Netherlands

NETHERLANDS. The Netherlands first became known to the Romans through the campaigns of Julius Caesar. He found the country peopled partly by tribes of Gallo-Celtic, partly by tribes of Germanic stock, the river Rhine forming roughly the line of demarcation between the races. The Gallo-Celtic tribes bore the general appellation of Belgae, and among these the Nervii, inhabiting the district between the Scheldt and the Sambre were at the date of Caesar's invasion, 57 B.C., the most warlike and important. To the north of the Meuse, and more especially in the low-lying ground enclosed between the Waal and the Rhine (insula Batavorum) lived the Batavi. Beyond these were found the Frisians (q.v.), who gave their name to the territory between the Rhine and the Ems.

Julius Caesar, after a severe struggle with the Nervii and their confederates, was successful in bringing the Belgic tribes into sub jection to Rome. Under Augustus, 15 B.C., the conquered territory was formed into an imperial province, Gallia Belgica, and the frontier was strongly fortified. The Batavians were first brought under Roman rule in the governorship of Drusus, 53 B.C. They were not incorporated in the empire, but were ranked as allies. In 69 they revolted under a native leader, known only under his Roman name of Claudius Civilis. After the rising, they returned to their position of socii. Their land became a recruiting ground for the Roman armies and they were henceforth faithful in their steady allegiance to Rome.

When at the end of the 3rd century the Franks (q.v.) began to swarm over the Rhine into the Roman lands, the names of the old tribes had disappeared. The branch of the Franks—who were a confederacy, not a people—which gradually overspread Gallia Belgica, bore the name of Salii, from their position on the river Saale. In the days of their great king Clovis (481-511) they were in possession of the whole of the southern and central Nether lands. The strip of coast between the mouths of the Scheldt and Ems remained, however, in the hands of the Frisians (q.v.), and the Saxons (q.v.) had occupied a portion of the districts known later as Gelderland, Overyssel and Drente.

The conversion of the Franks tended to facilitate fusion be tween them and the Gallo-Roman population, and to accentuate the enmity between the Franks and the heathen Frisians and Saxons. In the south of the Netherlands bishoprics were set up at Cambrai, Tournai, Arras, Therouanne and Liege. In the north progress was much slower and success was due rather to the arms of the Carolingian kings than to missionary efforts. Towards the end of the century, Charlemagne, himself a Netherlander by de scent and ancestral possessions, after a severe struggle thoroughly subdued the Frisians and Saxons, and compelled them to embrace Christianity.

The Duchy of Lower Lorraine.

The Verdun treaty (843) assigned the central part of the Empire to the Emperor Lothaire, separating the kingdom of East Francia (the later Germany) from West Francia (the later France). This middle kingdom included the whole of the later Netherlands with the exception of the por tion on the left bank of the Scheldt, which river was made the boundary of West Francia. On the death of the emperor, his son Lothaire II. received the northern part of his father's domain, known as Lotharii Regnum, corrupted later into Lotharingia and Lorraine. Lothaire had no heir, and in 870 by the Treaty of Mers sen his territory was divided between the kings of East and West Francia. In 879 East Francia acquired the whole; from 912 to 924 it formed part of West Francia. In 924 Lorraine passed in the reign of Henry the Fowler under German overlordship. Henry's son, Otto the Great, placed it in 953 in the hands of his able brother, Bruno, archbishop of Cologne, for pacification. Bruno, who kept for himself the title of archduke, divided the territory into the two duchies of Upper and Lower Lorraine. Godfrey of Verdun was invested by him with the government of Lower Lorraine. 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. (See FLANDERS; HOLLAND; BRABANT; GELDERLAND; LIMBURG; UTRECHT; LIEGE.) The development of feudalism in the Netherlands was largely due to the necessity of protecting the land against the Scandi navian attacks of the 9th and loth centuries. For a time near the middle of the 9th century the Northmen were masters of all Holland and Friesland, though they never established permanent settlements there. On one occasion, in 88o, the emperor, Charles the Fat, led an army against the Northmen, then en camped at Elsloo, but the remoteness of the Netherlands from the centres of either French or imperial power threw the burden of defence upon local magnates, and a great increase in their author ity was the inevitable consequence. Long before the end of the I ith century the system of feudal States had been firmly estab lished in the Netherlands. The part which their rulers played in the Crusades is a proof of their order and prosperity.