Duchy of Cleves

The Duchy of Cleves (Herzogtum Kleve; Hertogdom Kleef) was a State of the Holy Roman Empire which emerged from the medieval Hettergau. It was situated in the northern Rhineland on both sides of the Lower Rhine, around its capital Cleves and the towns of Wesel, Kalkar, Xanten, Emmerich, Rees and Duisburg bordering the lands of the Prince-Bishopric of Münster in the east and the Duchy of Brabant in the west. Its history is closely related to that of its southern neighbours: the Duchies of Jülich and Berg, as well as Guelders and the Westphalian county of Mark. The Duchy was archaically known as Cleveland in English.

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.

History
In the early 11th century Emperor Henry II entrusted the administration of the Klever Reichswald, a large forested area around the Kaiserpfalz at Nijmegen directly subordinate to the Imperial rule, to local Lower Lorrainian nobles at Geldern and Kleve. A County of Cleves (Grafschaft Kleve; Graafschap Kleef) was first mentioned in the 11th century. Dietrich I was the first Count of Cleves and reigned from 1092 through 1119. In 1283, Cleves fought in the War of the Limburg Succession and helped weaken the powerful Electorate of Cologne. In 1355 Zevenaar passed from the control of the Duchy of Guelders to the County of Cleves.

Upon the death of Count Johann in 1368, the fief was inherited by his nephew Adolf III of the Marck. Cleves and the Marck were finally ruled in personal union by the House of La Marck after Adolf's elder brother Count Engelbert III had died without issue in 1391. King Sigismund of Germany raised Count Adolph I to the status of a duke and a Prince of the Holy Roman Empire in 1417, and the county became a duchy.

The Cleves-Mark territories became one of the most significant estates of the Lower Rhenish–Westphalian Circle in 1500, rivaled by the Prince-Bishops of Münster. In 1511 John III of La Marck, son of Duke John II of Cleves, married Maria and her estates and titles were then merged with the Duchy of Cleves. Upon the death of his father-in-law Duke William IV, John inherited the fiefs of Jülich and Berg through his wife. When John III succeeded his father as Duke of Cleves in 1521, the states of Jülich, Berge, Cleves and Mark formed the United Duchies of Jülich-Cleves-Berg. His daughter Anne of Cleves (1515–1557) even became Queen Consort of England for a few months in 1540, as her brother William, duke since 1539, quarreled with Emperor Charles V over the possession of Guelders and sought support from King Henry VIII.

John William was the son of William and the last duke of Jülich-Cleves-Berge. He died without issue in 1609, and the War of the Jülich Succession broke out between the heirs of his two eldest sisters: Maria Eleonora, Duchess of Prussia, and Anna, Countess of Neuburg. Marie Eleonore's daughter Marie was married to the Margrave of Brandenburg; Neuburg was a cadet branch of the House of Wittelsbach. According to the 1614 Treaty of Xanten, Brandenburg received Cleves-Mark and Neuburg received Jülich-Berg. The Hohenzollern margraves thereby got a first foothold in the Rhineland; however, large parts of the Duchy of Cleves were occupied by the United Provinces until the Franco-Dutch War in 1672. Finally incorporated into Brandenburg-Prussia by the Great Elector Frederick William I of Brandenburg in 1666 and part of the Kingdom of Prussia after 1701, Cleves was occupied by French forces in the Seven Years' War (1757–1762).

In the 1795 Peace of Basel the Duchy of Cleves west of the Rhine and Wesel was ceded to France, and became part of the French département of the Roer. The rest of the duchy was occupied between 1803 and 1805, and became part of the puppet-state Grand Duchy of Berg. In 1815, after the defeat of Napoleon, the duchy became part of the Prussian Province of Jülich-Cleves-Berg, which merged in the Prussian Rhine Province in 1822. The cities Gennep, Zevenaar, and Huissen became part of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands as a result of the 1815 Congress of Vienna.

House of Cleves
The House of Cleves considers itself to be descended from Rutger von Antoing, a Flemish nobleman. He was enfeoffed of imperial property near Kleve in 1020, and Tomburg Castle some time after. The first documented lord from the House of Cleves is Dietrich, numbered variously as II or III, in 1092.
 * 1092–1117/8 Dietrich II or III
 * 1117–1134 Arnold I, his son. Either he or Arnold II married Ida, daughter of Count Gottfried von Löwen
 * 1134–1150 Arnold II
 * 1150–1172 Dietrich III [IV]. Married Aleidis von Sulzbach
 * 1172–1193 Dietrich IV [V]. Married Margarete von Holland
 * 1193–1202 Arnold III. Married Aleidis von Heinsberg
 * 1202–1260 Dietrich V [VI]
 * 1260–1275 Dietrich VI [VII]
 * 1275–1305 Dietrich VII [VIII]
 * 1305–1310 Otto I the Peaceable
 * 1310–1347 Dietrich VIII [IX] the Pious
 * 1347–1368 Johann

House of La Marck

 * 1368–1394 Adolf III of the Marck
 * 1394–1448 Adolph I, son of Adolf III

House of La Marck

 * 1394–1448 Adolph I, Duke of Cleves
 * 1448–1481 John I, son of Adolph I
 * 1481–1521 John II the Pious, son of John I
 * 1521–1539 John III the Peaceful, son of John II
 * 1539–1592 William the Rich, son of John III
 * 1592–1609 John William, son of William

Notable people

 * Anne of Cleves, Henry VIII’s fourth wife, married in 1540
 * Karl Harst, sixteenth-century diplomat