streams meet, and its walls were pulled down during the long war with Spain.

In medieval legend, Genevieve of Brabant survives six years in an Ardennes cave after being falsely accused of what?

Infidelity was the false charge, invented by the steward Golo; her husband Siegfried found her while hunting the very roe deer that had kept her child alive.

Brabantine Gothic produced lavish fifteenth-century showpieces in Leuven and Brussels of which type of civic building?

Town hall builders in Leuven finished their lace-like façade in 1469, while the Brussels one carries a 96-metre tower.

Which neighbouring county's ruler, Louis II, invaded Brabant in 1356, claiming the duchy through his wife Margaret?

Flanders held Brussels for about two months, until a band of patriots led by Everard t'Serclaes scaled the walls at night and drove the garrison out.

Duke Henry I of Brabant suffered a heavy defeat at the 1213 Battle of Steppes against which prince-bishopric?

Liège struck back after the duke had invaded the bishopric, and at Steppes a knight wearing the duke's own armour was killed in the fighting.

Which German city received its city rights weeks after the 1288 Battle of Worringen, from Brabant's ally Adolf of Berg?

Düsseldorf was only a village on the banks of the Düssel until the count rewarded it on 14 August 1288, and it went on to become the capital of Berg.

Which heiress of Holland and Zeeland married Duke John IV of Brabant in 1418, then fled his court two years later?

Jacqueline of Hainaut later wed an English duke, Humphrey of Gloucester, on the strength of a disputed annulment that John IV never accepted.

Before its elevation to a duchy in 1183, the small imperial fief of Brabant west of Brussels held which rank?

Landgraviate status came from Emperor Henry IV in the 1080s, in what is the earliest known use of the title landgrave anywhere.

Which Belgic tribe, called the most warlike of the Belgae in Caesar's day, lived in the Brabant area in Roman times?

The Nervii ambushed Caesar's marching column at the river Sabis in 57 BC, and their lands were later folded into the Roman province of Belgica.

Which Brabantine city, long held by the House of Nassau, gave its name to a 1667 peace and a Velázquez painting?

Breda hosted the 1667 treaties that ended the Second Anglo-Dutch War, and Velázquez painted its 1625 surrender to the Spanish general Spinola.

Which 1312 Brabantine agreement, covering rich and poor alike, set up a council of four knights and ten townsmen?

The Charter of Kortenberg was sealed in an abbey by Duke John II exactly a month before he died, and its council is seen as an early kind of parliament.

After 1648, northern Brabant was ruled directly by the Dutch Republic, with no vote, as one of which territories?

The Generality Lands were mostly Catholic and made up about a fifth of the Republic, yet they had no provincial assembly and no voice in its government.

Which town east of Brussels held the castle where the Dukes of Brabant lived in the 14th and 15th centuries?

Tervuren kept its ducal castle until it was demolished in 1782, and the town's park now holds the Royal Museum for Central Africa.