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60-475: Throughout the 18th century, groups of thieves and other criminals adopted the belief to frighten the inhabitants of southern Limburg , a province in the southern part of the Netherlands and in parts of what has become since eastern Belgium . Using the name "Bokkenrijders" (buckriders), these criminal bands launched raids across a region that included Limburg, and parts of modern-day Germany . In response to

120-747: A buck that refers to the nickname of residents, not directly to the gang. Since October 2016, there has also been a monument in Klimmen that commemorates the miscarriage of justice where 60 executions took place in five years at the end of the 18th century. In the center of Schaesberg in the municipality of Landgraaf there is a statue of a buckrider, just like in Stein , Sint Joost , Geleen , in Herzogenrath (Germany) and in Maaseik , Wellen and Overpelt (Belgium). Several carnaval groups are named after

180-511: A colorful collection of folk tales, in which the subject has become increasingly distant from historical facts. In Valkenburg , the buck weeks take place every year in October with various activities, including the bokkemért (buck market) and the Witches' Kitchen is a reminder of the gang of robbers. The buckriders festival takes place in Klimmen each year. A plaque was installed in 1999 on

240-551: A county which was first assembled under the lordship of a junior member of the House of Ardenne–Luxembourg , Frederick . He and his successors built and apparently named the fortified town which the county, and later the Duchy, were named after. Despite being a younger son, Frederick had a successful career and also became Duke of Lower Lotharingia in 1046. Lordship of this county was not originally automatically linked with possession of

300-705: A ducal title ( Herzog in German, Hertog in Dutch), and the same title was also eventually contested by the counts of Brabant , leading to the invention of two new Ducal titles: Brabant and Limbourg. The extinction of the line of Frederick's grandson Henry in 1283 sparked the War of the Limburg Succession , whereafter Limburg was ruled by the Dukes of Brabant in personal union , eventually being grouped together with

360-529: A godless, averted gang of night thieves and gaggers within the lands of 'Overmaas' and adjacent regions. This book was written in 1779 by S.J.P. Sleinada (real name Pastor A. Daniels). This pastor, who lived in Landgraaf , knew several buckriders personally. The author tells us that these robbers made a pact with the Devil and rode their bucks at night. The common people told stories about them flying through

420-424: A grandson) was Henry , although between them was Count Udon , who about 1065 was also called a "count of Limburg". (It has been proposed that he married Frederick's daughter, and was the father of Henry.) Henry also claimed Frederick's ducal title, which was finally acknowledged by Emperor Henry IV in 1101. The Duchy of Limburg, like most of modern Belgium, was originally within the Duchy of Lower Lorraine . For

480-449: A new province, Limburg, within the new Kingdom of Belgium . From the earliest mentions, the counts of Loon exercised power in three distinct geographical areas, with different medieval names. All three of these components can be found in the modern province of Limburg. However, the early county did not have a simple geographical form. The counts excerised a changing bundle of rights and duties in scattered locations which extended outside

540-433: A pact with the devil. The witch trials and robbery trials can not be seen separately in that sense: the accusations always included both robbery and witchcraft. It is estimated that about 1200 men were accused and at least between 425 and 468 men were executed between 1743 and 1796 on the conviction of being a Buckrider. The number of deaths might surpass 500 men due to suspects dying under torture when questioned. Formally,

600-485: A separate "middle" kingdom, but it no longer had a king. The eastern and western kingdoms of the old Carolingian dynasty , the forerunners of later France and Germany, contested for control, together with the local magnates. By the year 1000, the area was under lasting control of the eastern kingdom, and royal power in the Haspengouw region was partly in the hands of the prince bishops of Liège, who had been enfeoffed by

660-462: A while, Lower Lorraine had its own duke . It is from this duchy that the Duchy of Limbourg derived its ducal status (as did the Duchy of Brabant, in a competitive claim to succession). This meant that Lower Lorraine came to have two duchies, that of Brabant, and that of Limburg, and the title of Duke of Lothier , still held by Brabant, eventually became ineffective. As the Lorrainian ducal dignity

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720-562: A widespread area and be home before dawn to remain obscured in their crimes. Commonly, the buckriders raided small communities, parsonages, churches and more remote farms. Hundreds of buckriders were convicted and sentenced to death. Because of the link to the occult and witchcraft, authorities accused a large number of potentially innocent men of being buckriders and the majority of suspects were tortured and subsequently convicted of crimes they initially denied having committed. The buckriders were considered both criminals and witches that made

780-484: Is a stereotypical aspect of the buckriders myth. Since the convicts were accused of this oath and a pact with the devil, we can define this as a late form of witch-hunt . Prosecution of buckriders were ruthless, even by those day's standards. More than 90% of the convicted received capital punishment. Many confessions were gained by means of torture, or by fear for it. There are seven periods of different buckrider trials. The first took place during 1743 – 1745, and

840-642: Is said to have originated in the Lands of Overmaas (according to the trial of Hendrik Becx in Nieuwstadt in 1743) and then spread to Loon . During the 18th century there were seven buckrider trials. In the Wellen-Haspengouw trial, this is stated in black and white in the court documents. A common question there is: "Aren't you a member of the gang from across the Meuse , the so-called buckriders?" That

900-578: Is today the Belgian-German border, but after the First World War , these lands became Belgian, re-uniting the original parts of the old Duchy. 50°37′N 5°56′E  /  50.617°N 5.933°E  / 50.617; 5.933 County of Loon The County of Loon ( Dutch : Graafschap Loon [ˈɣraːfsxɑp ˈloːn] , Limburgish : Graafsjap Loeën [ˈɣʀaːfʃɑp ˈluən] , French : Comté de Looz )

960-437: Is why people speak of buckriders in the sense that they are suspects and convicts of massive witch trials conducted in that sense. The witch trials and robbery trials can not seen separately in that sense: the accusations always included both. Trials against buckriders differed from 'common trials against common criminals' if the suspect had performed the god-denying oath: 'I forswear God ... etc.' This so-called oath of heresy

1020-652: The Benelux in the late Middle Ages , and continued to unite almost all of today's Belgium under the ancien regime . Loon and other Liège lordships only joined their neighbours when they all became part of France during the French Revolution . After the Battle of Waterloo , they remained connected in the new United Kingdom of the Netherlands . In 1839, the old territory of Loon became the approximate basis of

1080-749: The Prince-Bishopric of Liège , based to the west, the Principality of Stavelot-Malmedy to the south, and the County of Luxembourg , to the south. In the east the main neighbour was the Rhenish Duchy of Jülich . To the north were the smaller lordships such as Slenaken, and Wittem and the lordships of Dalhem and Rolduc ('s-Hertogenrade), today in the Dutch province of Limburg, which came under Brabant control and were referred to in that context as

1140-459: The War of the Limburg Succession broke out. The duke of Brabant won the final Battle of Worringen in 1288, thereby gaining control of the Duchy of Limburg with the consent of King Rudolph I of Germany . Though it shared the fate of Brabant, Limburg remained a separate Imperial State , which in 1404 passed from Joanna of Brabant to Anthony of Valois , son of the Burgundian duke Philip

1200-421: The "Overmaas" territory, or even Limburg. In the northeast was the imperial city of Aachen . Linguistically Limburg was situated on the border of Germanic with Romance Europe . While in the northern and eastern districts Limburgish and Ripuarian dialects were spoken, the southwestern part around Herve was dominated by Walloon . The territory of the duchy of Limburg was formed in the 11th century around

1260-537: The Bishop of Liège, of allodial land in key places in the County of Loon. Her possessions cannot be explained by her proposed ancestry, or her known husband, and so it has long been suggested that she must have first married a Count Arnold, because he is presumed to have had no heirs. In the generation after the 3 brothers Balderic, Gilbert, and Arnulf, Count Emmo became the next count of Loon while his brother Count Otto

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1320-964: The Bold . After the death of Mary of Burgundy in 1482, it passed to her descendants from the Austrian House of Habsburg . Combined with the Landen van Overmaas (the lands beyond the Meuse: Dalhem , Herzogenrath and Valkenburg ) and Maastricht , the duchy became one of the Seventeen Provinces held by the Habsburgs within the Burgundian Circle established in 1512. Significant towns in Limburg proper were Herve, Montzen, Lontzen , Eupen , Baelen and Esneux . After

1380-766: The Brabantian "Overmaas" territories bordering it (including Dalhem , Valkenburg , and 's-Hertogenrade ), to be one of the Seventeen Provinces of the Burgundian Netherlands . Unlike other parts of this province, the lands of the duchy stayed intact within the Southern Netherlands, under Habsburg control, after the divisions caused by the Eighty Years' War and the War of the Spanish Succession . However finally, after

1440-581: The French-speaking County of Chiny in 1227, and brought the main line of the counts of Loon to the high point of its territorial expansion. The comital male line became extinct with the death of Louis IV of Loon in 1336 and the Loon and Chiny estates were at first inherited by the noble House of Sponheim at Heinsberg with the consent of the Liège bishop. In 1362 Prince-Bishop Engelbert III of

1500-554: The Marck nevertheless seized Loon and finally incorporated it into the Liège territory in 1366. The county remained a separate entity ( quartier ) within Liège, whose prince-bishops assumed the comital title. When the bishopric was annexed by Revolutionary France in 1795, the county of Loon was also disbanded and an adjusted version of the territory became part of the French département of Meuse-Inférieure , along with Dutch Limburg to

1560-625: The abdication of Emperor Charles V in 1556, the Burgundian fiefs passed to his son King Philip II of Spain . The measures of the Council of Troubles implemented by Philip's stern governor, the Duke of Alba , sparked the Eighty Years' War , ended by the 1648 Peace of Westphalia . An area known as Limburg of the States , consisting of parts of Overmaas (but no part of the Duchy of Limburg itself),

1620-477: The approximate boundaries of the modern state of Belgium with the Netherlands and Germany , at their " tripoint ". The eastern part, which includes Eupen , is the administrative capital and northernmost part of the modern German-speaking Community of Belgium . The Duchy also included the main part of the Pays de Herve , famous for its pungent-smelling soft cheese known as Limburger or Herve . The state's territory

1680-579: The buckriders throughout the affected area. Duchy of Limburg The Duchy of Limburg or Limbourg was an imperial estate of the Holy Roman Empire . Much of the area of the duchy is today located within Liège Province of Belgium , with a small portion in the municipality of Voeren , an exclave of the neighbouring Limburg Province . Its chief town was Limbourg-sur-Vesdre , in today's Liège Province. The Duchy evolved from

1740-476: The buckriders: The first view is found among those who believed that the buckriders have really formed a large gang and had not yet been punished harshly enough. Critical historians, however, who do not accept the torture statements at face value, consider the punishment exaggerated. The pioneer of this trend, Attorney General Gaspard de Limpens, wrote in 1774 about the convicts: "Their statements are full of contradictions, varying versions and violations of logic and

1800-462: The core area, while other landholders also had rights within that area. Like many of counties in the region, records mentioning counts of Loon begin in the early 11th century, but these give almost no indication of how the county came to be and what its original boundaries and institutions it encompassed. The immediately preceding generations had seen many rebellions, confiscations, and expulsions. The larger region of Lower Lotharingia had been part of

1860-667: The county of Duras and advocacy of the abbey of Sint-Truiden, but had to accept Brabant's suzerainty over those lands. This area gave power over abbey lands in Sint-Truiden , Halen , and Herk de Stad , effectively defining what is today still the southwestern border of Belgian Limburg. Gerard's son Louis II was heir, but Rieneck went to another son, Gerard, Count of Rieneck . The counties of Rieneck and Loon were re-united eventually under Gerard of Rieneck's son Louis III of Loon , but he then divided them again, giving Loon to his brother Arnold IV . By marriage, Count Arnold IV acquired

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1920-411: The devil moved at night on bucks. The present interpretation is that a number of criminal gangs robbed houses and committed other crimes, using the myth to their advantage. Also, many of the buckriders that were arrested are thought to be innocent, as confessions were obtained through torture. The condemnation of people because of an impious oath or their alleged alliance with the devil can be compared to

1980-527: The east of the Maas. After the defeat of Napoleon , the département became part of the new United Kingdom of the Netherlands in 1815, and received its modern name of Limburg as a way for the kingdom to preserve the old title of the medieval Duchy of Limburg , which was nearby. However, in 1830, Belgium was created, splitting the Kingdom, and the position of Limburg and Luxemburg became a cause of conflict between

2040-500: The emperor of at least two significant Haspengouw counties, Huy , and Brunengeruz . A third one, "Haspinga", came into the hands of the bishop in 1040. There is no consensus over what territory it encompassed, and it may have even included lordship over all or part of Loon. The first generally accepted count (Dutch graaf , Latin comes , French comte ) of Loon was the 11th century Giselbert (modern English and French "Gilbert"). He had two brothers, Count Arnulf, who appears to have been

2100-585: The facade of the Museum Land van Valkenburg, formerly the town hall of Valkenburg and the scene of the Valkenburg buckrider trials in the 18th century, in memory of the many innocent convicts. The buckriders play a major role in Valkenburg folklore. For example, the residents of the Geul city are referred to as bök ("bucks") during carnival time. In the park at Den Halder Castle there is a bronze statue of

2160-444: The failed Brabant Revolution in 1789, the duchy's history was terminated with the occupation by French Revolutionary troops in 1793. The easternmost lands were reunited within modern Belgium only after World War I . The duchy was multilingual, being the place where Dutch, French, and German dialects border upon each other and coexist at their geographical extremes, both now and in medieval times. Its northern and eastern borders are

2220-500: The last during 1793 – 1794. In Limburg , the buckriders are now embraced as part of cultural heritage. In the 19th century, under the influence of Romanticism, a flood of stories about buckriders emerged, pioneered by the Sittard author Pieter Ecrevisse. As of 2015, more than 1,300 titles have been published on the subject. In the buckrider story, crime is strongly linked to magic and witchcraft. These popular themes resulted in

2280-484: The last secular count of Haspinga, and bishop Balderic II of Liège. Medieval records note that Giselbert and his brothers were related by blood to local nobility, such as Lambert I, Count of Louvain , and Arnulf of Valenciennes , but they do not give exact relationships. The only medieval source to mention a parent for Count Giselbert is the chronicle of the Abbey of St Truiden, which names his father as Otto. However this

2340-567: The laws of gravity." "They have been punished too harshly and the majority are innocent." "The torture makes those questioned confess what the justice system wants to hear." The fact that the buckriders were tried and prosecuted for their pact with the devil, resembles the witch-hunts during the Early Modern Period. Historians place these buckrider-hunts alongside other prosecuted 'godless' people: heretics and witches. These kinds of fullscale trials last took place in Limburg. Limburg

2400-428: The name Bokkenrijders (buckriders) was first publicly used in 1774, during the 'trial of Wellen ', a town in what belonged then to the Southern Netherlands. Johan van Muysen slid a letter underneath the door of a farmer called Wouters. The letter contained a threat that Wouters's house would be burned down unless he paid up. Van Muyses claimed to be member of the buckriders and used the word Satan up to three times. In

2460-539: The nearby Prince-bishop of Liège , and by 1190 the count had come under the bishop's overlordship. In the fourteenth century the male line ended for a second time, at which point the prince-bishops themselves took over the county directly. Loon approximately represented the Dutch-speaking (archaic French : thiois ) part of the princedom. All of the Dutch-speaking towns in the Prince-Bishopric, with

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2520-430: The new name for this place, Limburg, was taken from the name of the fort of the ruling Salian dynasty who had in about the same period given their possession to become Limburg Abbey . The most important towns in the eventual Duchy were Limbourg, the capital, and Eupen . The Limburg estates were commonly divided into five legal districts ( Hochbänke ): The territory of Limburg formed a complex patchwork with those of

2580-483: The next count of Loon and Rieneck, fortified Brustem and Kolmont, and moved the capital of the county to Kuringen. There he founded Herkenrode Abbey , for women living according to the Cistercian rule. In Loon, the enduring conflict with his Liège overlords culminated in an 1179 campaign by Prince-Bishop Rudolf of Zähringen , whose troops devastated the county's capital at Borgloon in 1179. In 1193 he also acquired

2640-402: The robberies towns in Limburg started to build defences like moats around them and farms started to develop a closed square building style. The buckriders were feared and despised by the common people throughout the area because of the ruthlessness and violence the robberies were committed by. The belief existed that the buckriders could travel fast and vast distances through the skies to rob in

2700-400: The sky, pronouncing the following spell: 'Over huis, over tuin, over staak, en dat tot Keulen in de wijnkelder!' (across houses, across gardens, across stakes (fences), even to Cologne into the wine cellar!). Both worshiping and riding a goat have been associated with the Witches' Sabbath and other devilish practices for centuries. According to old folk tales, people who had made a pact with

2760-572: The status of being so-called " Good Cities " ( French : bonnes villes ), were in Loon, and are in Belgian Limburg today. These were Beringen , Bilzen , Borgloon, Bree , Hamont , Hasselt , Herk-de-Stad , Maaseik , Peer and Stokkem . Like other areas which eventually came under the power of the Prince Bishop of Liège , Loon never formally became part of the unified lordship of the " Low Countries " which united almost all of

2820-484: The town of Limbourg in present-day Wallonia . About 1020, Duke Frederick of Lower Lorraine, a descendant of Count Palatine Wigeric of Lotharingia , had Limbourg Castle built on the banks of the Vesdre river. His estates then comprised the districts of Baelen (with Limbourg), Herve, Montzen (since 1975 part of Plombières ), Walhorn , and the southwestern exclave of Sprimont . Frederick's eventual successor (probably

2880-409: The trial of Wellen, the term “buckriders” is openly used against Philip Mertens, who wrote a similar threat letter.' Earliest records mentioning the buckriders originate from a tome called Oorzaeke, bewys en ondekkinge van een goddelooze, bezwoorne bende nagtdieven en knevelaers binnen de landen van Overmaeze en aenpalende landstreeken , which approximately translates to Causes, proof and discovery of

2940-469: The widespread area and long period of time these occurred suggests many smaller groups. This played into the belief that the buckriders could travel fast and vast distances through the skies to rob in a widespread area. The trials against the buckriders differed from 'ordinary' criminal proceedings because in many cases a so-called 'ungodly oath' was involved ("I renounce God and swear to the devil"). This impious oath, typical of buckriders in this tradition,

3000-635: The witch trials in Europe between 1450 and 1750 with brutal persecutions. In the Overmaasse trials the term 'buckriders' is only mentioned late, probably under the influence of the trial in Wellen. The word 'buck' does appear here in a lawsuit in 1773. In that trial, Mathijs Smeets from Beek claimed that he and 42 others had sat on large bucks at night and flown to Venlo to commit a robbery there. In historiography, two opposing observations arise about

3060-461: Was advocatus of the Abbey of St Truiden, and the ancestor of the first line of counts of Duras , perhaps through his wife Oda. The county of Duras was inherited by Otto's son Giselbert, and in turn by his son Otto. It eventually became part of Loon, under Count Gerard in the 1190s. Count Arnold (or Arnulf) I, the son of Emmo, is according to Baerten (1969 p. 40), the first Count of Loon for whom we can discuss any political activity. In 1106 he

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3120-470: Was a county in the Holy Roman Empire , which corresponded approximately with the modern Belgian province of Limburg . It was named after the original seat of its count, Loon, which is today called Borgloon . During the middle ages the counts moved their court to a more central position in Kuringen , which today forms part of Hasselt , capital of the province. From its beginnings, Loon was associated with

3180-412: Was able to strengthen his position, when he acquired the possessions of the extinct Counts of Rieneck through his marriage. He also probably built the motte-and-bailey castle which was at Borgloon during the middle ages. His son Arnold II, Count of Loon , founded the Abbey of Averbode. The son and heir of Arnold II was Louis (Dutch Lodewijk ) I. He founded Averbode Abbey by charter dated 1135, and

3240-767: Was ceded to the Dutch Republic . In 1661, the Dutch and the Spanish agreed on a re-partition of the county of Dalhem . The duchy of Limburg itself remained undivided under Spanish Habsburg rule as part of the Southern Netherlands , passing to the Austrian Habsburgs under the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713. When the region was occupied by the French in 1794, the Austrian duchy of Limburg proper

3300-523: Was contested the title "duke of Limburg" arose, achieving confirmation from Emperor Frederick Barbarossa in 1165. The rise of the Limburg dynasty continued, when Duke Waleran III in 1214 became Count of Luxembourg by marriage with the heiress Ermesinde and his son Henry IV in 1225 became Count of Berg as husband of heiress Irmgard . However, upon the death of Henry's son Waleran IV in 1279, leaving only one heiress Irmgard, who had married Count Reginald I of Guelders but died childless in 1283,

3360-598: Was count of Loon, Stadtgraf of Mainz , and count of Rieneck , both in modern Germany. He increased Loon's territory adding Kolmont (now in Tongeren) together with Bilzen . He strengthened the fort there and gave the city freedoms. He also did the same in Brustem (now in St Truiden), which came under threat as a Loon enclave surrounded by the County of Duras. Count Gerard (sometimes incorrectly called Gerard "II"),

3420-579: Was disbanded and was incorporated into the département of Ourthe , while most of the Overmaas lands became part of the department Meuse-Inférieure , which is the basis of today's Belgian and Dutch provinces called Limburg. After the defeat of the French empire, the eastern, German-speaking part of Duchy's lands were given to Prussia in the Congress of Vienna along with several other territories along what

3480-685: Was situated in the Low Countries between the river Meuse (Maas) in the west and the Imperial city of Aachen in the east. These lands had formed a very large lordship under Baelen on the route between the important imperial centres of Liège and Aachen. They had chiefly been used for hunting, and not yet developed very much for agriculture. Frederick selected a natural prominence at an important intersection of roads which had probably been called "Heimersberch" or Hèvremont, and built his new comital caput there in about 1030. Kupper has proposed that

3540-439: Was the last European region where such superstitious legal excesses took place en masse. The witches were a popular belief, but also in the eyes of the justice system witches were a reality. The accused were convicted on the basis of witchcraft as much as the robbery chargers and they were in most cases executed when found guilty. It is unclear how many people were involved in the actual robberies and that were convicted for it, but

3600-410: Was written centuries later and is not considered reliable. Not only is the parentage of Giselbert, Arnulf and Balderic uncertain, but also their connection to the next two count brothers, Emmo and Otto, is considered uncertain. They may be the sons of either Giselbert or Arnulf. Another important charter in discussions about the origins of the County of Loon is the 1078 grant by Countess Ermengarde to

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