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The County of Hainaut ( ay-NOH; French: Comté de Hainaut; Dutch: Graafschap Henegouwen; Latin: Comitatus Hanoniensis), sometimes spelled Hainault, was a territorial lordship within the medieval Holy Roman Empire that straddled the present-day border of Belgium and France. Its most important towns included Mons (Dutch: Bergen), now in Belgium, and Valenciennes, now in France.
In present-day terms, the original core of Hainaut consisted of the central part of the Belgian province of Hainaut, and the eastern part of the French département of Nord (the arrondissements of Avesnes-sur-Helpe and Valenciennes). It was named after the river Haine, and stretched from there southeast to include the Avesnois region, and southwest to the Selle (Scheldt tributary). In the Middle Ages, its Counts also gained control of part of the original pagus of Brabant to its north and the pagus of Oosterbant to the east, although they did not form part of the old pagus of Hainaut.
Hainaut appears in 8th-century records as a Frankish gau or pagus which included the Roman towns of Famars and Bavay. In the 9th century, and perhaps earlier, it was also described as a county, which implies that it had a single count governing it. As with many counties of the region, there was apparently a 10th-century fragmentation of territories among different counts, which is difficult to reconstruct. In 1071 a single large territorial county was given its more-or-less final form that lasted for the rest of the Middle Ages.
For much of its existence the County of Hainaut was a French-speaking frontier territory of the Holy Roman Empire, bordering upon the Kingdom of France. Previously, from 843 the County formed part of the Frankish "middle kingdom" of Lotharingia. However, after about 925 Lotharingia was definitively attached by King Henry the Fowler to his eastern Frankish realm that would become the Kingdom of Germany. Hainaut and its neighbourhood remained an important frontier area, or "march", during the High Middle Ages. Although a part of the Holy Roman Empire, ruled from present-day Germany, it was culturally and linguistically French and ecclesiastically part of the Catholic Archdiocese of Reims. Like its neighbours such as the counties of Brabant and Flanders, it frequently became entangled in the politics of France.
The counts of Hainaut were often rulers of other counties, including Flanders and Holland. Notable examples of such personal unions include the following:
In 1432, Hainaut, Holland and Zeeland joined Flanders, Artois, Namur, Brabant, Limbourg, and later Luxembourg, within the large agglomeration of territories in the Low Countries belonging to the French House of Valois-Burgundy. This new state, the Burgundian Netherlands, was inherited by the Habsburg dynasty in the 1470s.
In 1659 and 1678 southern Hainaut was acquired by France. The northern part continued as part of the Habsburg Netherlands. Like much of that state, the northern part of Hainaut was absorbed into the First French Republic in 1797 after the end of the Ancien Régime; it later became part of newly-formed Belgium in 1830.
The river Haine, for which the original pagus (country or territory) is named, flows from east to west. It originates in the once forested area between Binche and modern Charleroi, near the Sambre. It empties into the Scheldt. From the earliest records, Hainaut also extended south of the Haine to the upper Sambre, the Helpe Majeure, Helpe Mineure and the Avesnois region in the Arrondissement of Avesnes-sur-Helpe.
Hainaut's pagus also extended southwest along the Scheldt as far as the Selle river, where the most significant Roman city of the area was Famars (Roman Fanum Martis, literally 'shrine of Mars'), which had been a religious and administrative centre. In the early Middle Ages, records sometimes refer to places within the pagus of Hainaut as being within the pagus Fanomartenis, indicating that either Hainaut had an alternative name, or that Fanum Martis was base to a sub-pagus. According to the 10th-century monk Folcuin, Hainaut was simply a new name for the old Roman name, which had been connected to pre-Christian superstition.
The geographical definition of Hainaut as found in the oldest medieval records, was relatively stable, as shown by Faider-Feytman, Deru, and other historians of the region. According to archaeological evidence, geographical Hainaut, including Avesnes, formed the oldest region of development in the civitas of the Belgic Nervii. They had their early capital in Bavay in Hainaut (Roman Bagacum), which became a major Roman crossroads.
The etymology of Hainaut is thought to be Germanic. The first part is the river name (the modern Haine, probably based on Germanic) and the second component was originally based upon Germanic *awja, which appears in several old Frankish gau names, such as Masau, the oldest name of the pagus on the Meuse river north of Maastricht. The related concept "gau", used in the modern Dutch and German names of Hainaut, Henegouwen and Hennegau, was also used but never became popular in medieval documents concerning this particular area.
The first surviving records indicating that Hainaut was a county are the records of the Carolingian dynasty being divided into parts in 831, 843 and 870. Most of the early medieval records mentioning Hainaut, starting in the 9th century, describe it as a pagus, a land or country, rather than a county. 8th- and 9th-century attestations, as listed by Ulrich Nonn, however, never name any specific counts who ruled it:
Many such early medieval pagi in Europe have histories going back to the Roman Empire. As the Roman empire lost centralized control of this region, which lay in the Roman province of Belgica II, it came under the administration of Childeric I, who had been the military ruler of the Frankish army who previously fought under Romans in Gaul, north of the Loire. The Merovingian dynasty, and later the Carolingians, kept many of the Roman districts, and established counts to administer pagi.
As explained by Nonn, there are very few, if any, clear records of counts of all Hainaut in the 10th century. The region is associated by many historians such as Leon Vanderkindere with the so-called Reginarid dynasty who were a powerful and rebellious Lotharingian family, known for their frequent use of the name Reginar. This is because later in the 10th century a branch of this family succeeded to take the county by force, after returning from exile. However, while the later family clearly claimed to have once had important rights throughout Lotharingia, the exact nature of most of these is unclear, and their possession of a county in Hainaut before Reginar III can not be proven.
The only medieval record which claims that Reginar I held an office involving all of Hainaut was the much later Dudo of Saint-Quentin, who is considered to be unreliable for this period. He names Reginar as "Duke" (Latin dux) of both Hesbaye and Hainaut, and discusses his march against Rollo in Walcheren, together with a Frisian ruler named Radbod, at some point in late 9th or early 10th century. The late 14th century Annales Hannoniae, which give legendary origins of the Counts of Hainaut, describes this Reginar I as a count of Mons – a title held by his descendants.
The first recorded count who was associated as a count with any part of Hainaut in a contemporary record was Count Sigehard. Leon Vanderkindere proposed that this Sigehard was given the county while Reginar I was out of favour. In fact no such connections can be proven. He was more clearly described as a count in the pagus Liugas, east of Liège.
From 925, Lotharingia, including Hainaut, was continuously part of the eastern Frankish kingdom which was the predecessor of the Holy Roman Empire. In 939, the Reginars led a rebellion against the eastern kingdom which was defeated. Gilbert, Duke of Lorraine, the son of Reginar I who had been leader of this rebellion, was killed.
Reginar II (died before 943), the younger son of Reginar I, was named as a Count of Hainaut in the late 11th-century life story (Vita) of Gerard of Brogne (died 959), but this work is considered unreliable, and we can not be certain of this position. His son Count Reginar III Longneck, may also have been a count in Hainaut. What is more certain is that he unsuccessfully rebelled against Duke Bruno the Great, so he was deposed from all offices, exiled and banned in 958. The Vita of Gerard of Brogne also names him as a count of Hainaut. Ulrich Nonn considers it likely that he held Mons because it aligns with other evidence.
A count named Amelric who was "from" the pagus of Hainaut (Latin: ex pago Hainou) is named in or after 953 in the Deeds of the bishops of Cambrai. This is generally taken to mean that Hainaut already included the jurisdictions of more than one count. Apart from the one associated with Mons, Amulric perhaps held a county based in Valenciennes.
The second or third count of Hainaut to be named in a contemporary record was however called Godefrid, starting in 958, the year of Reginar III's exile. He is generally considered to be Godfrey I, Duke of Lower Lorraine who died in 964 in Italy.
After the death of Godfrey in Italy, he was replaced in Hainaut by a Count Richer, who was perhaps the same Count Richer who held a county in the pagus of Liège. In 972 he died. In 973 two noble brothers, Werner and Reynold, were killed near Mons fighting the two sons of Reginar III, Reginar IV and Lambert, who had returned to claim their father's property. Also in 973, Counts named Amelric and Richizo appeared in a royal grant in favour of Crispin Abbey in Hainaut. Amelric is probably the count of 953 mentioned above, with his seat in or near Valenciennes. According to Hlawitchka, Richizo is probably Richwin, a brother of Count Richer who died in 972.
The Regnarid brothers apparently did not succeed in gaining Hainaut, or even Mons for some decades. The Gesta of the bishops of Cambrai records that two counts named Godefrid and Arnulf succeeded Richizo and Amelric, and these two counts were involved in a defense of Cambrai in 979, and appear in other records. They are believed to be the same as Count Godfrey "the captive", and Arnulf of Valenciennes.
In 998 the Reginar IV regained control over the County of Mons, in Hainaut, from Godfrey according to Alberic of Trois-Fontaines. Historian Michel de Waha believes this late report can not be trusted, and that we can only say they took control in the period 985–1015, and probably after 1007. Reginar IV died 1013, and was succeeded by his son Reginar V. Reginar IV's brother Lambert, who made himself Count of Louvain, died in battle in Hainaut in 1015.
The County of Valenciennes disappears from records after the death of Arnulf of Valenciennes in about 1011, with this part of Hainaut possibly being taken over by the County of Flanders.
Text from the Wikipedia article “County of Hainaut”, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.