Qualla: County of Loon

County of Loon: Introduction

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit flamenc, CC BY-SA 3.0. The province is called Limburg. The dynasty that ruled it never was. For three and a half centuries a Dutch-speaking county in what is now eastern Belgium answered to the Counts of Loon, whose seat sat on a low hill called Borgloon and whose lands stretched from the sandy Kempen north through the orchards of Haspengouw to the Meuse near Maastricht. Then the male line died out in 1336, the Prince-Bishop of Liège absorbed the territory, and Napoleon's surveyors carved up the map. In 1839 international arbitration handed the western half of what had been called Loon back to a new Belgium, and the diplomats picked a name from across the river - Limburg - because it sounded like a remembered duchy. The land kept its borders. It just lost its name.

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Image: flamenc | CC BY-SA 3.0

County of Loon: Three Landscapes Under One Count

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit User Charles01, CC BY-SA 3.0. From its earliest mentions the County of Loon was not one place but three. In the northeast, fields along the Maas - the Frankish Maasau - included the towns of Maaseik and Bree. In the northwest, the dry, sandy Kempen plain - which Roman administrators had called Texandria and t...

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Image: User Charles01 | CC BY-SA 3.0

County of Loon: Origins in the Eleventh Century

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Reinier Vinkeles, Public domain. The records begin abruptly with Count Giselbert, present in documents from at least 1015 to 1036. He had two brothers: Arnulf, the last secular count of a neighbouring district called Haspinga, and Balderic II, who became Bishop of Liège in 1008. The trio's parentage is unclear; ...

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Image: Reinier Vinkeles | Public domain

County of Loon: Marriage, Castles, and Abbeys

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Andrew Lancaster, CC BY-SA 3.0. By the twelfth century the counts were operating like classic medieval lords. Arnold I, son of Emmo, married Agnes, heiress of the Burgrave of Mainz, and in 1106 acquired the German counties of Rieneck - planting one foot of the family in the Holy Roman Empire's heartland. He pro...

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Image: Andrew Lancaster | CC BY-SA 3.0

County of Loon: The Good Cities

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Public domain. All of the Dutch-speaking towns in the Prince-Bishopric of Liège - the so-called Good Cities, with chartered rights to send representatives to the bishopric's assemblies - lay inside Loon. Beringen, Bilzen, Borgloon, Bree, Hamont, Hasselt, Herk-de-Stad, Maaseik, Peer, Stokkem: ev...

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Image: Public domain

County of Loon: A Borrowed Name

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit original: Jeanhousen derivative work: P199, CC BY-SA 3.0. Loon never joined the Burgundian or Habsburg consolidation of the Low Countries. While the Counts of Flanders, the Dukes of Brabant, and the rest were absorbed into what would become first Burgundy, then the Spanish Netherlands, then the Austrian Netherlands, the Prince-Bishopric...

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Image: original: Jeanhousen derivative work: P199 | CC BY-SA 3.0