Duchies of Cleves and Guelders

Although the Ossenbroich/Ossenbruch families initially lived in the Cleves area, they had land and real estate in many different areas, including Guelders. Guelders was not the same as Gelderland. It included territories more north as well as south. Read more below.

Duchy of Cleves
The Duchy of Cleves (German: Herzogtum Kleve; Dutch: Hertogdom Kleef) was a State of the Holy Roman Empire. It was situated in the northern Rhineland on both sides of the Lower Rhine, around its capital Cleves. The duchy's territory roughly covered the present-day German districts of Cleves (northern part), Wesel and the city of Duisburg, as well as adjacent parts of the Limburg, North Brabant and Gelderland provinces in the Netherlands.

The Duchy was governed by the Count and a council of 14 noblemen, including the Ossenbroeks.

Click on the small map on the left and explore a huge map from 1664 of the counties of Cleves and Guelders.
Click on the new map to make it full size. Then move it around.

History
The County of Cleves (German: Grafschaft Kleve; Dutch: Graafschap Kleef) was first mentioned in the 11th century. In 1242 the Count of Cleves gave Cleves city rights and exempts its merchants from paying toll at Orsoy, Smithuizen, Huissen and Nijmegen. Daniel de Ossenbroich is mentioned as one of the fourteen noblemen.

During the 14th century there were some skirmishes between the Cleves and Guelders counties. On 25 January 1359 Cleves and Guelders sign a peace treaty (landsvrede), signed by 74 knights from both counties, including knight Johan van Ossenbroeke, who lived on the Ossenbruch estate, near Cleves.

In 1417, the county became a duchy. Through marriage the fiefs of Jülich (Dutch: Gulik) and Berg were inherited in 1521 to form the United Duchies of Jülich-Cleves-Berg and Mark. In 1538 Duke Johann III (the Peaceful) inherited Guelders from the Egmond family, but died one year later. Wilhelm, his son, then became Duke of Jülich-Cleves-Berg and Guelders (1539). It was at this time that King Henry VIII, of England, decided to marry Wilhelm's sister Anna in order to make an ally in his power struggle against France and Spain. His marriage with Anna was over before it began, and Wilhelm lost Guelders and Zutphen in a bloody war against Charles V three years later. Read the details below.

When the last duke of Jülich-Cleves-Berge died issueless in 1609, the War of the Jülich succession broke out. Large parts of the Duchy of Cleves were occupied by the United Dutch Provinces until the Franco-Dutch War in 1672. In 1815, after the defeat of Napoleon, the duchy became a Prussian Province.

DUCHY OF GUELDERS
Guelders is a historical county, later duchy of the Holy Roman Empire, located in the East of the Low Countries. Areas included in the duchy were the quarters of Roermond and Venlo; the Achterhoek (including Zutphen and Doetichem); the quarter of Arnhem and the Veluwe; the quarter of Nijmegen and the Betuwe.

History
The county emerged in 1096, when Gerard III of Wassenberg was first documented as "Count of Guelders". In 1319 Daniel d'Ossenbroich and his brother Lucil d'Ossenbroek -living in the county of Cleves- were registered in the Chambres des Comptes (Knights, Ridders) in Limburg, Brabant and Maasgebied.

After the Guelders War of Succession, William I of Jülich (Dutch: Gulik) was confirmed in the inheritance of Guelders in 1379. In 1423 Guelders passed to the House of Egmond.

In 1468 Henrick van Ossenbrug of Embrick (Emmerich) was taken prisoner at the battle at Straelen, where Adolph of Gelre won the war against the Duke of Cleves. Read the full document in the Reference list on bottom line.

In 1471 Charles the Bold (Karel de Stoute) bought the throne succession rights from Duke Arnold van Egmond, who, against the will of the towns and the law of the land, pledged his duchy to Charles for 300,000 Rhenish florins. After Arnold's death in 1473, Duke Charles added Guelders to the "Low Countries" portion of his Valois Duchy of Burgundy. The cities and its people who had opposed Charles were penalized with heavy taxes. Gerit van Ossenbroeck, who had property in Zutphen had to pay 16 guilders and 16 dimes (stuivers).

After this several succession wars were fought. In 1538 Cleves inherited Guelders from the Egmond family (see above). However, Emperor Charles V claimed Guelders for himself as the dukes had sold their right of heritage, but Wilhelm tried to hold on to it. Following in the footsteps of Karel van Egmond, Duke Wilhelm formed an alliance with France, an alliance dubiously cemented via his political marriage to French King Francis I's niece Jeanne d'Albret (who reportedly had to be whipped into submission to the marriage, and later bodily carried to the altar by the Constable of France, Anne de Montmorency). This alliance emboldened Wilhelm to challenge Emperor Charles V's claim to Guelders, but the French, mightily engaged on multiple fronts as they were in the long struggle against the Habsburg "encirclement" of France, did not lift a finger to help Wilhelm. In 1543 Charles' cavalry of 4,000 Italians and 4,000 Albanians, plus 14,000 foot soldiers defeated Wilhelm's army in a devastating battle. After his defeat Wilhem went to meet Charles in Venlo and threw himself at his feet groveling for forgiveness. Charles let him only keep his county of Cleves and made him marry his niece Mary of Hapsburg. Charles then united Guelders with the Seventeen Provinces of the Habsburg Netherlands, and Guelders finally lost its independence.

Charles V abdicated in 1556 and decreed that the territories of the Bourgundian Circle should be held by the Spanish Crown. When the northern Netherlands revolted against King Philip II of Spain in the Dutch Revolt, the three northern quarters of Gelderland joined the Union of Utrecht (1579) and became part of the United Provinces upon the 1581 Act of Abjuration. Only the Guelders quarter with Geldern, Venlo and Roermond remained a part of the Spanish Netherlands during the Eighty Years' War, which ended in 1648.