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The House of Ligne

The Lignes are one of the oldest noble families of Hainaut, in present-day Belgium. Their ancestral home is the village of Ligne, a few kilometres from Belœil, the castle that has been the family's seat since the fourteenth century [2]. The castle's foundation describes a family that served the counts of Hainaut, the kings of France, the dukes of Burgundy, the Austrian emperors and the kings of the Belgians [2]. This page draws on the castle's website, the Neue Deutsche Biographie (NDB), the Arenberg Foundation and the French Wikipedia article on the family.

Origins in Hainaut

The castle's website says archival records mention the family as early as the eleventh century [2]. Wikipedia names as early ancestors Fastré de Ligne, who witnessed a charter of Bishop Gérard of Cambrai in 1047, and Wauthier de Ligne, who signed a foundation charter for the abbey of Anchin in 1138 [1]. The lords of Ligne were part of the entourage of the counts of Hainaut during the Crusades [1].

Belœil came to the family in the fourteenth century through the inheritance of Catherine de Condé [2]. Since then the family has rebuilt and enlarged it, keeping elements of the old fortress such as its towers and moats [2].

Burgundy and the Golden Fleece

Wikipedia lists Jean IV de Ligne (1435–1491), known as "the Rich", as a knight of the Order of the Golden Fleece, married to Jacqueline de Croÿ, and his son Antoine I (1472–1532) as "the Great Devil of Ligne" [1]. In the sixteenth century the family became counts of Fauquembergues and princes of Épinoy [1].

The Arenberg branch

On 18 October 1547 Jean de Ligne, baron of Barbançon, married Margaretha (Marguerite) de La Marck, heiress of Arenberg [4][5]. With the consent of Charles V, their marriage contract provided that their descendants would bear the name and arms of Arenberg, and so the present House of Arenberg descends from a Ligne [5]. Jean was killed at the battle of Heiligerlee in 1568 [4].

Princes of the Empire

In 1601 Emperor Rudolf II made Lamoral I (1563–1624) "prince of Ligne and of the Holy Roman Empire"; in 1621 King Philip III of Spain made him a grandee of Spain [1]. Wikipedia quotes the Latin of the 1601 diploma: Haec domus nulli antiquitate et decore familiarum nobilissimarum etiam regalium cedit, "this house yields to none of the noblest families, even royal ones, in antiquity and distinction" [1].

Charles-Joseph, the "rose-coloured" prince

The family's most famous member is Charles-Joseph, prince de Ligne (1735–1814). According to the NDB, he was born in Brussels, the son of Claude Lamoral II, and married Franziska, a princess of Liechtenstein, in Vienna in 1755 [3]. He joined the imperial army in 1752, fought in the Seven Years' War, commanded a wing of the besieging army at the capture of Belgrade in 1789 and was made a field marshal in 1808 [3]. He was a knight of the Golden Fleece from 1772 [3].

The NDB sees him above all as a writer and "one of the great representatives of the Ancien Régime": a correspondent of Joseph II, Frederick the Great, Catherine II, Voltaire, Rousseau and Goethe, who accompanied Catherine II on her journey to the Crimea in 1787 [3]. He lived in Brussels, Paris or at Belœil until the French Revolution cost him his Belgian estates; he spent his last twenty years in Vienna, writing [3]. Madame de Staël published an anthology of his works in 1809 [3]. The NDB calls his prose "rose-coloured" [3].

In 1770 the barony of Fagnolle was made an imperial county for him [1]. After France annexed the region, the family was compensated in 1803 with the secularised imperial abbey of Edelstetten [1].

The nineteenth century to today

Charles-Joseph's grandson Eugène (1804–1880) was a Belgian envoy, minister of state and president of the Senate [1][3]. In 1923 King Albert I authorised the family, like its Arenberg branch, to use the style of Highness [1].

Wikipedia lists the later princes as follows [1]:

The Belgian public broadcaster RTBF, reporting in 2016, independently confirms that Michel is the present prince of Ligne, the fourteenth head of the house, and still lives at Belœil [6]. His dates and marriage above come from Wikipedia only [1].

The family still lives at Belœil, whose library holds more than 20,000 books and whose French gardens, laid out in the eighteenth century, cover 25 hectares [2].

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.