Les Buquoy, d'Artois en Bohême

Abstract

The Buquoy, from Artois to Bohemia The French medieval noble family of the Longueval, from Artois and Picardy, turned into a nursery of loyal servants of the House of Austria when the comté d'Artois was conceded to the Burgundian dukes and later became a part of the Austrian inheritance. When the Low Countries revolt broke out, they stood firm in their loyalty to the dynasty and the Catholicism. Maximilien de Longueval was made comte de Buquoy in 1580. Thanks to the Archdukes Court of Brussels at the beginning of the seventeenth century, his son Charles Bonaventure became general of the Imperial Army as soon as 1614. Six years later he won the decisive battle of the White Mountain near Prague. A few months before, Ferdinand II. had given him a lot of confiscated estates in South Bohemia. After his unexpected death in 1621, these castles, towns, fields and woods were far from secure for his widow, the Italian-born Maria Maddalena who had to leave Brussels to save her unique son's inheritance. For a few generations, the family's fortune unfolded both in the Spanish Low Countries and in the Austrian Monarchy, the Buquoy being servants of the whole House of Austria. But from the beginning of the eighteenth century to 1945, Bohemia remained the single landed base for the descendants of the victorious general of the White Mountain. Then, it's worth emphasizing who where the Buquoy, where they lived and what they have done.