Studies in American History 
327 
fore, that as a part of the Holy Roman Empire, Lotharingia 
was under German leadership and influences. Here is the 
third landmark in the development of the boundary lines of 
the states of Western Europe. 
In the long period from rude barbarian tribes to states or- 
ganized along modern lines, Lothair’s kingdom passed thru 
a period of proud feudatories both lay and ecclesiastical. One 
of these was the duchy of Burgundy held in flef by the Valois 
dukes. That a duke should aspire to the higher office of king 
was the accepted rule in the Middle Ages, and the dukes of 
Burgundy were no exception to this rule. Not only did they 
plan to create a kingdom, but they also proposed to extend their 
present boundaries until they included the whole of Lotha- 
ringia. If successful there would again be a middle kingdom 
between France and Germany. It was easiest to make acqui- 
sitions to the north, for here both the Empire and France 
were weakest in authority, and here the fashion to set up a 
borderland power was becoming a habit. 
During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries this was the 
Burgundian policy. The dukes were as fertile in method as 
bold in design, and one by one cities and counties, fiefs and 
districts passed to their rule. Sometimes a marriage was the 
happy stroke that brought in a large territory; sometimes a 
purchase was made ; it might be treachery, it might be force ; 
but whatever the method, by the close of the fifteenth century 
Luxemburg, Flanders, and the seventeen provinces of the 
Low Countries were under Burgundian rule. This was a vast 
territory, and of its rulers the distinguished Professor Free- 
man wrote: “No power ever arose which fills a wider and 
more oecumenical place in history than the line of Valois 
dukes. 
The Burgundian territories had by their overweight ceased 
to be a borderland kingdom; their power was both a threat 
and a menace to their neighbor on the west, Louis XI, of 
France; and when Duke Charles the Bold died in 1477, the 
French king seized his duchy lying along the Saone. While 
the southern part of the Burgundian lands went to France, 
it was very different in the north. Here emerged the inde- 
pendent state of the Netherlands comprising a large section 
of the original kingdom of Lothair. Its independence was 
^.Edward Freeman, The Historical Geogi'aphy of Europe (New York, 1904). 
