BRABANT, Duchy of, bra'bint, or bra bane, the central district of the lowlands of Holland and Belgium, extending over an area of 4,341 square miles, from the left bank of the Waal to the sources of the Dyle and from the Meuse and the plains of Limburg to the lower Scheldt. In the Middle Ages it formed a separate independent duchy, called Lower Lorraine. It is divided at present between the kingdoms of Holland and Belgium, into three provinces: (1) Dutch or North Brabant, with an area of 1,980 square miles; (2) the Belgian province of A.ntwerpith an area B of 1,093 square miles; (3) the Belgian province of South Brabant, with an area of 1,268 square miles. The country is comprehended in a plain, gently sloping to the northwest, occupied in the north by heathy and marshy tracts and in the south passing into the gentle rising ground which forms the first ascent of the forest of Ardennes. It is copiously watered by the Meuse in the north and the Scheldt in the south, in the former of which the internal tran sit is furthered by means of canals, among others the South William and the Breda canals, and in the latter by railways which have their point of union at Mechlin. Under the influ ence of a northerly, indeed, and moist but in general healthful and mild climate, the great fertility of the soil renders agriculture and the raising of cattle the principal and most profit able employment of the inhabitants. With this is associated the general diffusion of an active industry which supports an extensive trade, consisting chiefly of lace, cotton, woolen and leather goods.
Through Cr-saes campaigns the Romans be came acquainted with the inhabitants of Bra bant as a mixed race of Germans and Celts. The Menapians, particularly, inhabiting the country between the Rhine, the Meuse and the Scheldt, made, as the most powerful and war like among the various tribes, a gallant though ultimately ineffectual resistance to the Roman arms, by whose conquests this portion of lower Germany was incorporated with the province of Gallia Belgica. In the 5th century the Franks gained possession of Brabant, which in the 6th was, at the partition of the Frank kingdom, assigned to the primitive country of Austrasia; in the 9th century it was united to Lorraine, and on the division of the latter, in 870, became the property of France, from which, however, in the commencement of the 10th century, it was transferred by Henry I again to Lorraine; in 959 to Lower Lorraine and thus to Germany.
In the beginning of the 11th century it was separated from Lorraine, on Duke Otho, the son of Charles the Fat, who had been invested by the Emperor Otho with Lower Lorraine, dying childless in 1005. After this, several counts of Ardennes and Godfrey of Bouillon possessed it till 1076; the Emperor Henry V mortgaged it to Godfrey the Bearded, of the family of the counts of Louvain and Brussels, whose house reigned over Brabant to the mid dle of the 14th century. As early as 1190 we find the title of Duke of Brabant, in which the former title of Duke of Lower Lorraine or Lothier was gradually absorbed. Under the government of its own dukes Brabant gained rapidly in power and independence, but was engaged in numerous contests with its neigh bors and shifted much in its leanings between Germany and France. Of the six dukes of
Brabant, Henry I, II and III and John I, H and III, there are more especially to be men tioned John I, who, by the celebrated battle of Woringen (1288), united Limburg to Bra bant, and is also renowned in Germany as a minnesinger or troubadour, and John III, who, in 1349, received from the Emperor Charles IV the important privilege of a free judicature, under the name of the Brabantine Golden Bull, in consequence of which his subjects ceased to be amenable to any foreign jurisdiction. With John III, the male heirs of the family of the counts of Louvain became extinct in 1355, and, by the bequest of his daughter Jo anna, who reigned till 1406 and married Wen ceslaus of Luxemburg, Brabant came into the possession of the house of Burgundy and in the first instance to Antony of Burgundy, Jo anna's grand-nephew and second son of Philip the Bold. On Antony's death at the battle of Agincourt, in 1415, and his two successors, his son, John IV, and his brother Philip, Count of Saint Pol, dying childless respectively in 1427 and 1430, Brabant, as the inheritance of Philip the Good, became formally incorporated with the dominions of the house of Burgundy. In this state, however, it did not long continue, and, by the marriage of Mary of Burgundy with the Emperor Maximilian, was transferred to the house of Austria and subsequently to the Emperor Charles V, who abdicated in favor of his son, Philip H of Spain. The persecuting edict of the latter, and the Duke of Alva's cruelties, excited a revolt in Brabant, but it was only the northern portion (Hertogenbosch) which succeeded in asserting its independence, and in 1648 was incorporated with the United Provinces under the name of the Generality Territory, while South Brabant remained till 1714 in the possession of the Spaniards. On the extinction of the Spanish-Austrian line in the latter year, Brabant, with the other southern provinces of the Netherlands, reverted 'to the imperial house of Austria, which, however, was unable long to retain it in peace. On a violent contest breaking out under the Emperor Joseph II, as to the explanation of the provincial privi leges which Brabant possessed under the Joy euse Entrée (q.v.), and the consequent dismis sal of the assembly of the states of Brabant and Limburg, the Brabantines assembled of their own authority, and boldly pronounced the separation of Brabant from the supremacy of the house of Austria. Leopold II settled the dispute after Joseph's death by granting their ancient privileges to the people of Brabant. At the close of the Napoleonic wars the whole of Brabant was included in the Kingdom of the Netherlands, and was divided into three prov inces. After the revolution of 1830 the prov inces of Antwerp and South Brabant became parts of Belgium. The eldest son of the King of the Belgians bears the title of Duke of Brabant. Consult Omond, (Brabant and East Flanders) (1907). See BELGIUM.