Neuchâtel is one of the many sovereign principalities that existed on the eastern borders of France in the 16th-17th centuries. The capital is the city of Neuenburg, later renamed the French way to Neuchâtel (both names mean "new castle").
Content
County
Counts of Neuenburg are mentioned by sources from the XII century, when one of them took part in the Third Crusade . From the eldest son of this crusader come the counts of Neuenburg, from the middle - the lords and counts of neighboring Valangen (the clan lasted until the Napoleonic Wars ), and the youngest was the bishop of Lausanne .
In the 14th century, the clan of the counts of Neuenburg was cut short. The heiress of their possessions married the Count of Freiburg from the Urach family (from whom the princes of Furstenberg descend). The last of the counts of Freiburg, Johann, died in 1457. Relatives of his wife from the Hebrew dynasty ( Louis the Good, Prince of Orange ) and the grandson of Anna Freiburg, Margrave Rudolf IV of Hachberg from among the younger Tseringen, joined the struggle for a non-lethal inheritance.
By the will of Johann of Freiburg and the will of the inhabitants of Neuchatel, the city went to Rudolph IV. His son Philip (1454-1503) held a high position in the Duchy of Burgundy . He chose Neuchâtel Castle as his residence and married in it with Maria of Savoy, granddaughter of Anna de Lusignan and niece of Louis XI . The only fruit of this marriage was Jeanne, the heiress of the county of Neuenburg (Neuchâtel) and the Margrave of Rötteln (Rothlen).
In 1504, her mother arranged a marriage of Jeanne with her own nephew, Louis de Longville, grandson of the famous Count Dunois . From this union came the French princes of blood - the dukes of Longwil . They inherited Neuchâtel and therefore claimed the dignity of “foreign princes” (or sovereigns) at the French court. Since 1532 they called themselves not counts , but sovereign princes of Neuchatel.
Principality
Longvili on the side of the French crown took part in the Italian wars . This cost them control of Neuchâtel, which the Swiss occupied from 1512 to 1529. At that time, the local population converted Guillaume Farelle into a Protestant confession. The widow of one of Longwill, the Duchess of Estuteville (aunt of Heinrich of Navarre ), in 1592 bought the village of Valangen, next to Neuchâtel, for 70,000 gold. Her descendants began to call themselves the princes of Neuchâtel and Valangen.
Under the terms of the Peace of Westphalia, the emperor of the Holy Roman Empire recognized that Neuchâtel is outside his jurisdiction, and Longvili is thus a sovereign ruler. A curiosity appeared on the map of Europe - a Protestant principality with a Catholic monarch. The last of Longville was extremely religious and even joined the Jesuit order , which was enthusiastically accepted by his Huguenot subjects. After his death in 1694, the sister, childless and widowed Duchess Maria Nemursky took over Neuchatel.
The Duchess chose as her heir cousin Louis-Henri de Bourbon-Soissons - illegitimate son of Count Soissons . Despite his considerable age, she married him to the daughter of Marshal of Luxembourg . Their daughter, who was supposed to inherit Neuchâtel, was married to the young Duke Lyuin .
In 1707, the death of Maria Nemursky led to a new dispute over the neuchatel legacy. At least 15 subjects of the French king, led by the powerful Prince Conti, declared their rights to the principality. Especially vigorously defended their rights, the Matignon and the Duchess of Ledigier, the closest heir to Longwill in the Gondi line.
The inhabitants of Neuchatel took advantage of the dynastic confusion to betray themselves into the hands of the Protestant sovereign, namely the first Prussian king, Frederick . After the death of William III of Orange, he (as his closest relative) claimed his inheritance, which also included the old claims of the Chalon-Oran branch of the Hebrew house to possess Neuchâtel (see the Principality of Orange ). Thus, Neuchâtel had a Protestant sovereign in the person of the King of Prussia .
Prussian period
Prussian rule in Neuchâtel continued until 1857. It was interrupted by the events of the Napoleonic Wars, when (in 1806) Napoleon forced the Prussian king to cede Neuchatel to his Marshal Bertier . For 6 years he called himself the Duke of Valangesne and the sovereign Prince Neuchatel. A separate battalion, formed from the inhabitants of Neuchâtel, took part in the campaign against Russia in 1812 . The ranks of the battalion wore the form of red and yellow flowers, for which they received the nickname "canaries" in the army.
The Congress of Vienna returned the principality to Hohenzollern , but Prussian diplomats insisted on its inclusion in Switzerland as a canton in order to gain leverage over the Alpine confederation. It was the only canton with a monarchical form of government. And only during the revolutionary unrest of 1848-1857, the inhabitants of Neuchatel finally managed to move from the monarchy to the republic .
Government system
The head of state is the prince, who was the king of Prussia. Legislature - Zemsky states of the Principality of Neuchâtel ( Landstände des Fürstenthums Neuenburg ) [1] (since 1831 - the Legislative Building ( gesetzgebenden Körpers )), were elected by the people. The executive body is the Council of State ( Staatsrath ), appointed by the prince.