Je lay emprins | |||
Capital (and largest city) |
Dijon | ||
Other cities | Amsterdam, Marseilles, Bescancon | ||
Language | Dutch, Occitan, French | ||
Religion | Christianity | ||
Ethnic Groups main |
Burgundian | ||
others | Dutch, French, Provencal | ||
Established | 1490 |
Burgundy was a large West European state incorporating Provence, the Low Countries, and parts of the Rhineland which existed from the late 1500s until the mid-1800s. Formed by the Valois counts of Burgundy from a scattered patrimony of inherited territories, Burgundy rose to power as its ruling house displaced their cousins, the French royals, in concert with Anglia, and annexed much of France. Burgundy fought a succession of wars against neighbours including the Swiss Confederacy, the Holy Roman Empire, and Aragon in the 16th and 17th centuries, gradually uniting its territories into a unitary kingdom and assembling a large colonial empire. Following colonial revolts in the 1700s, Burgundy was consumed by internal nationalist rivalry, proving unable to overcome its internal linguistic and cultural divides, and was eventually partitioned by its neighbours. Burgundy's long period of relative weakness provided the space for the development of ideologies that would, however, eventually overcome Europe's monarchical order altogether.