The _Burgundian_ circle was the last and the strangest use of the Burgundian name. ♦Dominion of the Valois Dukes within the Empire.♦ It consisted of those parts of the dominions of the Dukes of Burgundy of the House of Valois which remained to their descendants of the House of Austria at the time of the division into circles. These did not all lie strictly within the boundaries of the German kingdom. ♦The Imperial Netherlands.♦ Within that kingdom indeed lay the Northern Netherlands, the Frisian lands of _Holland_, _Zealand_, and _West-Friesland_, as also _Brabant_ and other Lotharingian lands. ♦County of Burgundy.♦ But the circle also took in the _County of Burgundy or Franche Comté_, part of the old kingdom of Burgundy, and lastly _Flanders_ and _Artois_, lands beyond the bounds of the Empire. ♦Flanders and Artois released from homage to France, 1526.♦ These were fiefs of France which were released from their homage to that crown by the treaty between Charles the Fifth and Francis the First of France. The Burgundian circle thus took in all the Imperial fiefs of the Valois dukes, together with a small part of their French fiefs. As all, or nearly all, of these lands altogether fell away from the German kingdom, and as those parts of them which now form the two kingdoms of the Low Countries have a certain historical being of their own, it will be well to keep their more detailed mention also for a special section. § 2. _The Confederation and Empire of Germany._ ♦Germany changed from a kingdom to a confederation.♦