County of Flanders

The County of Flanders was the richest principality of the medieval Low Countries, lasting from 866 to 1797. Its counts held the northern edge of the Kingdom of France and ranked among the twelve peers of the realm, yet their real power came from cloth. In Ghent, Bruges, Ypres and Lille, weavers turned English wool into the fine fabrics of Europe, and the counting-houses of Bruges invented much of modern finance: bills of exchange, annuities, the first bourse. The cities grew so rich they humbled kings and counts alike, beating French knights at Courtrai in 1302 with the clubs of guildsmen. The county straddled two worlds: west of the Scheldt it owed homage to Paris as Royal Flanders, east of the river to the Emperor as Imperial Flanders. In 1384 the whole inheritance passed to the dukes of Burgundy, who built the Burgundian Netherlands upon it; Habsburgs and Spaniards followed as absentee lords. Revolutionary France finally annexed the county outright in 1797, dividing nine centuries of the county into French and Belgian departments.