JULICH (Fr. Juliers), a town in the Prussian Rhine province, on the right bank of the Roer, 16 m. N.E. of Aix-la-Chapelle. Pop. (1925) 8,589. Jiilich (formerly also Giilch, Guliche), the capital of the former duchy of that name, is the Juliacum of the Antonini Itinerarium. It became a fortress in the 17th century, and was captured by the Dutch under Maurice of Orange in 161o, and by the Spaniards in 1622. Till 186o, when its works were demolished, Jiilich ranked as a fortress of the second class.
The Duchy of Jiilich (or Juliers).—From the 11th to the 14th century Jiilich was ruled by a line of hereditary counts. The county was raised to the rank of a duchy in 1356, but its importance in general history is due to its later association with the neighbouring duchies of Berg and Cleves. In 1423 Jillich passed to Adolph, duke of Berg (d. who belonged to a younger branch of the ruling family. Nearly a century later Mary (d. 1543) the heiress of these two duchies, married John, the heir of the duchy of Cleves. John died in 1539 and was succeeded by his son William who reigned until 1592.
At the beginning of the 17th century the reigning duke, John William, was childless and insane. Among the claimants to his lands the most important were two Protestant princes, Philip Louis, count palatine of Neuburg, husband of the duke's sister Anna, and John Sigismund, elector of Brandenburg, whose wife was the daughter of another sister. Moreover, by virtue of an imperial promise made in 1485 and renewed in 1495, the elector of Saxony claimed the duchies of Julich and Berg, while the proximity of the coveted lands to the Netherlands made their fate a matter of great moment to the Dutch. The situation was made dangerous by the tension between the Roman Catholics and the Protestants who were fairly evenly matched in the duchies, and by the rivalry between France and the empire. In March 1609 Duke John William died. Having assured themselves of the sup port of Henry IV. of France and of the Evangelical Union, Brand enburg and Neuburg at once occupied the duchies. Thereupon the emperor Rudolph II. ordered some imperialist and Spanish troops to seize the disputed lands, and a great European war was narrowly avoided. The emperor adjudged the duchies to Saxony, while the
Dutch captured the fortress of Jiilich; but the "possessing princes," as Brandenburg and Neuburg were called, continued to occupy and administer the lands. These two princes had made a compact at Dortmund in 1609 to act together in defence of their rights, but differences soon arose between them which were in creased by the conversion of the count palatine's heir, Wolfgang William of Neuburg, to Roman Catholicism, and his marriage with a daughter of the powerful Roman Catholic prince, Duke Maximilian of Bavaria. Each party then invited foreign aid, but through the intervention of England and France the treaty of Xanten was signed in Nov. 1614 by which Brandenburg obtained Jiilich and Berg, the rest of the lands falling to the count palatine. In 1666 the great elector, Frederick William of Brandenburg, made with William, count palatine of Neuburg, a treaty providing that in case the male line of either house became extinct the other should inherit its lands.
When, early in the 18th century, the latter family was threat ened with extinction, the emperor Charles VI. promised the suc cession to Jiilich to the Prussian king, Frederick William I., in return for a guarantee of the pragmatic sanction. A little later, however, he promised the same duchy to the count palatine of Sulzbach, a kinsman of the count palatine of Neuburg. Then Frederick the Great, having secured Silesia, abandoned his claim to kilich, which thus passed to Sulzbach when, in 1742, the family of Neuburg became extinct. From Sulzbach the duchy came to the electors palatine of the Rhine, and, when this family died out in 1799, to the elector of Bavaria, the head of the other branch of the house of Wittelsbach. In 18o1 Mich was seized by France, and by the settlement of 1815 it came into the hands of Prussia. Its area was just over 1,600 sq.m.and its population about 400,00o.