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The House of Croÿ

The Croÿs (pronounced roughly "krwee") are an old noble family from Picardy who rose to power at the court of the dukes of Burgundy and later served the Habsburgs, France and Spain [1]. Since the early nineteenth century the head of the family has lived at Dülmen, in Westphalia, where the ducal administration still looks after the Merfelder Bruch and its wild horses [3][4]. This page draws on the German Wikipedia article on the family, the Neue Deutsche Biographie (NDB), the ducal administration's website and a local press report on the family's history in Dülmen.

Origins: fact and legend

The family takes its name from Crouy-Saint-Pierre, near Amiens in the Somme [1]. Older literature gave it grander origins. One tradition made it descend from a Marcus, said to be a grandson of King Béla II of Hungary, who married the heiress of Airaines and Crouy; another derived it from the dukes of Lorraine [1]. GOTHA treats both as legends: Wikipedia presents them only as traditions from older literature, and GOTHA has found no source that establishes them.

The rise under Burgundy

Members of the family acquired lands in Burgundy, Flanders and Hainaut early on [1]. Their real rise came through Antoine I de Croÿ (c. 1402–1475), a minister of Duke Philip the Good of Burgundy, who held an all-powerful position at his court in the duke's last years [1]. Antoine bought Le Rœulx in 1429, still owned by the family today, and acquired the lordship of Aarschot through his second wife [1]. His sons founded the lines of Aarschot and Rœulx [1].

Titles under the Habsburgs and France

Wikipedia lists the main titles as follows [1]:

• 1473: count of Chimay, in Hainaut.
• 1486: Charles I de Croÿ, mentor of the future Charles V, received an imperial title from Maximilian I at Aachen. The article's introduction calls this the princely rank of the Empire, while its list of titles calls it a titular count's rank without a vote in the Imperial Diet. GOTHA notes the inconsistency and does not choose.
• 1534: Philippe II de Croÿ was made duke of Aarschot in the Spanish Netherlands.
• 1594: Charles Philippe de Croÿ, marquis of Havré, was made a titular prince of the Empire.
• 1598: King Henry IV of France made Charles Alexandre de Croÿ duke of Croÿ, with the title passing to the eldest of the whole family.

When the Aarschot line ended in 1612, the duchy of Aarschot and the principality of Chimay passed to the House of Arenberg, through Anne de Croÿ's marriage in 1587 to Charles of Arenberg [1]. The Arenberg Foundation confirms that marriage [5].

A Croÿ in Pomerania

One branch made an unusual career in Protestant northern Germany. Ernst Bogislaw, duke of Croÿ (1620–1684), was the son of Duke Ernst of Croÿ and Aarschot and of Anna, daughter of Duke Bogislaw XIII of Pomerania [2]. Raised at the court of his uncle Bogislaw XIV in Stettin, he was elected the last Protestant bishop of Cammin, gave up his rights to Brandenburg in 1650 and served the Great Elector as governor of Farther Pomerania and, from 1670, of Prussia [2]. His bequests, including the "Croÿ tapestry", went to the University of Greifswald, which held a "Croÿ celebration" in his family's memory from 1680 to 1930 [2]. According to Wikipedia, the Havré line died out with him in 1684 [1].

The Solre line and Dülmen

All living members of the family descend from Emmanuel, duke of Croÿ (1718–1784), prince of Solre and a Marshal of France [1]. After the Peace of Lunéville in 1801 cost the family lands in the Netherlands, Duke Anne Emmanuel received most of the district of Dülmen, from the dissolved prince-bishopric of Münster, in 1802–03, shortly before his death [1][4]. His son had to cede it to the duke of Arenberg as early as 1806 [4]. After 1815 the Croÿ lands came under Prussian sovereignty as a mediatized lordship [1].

The local historian quoted by the Dülmener Zeitung describes how the dukes nevertheless shaped the town: they built the palace and park, kept church patronage into the twentieth century, preserved the wild horses, founded an ironworks and became the town's largest landowners [4]. On 9 November 1918, faced with the revolution, the duke renounced all privileges for himself and his descendants [4].

The ducal administration states that the wild horses of the Merfelder Bruch were first recorded in 1316, and that in the mid-nineteenth century Duke Alfred placed their habitat under private protection; the area of about 500 hectares still belongs to the duke [3].

The lines today

Duke Alfred (1789–1861) and his brothers Ferdinand and Philipp founded the three present lines of the family [1]. Belgian branches were admitted to the Belgian nobility with the title of prince from 1892 onwards; the French title of duke is borne only by the head of the whole family, at present from the Dülmen line [1]. Wikipedia names Carl Emanuel (1914–2011) as the 14th duke and his son Rudolf, born in 1955, as the present 15th duke [1]. After Dülmen palace was destroyed in 1945, Haus Merfeld became the residence of the Westphalian branch [1].

Key dates

Licence: contains material adapted from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/). This article is released under the same licence. Other sources are summarised or briefly quoted.