Burgundy is a historic region in Western Europe that has existed as a political entity in a number of forms with very different boundaries. Two of these entities - the first around the 6th century, the second around the 11th century - have been called the Kingdom of Burgundy; a third was very nearly created — as was more than one noble state of Burgundy — including a County and Duchy, almost all of them being influential and fairly wealthy. In the last stages of the later house of Burgundy, Burgundy had became one of the most influential and powerful states in Europe and a great prize as a Duchy, with possessions obtained by marriage and inheritance extending from and encompassing the Netherlands (then including modern Belgium), and extensive lands from Lorraine and encompassing the entire surrounds of the valley of the Rhone River, nearly to the Rhine abutting western Switzerland extending down the Rhone Valley to the Mediterranean coast.
The area correlates with today's border regions between France, Italy and Switzerland, in other words a country-sized region roughly centered on Lyons or Geneva. The later period Duchy of Burgundy, eventually failed of a male heir and became assimilated into Habsburg Spain by marriage of Duchess Theresa Marie to Charles I of Spain (Charles V, Holy Roman Empire) and passed with the Spanish crown to his son Phillip II of Spain.
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The first documented, though not historically verified King of the Burgundians was Gjúki (Gebicca), who lived in the late 4th century. In the course of the Crossing of the Rhine in 406, the Burgundians, an East Germanic tribe, settled as foederati in the Roman province of Germania Secunda along the Middle Rhine. Their situation worsened when about 430 the Burgundian King Gunther started several campaigns into neighbouring Gallia Belgica, which led to a crushing defeat by joined Roman and Hunnic troops under Flavius Aetius in 436 near Worms — the origin of the mediæval Nibelungenlied poem.
The remaining Burgundians from 443 onwards settled in the Sapaudia (i.e. Savoy) region, again as foederati in the Roman Maxima Sequanorum province. Their efforts to enlarge their kingdom down the Rhone river brought them into conflict with the Visigothic Kingdom in the south. After the fall of the Roman Empire in 476, King Gundobad allied with the mighty Frankish king Clovis I against the threat of Theoderic the Great. He was thereby able to secure the Burgundian acquisitions, leaving the Lex Burgundionum, an Early Germanic law code.
The decline of the kingdom began when they came under attack from their former Frankish allies. In 523 the sons of King Clovis campaigned the Burgundian lands, instigated by their mother Clotilde, whose father King Chilperic II had been killed by Gundobad. In 532 the Burgundians were decisively defeated by the Franks at Autun, whereafter King Godomar was killed and finally Burgundy was annexed by the Frankish Empire in 534. Between 561 and 584 as well as between 639 and 737 several rulers of the Frankish Merovingian dynasty bore the title of a "King of Burgundy". In the course of the 843 partition by the Treaty of Verdun, Burgundy became part of Middle Francia (Lotharii Regnum) ruled by Emperor Lothair I, except for its northwestern part, the Duchy of Burgundy (Bourgogne), which fell to West Francia.
The second Kingdom of Burgundy, also called the Kingdom of Arles (alternatively spelled as Kingdom of Arelat), existed from 933-1033 as an independent entity and from then (when it was absorbed into the Holy Roman Empire) to 1378 when it was succeeded by the Duchy of Burgundy. It had incrementally come into existence by the merger of several short lived states which came into existence in power vacuums along the Rhone River within the overall region of the First Kingdom of Burgundy, and then as leaders came, died, married, and otherwise combined in one way or another with each other, then merged into the new state. At the last stage of the matter, the two states known as Upper Burgundy and Lower Burgundy (Beginning as the Kingdom of Provence and Burgundy), which had been sundered by the division of Middle Francia upon Lothair I's death, were reunited becoming the Second Kingdom of Burgundy.
The Kingdom of Arles came to occupy most of Provence and Burgundy, the southern lands of the former kingdom of Middle Francia (or Lotharingia — which only lasted 14 years — but excluding Emperor Louis I's inheritance, the Kingdom of Italy). Middle Francia (or Lotharingia) was the central slice of the great Franks' Empire of Charlemagne, created by the three way division of the Frankish Empire after the death of Louis the Pious gave rise to the civil war (840-843) between his three sons by the 843 Treaty of Verdun.
In failing health, shortly before his death in 855 at Prüm Abbey, Emperor Lothair I bequeathed the southern part of his realm of Middle Francia, consisting of the larger southeastern part of the former Kingdom of Burgundy and the Provence, to his youngest son Charles of Provence (sometimes called "Charles of Burgundy" or "Charles of Burgundy and Provence"). However, Lothair's brothers Charles the Bald and Louis the German intervened and prevented the inheritance and succession of their late brother's dignities as a Monarchy, preventing any of their Frankish nephews from elevating themselves and eliminating the Kingdom of Lotharingia. The two instead partitioned the middle realm's lands between East and West Francia, although allowing their nephews to retain their respective duchies, accepting that part of the king's arrangements.
According to the 870 Treaty of Meerssen, the northern part of First Burgundy was allotted to Charles's uncle King Louis the German of East Francia, while the southern lands with Provence fell to King Charles the Bald of West Francia until 875.
Upon Charles's death in 877, followed by that of his incapable son Louis the Stammerer two years later, the Frankish noble Boso of Provence proclaimed himself a "King of Burgundy and Provence" at Vienne in 879.
This second Kingdom of Burgundy was absorbed into the Holy Roman Empire under Conrad II in 1033, as the Kingdom of Arles. It was one of the three kingdoms within the medieval Empire, the others being the Kingdom of Germany and the Kingdom of Italy. The Kingdom of Burgundy or Arles gradually lost its territorial integrity as sons inherited pieces over time, and other pieces were dispersed through diplomacy. Large parts were already held by the Counts of Savoy when Arelat ceased to exist in 1378, after the remnants were ceded to the French Dauphin Charles VI by Emperor Charles IV of Luxembourg (Dauphiné).
The House of Burgundy was a dynasty that ruled the Duchy of Burgundy from 1032 to 1361, and the Free County of Burgundy from 1330, when the wife of Eudes IV inherited it from her mother, until 1361. It did not rule the Kingdom of Burgundy.
From 1361 to 1477 both the Duchy of Burgundy and the Free County of Burgundy were ruled by a cadet branch of the House of Valois (see Dukes of Burgundy). By the mid-15th century this dynasty also ruled most of the provinces in the Low Countries, making it one of the most powerful ruling houses in Western Europe.
The territories of the House of Valois-Burgundy in the Low Countries were never part of ancient Burgundy proper, but the combined territories of the ruling house are sometimes referred to as the Burgundian Lands or the Burgundian Netherlands. However all of these lands were notionally held by the House of Valois-Burgundy as feudal vassals of either the King of France or the Holy Roman Emperor.
Duke Charles the Bold conceived the project of combining his territories into a third kingdom of Burgundy with himself as its fully independent monarch, and even persuaded the Emperor Frederick to assent to crown him king at Trier. The ceremony, however, did not take place owing to the Emperor's precipitate flight by night (September 1473), occasioned by his displeasure at the Duke's attitude, and ultimately ended the duchy as an independent realm with the defeat and mutilation of Charles, also called 'the brash', at the Battle of Nancy.