Talk:House of Arenberg

6th and 7th dukes
Currently this page says:
 * 1778-1820: Louis-Engelbert, 6th Duke of Arenberg, 12th Duke of Aarschot, 1st Duke of Meppen and 1st Prince of Recklinghausen (1750-1820)
 * 1820-1861: Prosper-Louis, 7th Duke of Arenberg, 13th Duke of Aarschot, 2nd Duke of Meppen and 2nd Prince of Recklinghausen (1785-1861)

But the Arenberg Archives and Cultural Centre (AACC) implies on their The dukes of Arenberg web page that the 6th Duke was no longer Duke in 1801 as the page says about the 7th Duke that "In 1801, lost the former Duchy of Arenberg on the left bank of the Rhine but received a larger duchy on the right bank in 1803, lost in its turn in 1815, overrun by the Prussians and the Hanoverians." What is the source for claiming that the 6th Duke of Arenberg remained the Duke of Arenberg until 1820? --PBS (talk) 12:45, 8 July 2008 (UTC)


 * The list isn't a list of Dukes of Arenberg, it's a list of Heads of the House of Arenberg. The list says that, Louis-Engelbert, the 6th Duke was head of the House of Arenberg until 1820, which is the year the 6th Duke died, according to this page on the Arenberg Archives and Cultural Center website.


 * I'm not entirely clear what happened here but this is what I've gleaned from the AAAC website. The House of Arenbergs are the sovereigns of the Duchy of Arenberg, located in the Eifel mountains, and the 6th Duke is the ruler of the duchy.  Then, in the midst of the French Revolutionary Wars, the duchy gets overrun by the French, who sequester the 6th duke's lands.  Under the terms of the Treaty of Lunéville (1801), which ends the French Revolutionary Wars, this land is permanently annexed to France.  In 1801, the Reichstag, following a commission on how to compensate nobles, decides to secularize a bunch of church land and award it to noble house who had lost land as a result of the Treaty of Lunéville.  The Arenberg family gets lands in the County of Vest Recklinghausen, the County of Meppen, and the lordship of Dülmen: these lands constitute the so-called "New Duchy of Arenberg".


 * Then, the rest can be explained through cutting and pasting from the Arenberg website: The new duchy of Arenberg was part of the Confederation of the Rhine, and in a note dated in 1808, the prince-primate declared that according to article 11 of the Act of Confederation, there was no doubt that the House of Arenberg occupied the foremost rank in the protocol of the college of princes. The [6th] duke Louis-Engelbert renounced his rights and the new sovereign duke, Prosper-Louis (1785-1861), took part in Napoleon's military campaigns, an alliance in which both parties clearly aimed at political goals. The duke of Arenberg needed the support of the emperor of the French to face off Prussia, which wanted to incorporate Meppen in order to consolidate its own territories of Münster and eastern Friesland. Napoleon found a way of showing the old nobility of the Low Countries the advantages in supporting his military policies. As sovereign prince and member of the Confederation of the Rhine, Prosper-Louis had to raise a contingent of 379 soldiers according to the treaty. In addition he had undertaken to raise a regiment of light cavalry from around Liège, the Belgian light cavalry which in 1808 became the 27th mounted dragoons. At the head of this regiment, consisting originally of some 360 men but later with a complement of up to 1,014, the duke marched on Pomerania, Schleswig, Denmark and finally Spain, where he was seriously wounded in the battle of Arroyo-Molinos and captured by the English on 28 October 1811. He remained their prisoner until 1814.

During this period, the ultimate catastrophe for Prosper-Louis was the loss of his duchy. By decrees issued in December 1810 and January 1811, Napoleon annexed to France the whole of the Baltic coast from the Ems to the Elbe together with the interior territories without prior announcements to either the towns or the ruling princes concerned. With the exception of Recklinghausen, all the Arenberg lands were affected by this measure. In exchange, the duke of Arenberg became a count of Napoleon's empire and received a pension from the French state. But in January 1811, Recklinghausen was incorporated into the French Grand Duchy of Berg, without a word of warning to the duke's ambassador, baron Schmaus van Livonegg. In addition to his territorial expansion, Napoleon wanted to reinforce the blockade known as the Continental System. This economic and trade embargo against England, which caused so much damage to trade throughout Europe, was in fact broken from the ducal port of Papenburg by hundreds of boats flying the Arenberg flag.

When duke Prosper-Louis returned in May 1814 from captivity in England, the situation had changed once again. At the "battle of the nations" at Leipzig in 1813, the 'Grande Armée', weakened by the Russian campaign, was beaten. Thereupon the Prussian troops had occupied the former Arenberg territories of Meppen, Dülmen and Recklinghausen. When king Louis XVIII gave his instructions to Talleyrand, his ambassador at the Congress of Vienna, he rightly pointed out that the allies did not clearly recognise the rights of the duke of Arenberg nor those of the princes of Salm and Isenburg, and that these princes were being deprived of their sovereignty without their consent.

The treaty of 29 May 1815 between Prussia and the kingdom of Hanover gave the territory of Meppen to Hanover and the remainder, that is Recklinghausen and Dülmen, to Prussia.


 * All of which does point up the fact that the quality of this article could stand to be improved, eh? As could the AAAC's articles, for that matter.  So much Wikipedia, so little time, though.

Adam_sk (talk) 20:28, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Encyclopaedia Britannica Eleventh Edition
Encyclopaedia Britannica Eleventh Edition has an article on this subject see Aremberg or Arenberg. --PBS (talk) 19:22, 31 July 2009 (UTC)