Kingdom of Arles

Kingdom of Burgundy Regnum Burgundiae (Latin) Kingdom of Arles Regnum Arelatense (Latin)
933–1378
The Kingdom of Burgundy within Europe at the beginning of the 11th century
Burgundy in the 12th–13th century:   Kingdom of Arles   French Duchy of Burgundy   Ducal dependencies
Status	Sovereign kingdom (933–1006) Imperial kingdom of the Holy Roman Empire (1006–1378)
Capital	Arles
Government	Monarchy
King
• 912–937 (first)	Rudolph II
• 1346–1378 (last)	Charles IV
Historical era	High Middle Ages
• Union of Upper and Lower kingdoms	933
• Rudolph III pledged succession to King Henry II of Germany	May 1006
• Rudolph III died without issue; kingdom inherited by Emperor Conrad II	6 September 1032
• Emperor Charles IV detached the County of Savoy	1361
• Dauphin Charles made Imperial Vicar of Burgundy	7 January 1378
• Archbishop of Trier removed as archchancellor	27 April 1803
Preceded by Succeeded by Upper Burgundy Lower Burgundy County of Burgundy Comtat Venaissin Principality of Orange County of Savoy Landgraviate of Burgundy Dauphiné County of Provence
Today part of	France Italy Switzerland

The Kingdom of Burgundy, known from the 12th century as the Kingdom of Arles, was a realm established in 933 by the merger of the kingdoms of Upper and Lower Burgundy under King Rudolf II. It was incorporated into the Holy Roman Empire in 1033 and from then on was one of the empire's three constituent realms, together with the Kingdom of Germany and the Kingdom of Italy. By the mid-13th century at the latest, however, it had lost its concrete political relevance.

Its territory stretched from the Mediterranean Sea to the High Rhine River in the north, roughly corresponding to the present-day French regions of Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur, Rhône-Alpes and Franche-Comté, as well as western Switzerland. Until 1032 it was ruled by independent kings of the Elder House of Welf.

Carolingian Burgundy

Since the conquest of the Ancient Kingdom of Burgundy by the Franks in 534, its territory had been ruled within the Merovingian state, and later the Carolingian Empire. In 843, the three surviving sons of Emperor Louis the Pious, who had died in 840, signed the Treaty of Verdun which partitioned the Carolingian Empire among them: the former Burgundian kingdom became part of Middle Francia, which was allotted to Emperor Lothair I (Lotharii Regnum), with the exception of the later Duchy of Burgundy, the present-day Bourgogne, which went to Charles the Bald, king of West Francia. King Louis the German received East Francia, comprising the territory east of the Rhine River.

Shortly before his death in 855, Emperor Lothair I divided his realm among his three sons in accordance with the Treaty of Prüm. Much of his Burgundian domains would pass to his younger son Charles of Provence, who ruled Lower Burgundy with Provence as a king (855–863), while Upper Burgundy was given to his brother, king Lothair II. Upon the death of Charles in 863, his domains were divided between his brothers: Emperor Louis II took Provence, while Lothair II received the rest. In 869, Lothair II died without legitimate children, and in 870 his uncles Charles the Bald and Louis the German concluded the Treaty of Meerssen and partitioned his territory: much of the Upper Burgundy, the territory north of the Jura mountains (Bourgogne Transjurane), went to Louis the German. The western regions went to Charles the Bald, while emperor Louis II kept Provence and parts of Lower Burgundy. In 875, the emperor died, and his domains in Lower Burgundy and Provence were taken by Charles the Bald and incorporated into his domains.

Formation of the kingdom

The three Burgundian polities, c. 900:

  Upper Burgundy

  Lower Burgundy

  Duchy of Burgundy under Richard the Justiciar

In the confusion after the death of Charles' son, the West Frankish king Louis the Stammerer in 879, one of his most powerful nobles - count Boso of Provence (d. 887) refused to submit to Louis' heirs. At the Synod of Mantaille, Boso was proclaimed king, thus establishing a distinctive Kingdom in the regions of Provence and Lower Burgundy (Bourgogne Cisjurane), centered at Arles and Vienne, but his realm was much reduced by 882. His son and heir, king Louis the Blind (d. 928) succeeded to consolidate the realm in 890, and even managed to capture northern Italy, becoming the emperor in 901. Blinded in 905, he gradually transferred the governance to his cousin, count Hugh of Arles.

In the meanwhile, a separate kingdom was created in Upper Burgundy. In 888, upon the death of the Emperor Charles the Fat, count Rudolph of Auxerre, Count of Burgundy, founded the Kingdom of Upper Burgundy at Saint-Maurice which included the County of Burgundy, in northwestern Upper Burgundy.

In 933, Hugh of Arles ceded Lower Burgundy to Rudolph II of Upper Burgundy in return for Rudolph relinquishing his claim to the Italian throne. Rudolph merged both Upper and Lower Burgundy to form the Kingdom of Arles (Arelat).

In 937, Rudolph was succeeded by his son Conrad the Peaceful. Inheritance claims by Hugh of Arles were rejected, with the support of Emperor Otto I. The kingdom was simulteously invaded by Magyar and Arab raiding parties in 954 and Conrad sent envoys to both parties to attack one another and sent expeditions to Provence in raiding Arab settlements in the 960s.

In 993, Conrad was succeeded by his son Rudolph III, who in 1006 was forced to sign a succession treaty in favor of the future Emperor Henry II. Rudolph attempted to renounce the treaty in 1016 without success.

Imperial kingdom

In 1032, Rudolph III died without any surviving heirs, and, in accordance with the 1006 treaty, the kingdom passed to Henry's successor, Emperor Conrad II from the Salian dynasty, and Arelat was incorporated in the Holy Roman Empire, though the kingdom's territories operated with considerable autonomy. Though from that time the emperors held the title "King of Arles", few went to be crowned in the cathedral of Arles. An exception was Frederick Barbarossa, who in 1157 held a diet in Besançon and in 1178 was crowned King of Burgundy by the archbishop of Arles.

The Vivarais see of Viviers was the first of the kingdom's territories to be annexed to the Kingdom of France, gradually during the 13th century with formal recognition in 1306. The Lyonnais had been practically beyond the reach of the Empire since the late 12th century. Its incorporation into France was the result of internal conflicts between the Archbishop of Lyon, the cathedral chapter and the city council. It was cemented in the early 14th century and formalized in a 1312 treaty between Archbishop Peter of Savoy and Philip IV of France. Emperor Henry VII protested against this but did not seriously challenge it. The Dauphiné was effectively annexed by France through a series of largely accidental developments between 1343 and 1349, but the issue of whether the king or emperor had ultimate sovereignty over it was left unclear until well into the 15th century.. The County of Provence was ruled by junior branches of the House of France from 1246 onwards, but only became formally part of the Kingdom of France with the death of Charles du Maine on 11 December 1481.

A stillborn attempt to revive the kingdom of Burgundy/Arles was made by Charles of Anjou in coordination with Pope Nicholas III. Between 1277 and 1279, Charles, at that time already King of Sicily, Rudolf of Habsburg, King of the Romans and aspirant to the Imperial crown, and Margaret of Provence, queen dowager of France, settled their dispute over the County of Provence, and also over Rudolf's bid to become the sole Imperial candidate. Rudolf agreed that his daughter Clemence of Austria would marry Charles's grandson Charles Martel of Anjou, with the whole Arelat kingdom as her dowry. In exchange, Charles would support the imperial crown being made hereditary in the House of Habsburg. Nicholas III expected Northern Italy to become a kingdom carved out of the Imperial territory, to be given to his family, the Orsini. In 1282, Charles was ready to send the child couple to reclaim the old royal title of Kings of Arles, but the War of the Sicilian Vespers frustrated his plans.

On 4 June 1365, Charles IV was the last emperor to be crowned king at Arles, after a gap of nearly two centuries following the previous Arlesian coronation of Frederick I in 1178. That attempt to revive the imperial hold on the kingdom did not succeed, however, and as a consequence Charles annexed the County of Savoy to the Kingdom of Germany. Charles IV ceded his rights to the crown of Arles to Louis I of Anjou the following year. During his visit to Paris in early 1378, Charles IV granted the title of Imperial vicar over the Kingdom of Arles to the nine-year-old Dauphin Charles of France, later King Charles VI, but only for his lifetime (i.e. not lineally). This was seen as an effective renouncement of imperial authority over the old Burgundian regions, thus initiating the final stage of institutional dissolution of the Kingdom as a distinct entity. The core of the Kingdom, the County of Provence (without the County of Nice, which had been passed to the House of Savoy), would eventually be united with the French crown in the 1480s, after it was willed to the French king by Charles IV of Anjou, Count of Provence.

In 1421, Emperor Sigismund appointed Louis II of Chalon-Arlay as the Imperial vicar of Burgundy, in hope to restore some imperial authority over Dauphiny, Viennois and Provence. Those efforts were directed against rising ambitions of powerful Burgundian Duke Philip the Good. In 1463, the title of Imperial vicar was offered to Duke Philip himself, by Emperor Friedrich III, as part of a proposed dynastic alliance between the houses of Burgundy and Austria, but no final agreement was reached, and thus the appointment was not accepted. The Dauphiny and the Provence were annexed into the Crown lands of France by the end of the 15th century, but those changes were not formally sanctioned by the Holy Roman Emperors.

Thus in 1524, imperial troops invaded Provence during the Italian War of 1521–1526, but failed to capture the region. In 1525, during the peace negotiations between Emperor Charles V and French King Francois I, it was proposed that a realm centered on Arles and Provence could be renewed for Charles III, Duke of Bourbon (d. 1527), but those plans were abandoned and not included into the Treaty of Madrid (1526). In the summer of 1536, during the Italian War of 1536–1538, Emperor Charles V personally led the invasion of Provence. He took Aix-en-Provence on August 5, affirming there his rights to the Kingdom of Arles, but those gains were soon lost, and the war ended by the Treaty of Nice (1538).

Burgundian royal traditions were briefly revived in 1784, following the War of the Bavarian Succession (1777-1779), when emperor Joseph II (d. 1790) proposed to the new Bavarian prince-elector Charles Theodore to exchange Bavaria for the Austrian Netherlands, offering him the title "King of Burgundy". The proposal was not accepted, and thus the plan failed.

By that time, the title of Imperial vicar of Burgundy became extinct, while the title "King of Arles" remained one of the Holy Roman Emperor's official subsidiary titles until the dissolution of the Empire in 1806. The Archbishop of Trier continued to act as the Imperial Archchancellor of Burgundy/Arles, as codified by the Golden Bull of 1356. The remnants of the Kingdom of Arles became part of the imperial circles unlike Italian, Bohemian or Swiss territories. All remaining Imperial states but Savoy were conquered by Louis XIV (r. 1643–1715).

See also

• Kings of Burgundy

Literature

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