Kleve

Cleves, or Kleve, rises above the lower Rhine beneath the Schwanenburg, the castle of its counts and dukes. The town received rights in 1242 and developed from the castle settlement and neighbouring quarters. Cleves was united with Mark in 1368, raised to a duchy in 1417 and joined with Jülich and Berg in 1521. Anne of Cleves, later a wife of Henry VIII of England, was born here.

The ducal line died out in 1609, precipitating a struggle over its inheritance. Cleves ultimately passed to Brandenburg. During the Thirty Years' War the Dutch controlled the town, and their administrator John Maurice of Nassau-Siegen later remodelled the castle and laid out celebrated gardens. French Huguenots established a community here in 1685. French revolutionary troops captured Cleves in 1794; Prussia regained it in 1815.