Guelders Totally Explained

ť This article deals with the historical county and duchy of Guelders, for other meanings see Gelderland.

Guelders (Dutch: Gelre, German: Geldern) is the name of a historical county, later duchy in the Low Countries.
The duchy was named after the town of Geldern, which is now in Germany. The present province of Gelderland (English also Guelders) in the Netherlands occupies most of the area of the former duchy.
The county and duchy of Guelders consisted not only of parts of the actual Dutch provinces of Gelderland and Limburg but also part of the present-day German state of North Rhine-Westphalia.

History

The duchy was divided into four quarters:

the quarter of Arnhem, also called the Veluwe,
the quarter of Nijmegen, also called the Betuwe,
the quarter of Zutphen, also called the Achterhoek,
the quarter of Roermond (now in the Dutch province of Limburg), also called the Upper Quarter of Guelders or Overkwartier. The actual centre was Montfort.

Guelders was often at war with the county of Holland and the Prince-Bishopric of Utrecht, until the dukes of Burgundy acquired the whole area.
When the northern Netherlands revolted against Philip II of Spain in the 16th century, the three northern quarters became part of the United Provinces, while the Upper Quarter remained a part of the Spanish Southern Netherlands.
At the Treaty of Utrecht, ending the War of the Spanish Succession in 1713, the Spanish Upper Quarter was divided between Prussia (a.o. Geldern, Viersen, Horst, Venray), the United Provinces (a.o. Venlo, Montfort, Echt), Austria (a.o. Roermond, Niederkrüchten, Weert) and the duchy of Jülich (Erkelenz).

Coat of arms of Guelders

The coat of arms of the region evolved during the ages. Image:Armoiries Gueldre ancien.png|before 1236 Image:Armoiries Gueldre 1236.png|from 1236 until 1276 Image:Armoiries Gueldre.png|from 1276 until 1379 Image:Armoiries Gueldre-Juliers.png|after 1379

Guelders in popular culture

William Thatcher, the lead character in the 2001 film A Knight's Tale played by Heath Ledger claimed to be Sir Ulrich von Liechtenstein from Gelderland so as to appear to be of noble birth and thus qualify to participate in jousting.

External results

Click here for more details on Guelders

External Link Exchanges

Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:

<a href="http://guelders.totallyexplained.com">Guelders Totally Explained</a>

Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned.