Qualla: Duchy of Brabant

Duchy of Brabant: Introduction

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Deutschlandmuseum Berlin, CC BY-SA 4.0. Look at the Belgian flag and you are looking at the Duchy of Brabant. The black, gold and red bands lifted in 1830 by the revolutionaries in Brussels were not invented for the new kingdom - they were taken straight from a coat of arms more than seven centuries old: sable a lion or armed and langued gules, a gold lion with red claws and tongue on a black field. The lion belonged first to a small county wedged between two rivers west of Brussels, then to a duchy that grew, by marriage and inheritance and the occasional well-timed battle, into the wealthiest principality in northern Europe. Brabant gave the Low Countries their first parliaments, their first universities, and most of their capital cities. When it finally died, in the chaos of the French Revolution, it had lasted just over six hundred years.

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Image: Deutschlandmuseum Berlin | CC BY-SA 4.0

Duchy of Brabant: A Name from a Swamp

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Traveler100, CC BY-SA 3.0. The name is older than the duchy. In Carolingian charters the region between the Scheldt and the Dijle appears as pagus Bracbatensis, from two Germanic roots: braec meaning marshy, and bant meaning region. The marshy region. Before the Romans came, the Belgic tribe called the Ner...

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Image: Traveler100 | CC BY-SA 3.0

Duchy of Brabant: Four Capitals, One Lion

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Steven Fruitsmaak, CC BY-SA 3.0. Brabant was unusual in having four capitals at once. Leuven came first, the original seat of the dukes, and in 1425 it became the home of the oldest Catholic university in the world that has been continuously in operation. Brussels rose in the thirteenth century as the dukes move...

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Image: Steven Fruitsmaak | CC BY-SA 3.0

Duchy of Brabant: Marriage, Burgundy, Habsburg

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Cornelis Galle / acques Francquart, Public domain. Brabant did not fall in war - it married into something larger. In 1430 Philip the Good of Burgundy inherited the duchy on the death of his childless cousin Philip of Saint-Pol, and Brabant became one of the seventeen provinces of the Burgundian Netherlands. Forty-seven years lat...

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Image: Cornelis Galle / acques Francquart | Public domain

Duchy of Brabant: The Eighty Years' War and a Northern Loss

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Hendrik Hondius (Henrici Hondii ,habitantis in Damo ad intersigne), Public domain. The Reformation tore Brabant in half. The Eighty Years' War, which broke out in 1568 between the Protestant northern Netherlands and their Catholic Habsburg overlord, was fought across Brabantian soil for eighty years. The Spanish held the south; the Dutch insurgents held what th...

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Image: Hendrik Hondius (Henrici Hondii ,habitantis in Damo ad intersigne) | Public domain

Duchy of Brabant: Why It Still Matters

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit EmDee, CC BY-SA 4.0. When the Belgians threw out the Dutch in 1830 and created their kingdom, the old Brabant lion went onto the new flag, the new coat of arms, the new currency. Three modern provinces - Flemish Brabant, Walloon Brabant, and the Brussels-Capital Region - still carry the name. So does...

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Image: EmDee | CC BY-SA 4.0