Bouillon

Bouillon lies in the Ardennes beneath a castle that was the principal seat of the Ardennes-Bouillon dynasty. Its best-known lord, Godfrey of Bouillon, sold the estate to the bishop of Liège to finance his departure on the First Crusade. The castle remained a Liège possession and was governed by castellans; from 1415 the office became hereditary in the La Marck family.

Disputes over the castle continued between Liège and La Marck. Charles V's forces restored it to the bishopric in 1521, while France captured it again in 1552. In the seventeenth century French intervention placed Bouillon in the hands of the La Tour d'Auvergne family, whose duchy exercised sovereign rights under French protection. Revolutionary France annexed it in 1795; after Napoleon's defeat it passed to the Netherlands and in 1830 to Belgium.