At the end of the thirteenth century, this county was joined by marriage with that of Holland. Holland and Hainault were thus detached possessions of a common prince, with Brabant lying between them. ♦Mark of Namur.♦ South of Brabant lay the small mark or county of _Namur_, which, without being united to Flanders, was held by a branch of the princes of that house. ♦Common character of these states.♦ All these states, though their princes held of two separate over-lords, had much in common, and were well fitted to be worked together into a single political system. They had much in common in the physical character of the country, and in the unusual number of great and flourishing cities which these countries contained. ♦Importance of the cities.♦ None of these cities indeed actually reached the position of free cities of the Empire; but their wealth, and the degree of practical independence which they possessed, forms a main feature in the history of the Low Countries. In point of language, the northern part of these states spoke various dialects of Low-Dutch, from Flemish to Frisian; in the southern lands of Hainault, Artois, and Namur, the language, though not French, was not Teutonic, but an independent Romance speech, the Walloon. ♦South-western group of states.♦ To the west of these states lay another group of small principalities connected with the former greater group in many ways, but not so closely as those which we have just gone through. ♦Bishopric of Lüttich. | Duchies of Luxemburg and Limburg.♦ The great ecclesiastical principality of _Lüttich_ or _Liège_, lying in two detached parts, divided the lands of which we have been speaking from the counties, afterwards duchies, of _Lüzelburg_ or _Luxemburg_ and of _Limburg_. Of these the more distant Limburg passed in the fourteenth century to the Dukes of Brabant. ♦Luxemburg a Duchy. 1353.♦ Luxemburg is famous as having given a series of princes to the kingdom of Bohemia and to the Empire, and in their hands it rose to the rank of a duchy. ♦Geldern.♦ Lastly, to the north of Lüttich, forming a connecting link between this group of states and the more purely Frisian powers, lay the duchy of _Geldern_, of whose quarters the most northern portion stretched to the Zuyder Zee. These eastern states, though not so closely connected with one another as those to the west, were easily led into the same political system. ♦Middle position of all these states.♦ Without drawing any hard and fast line, we may say that all the states of this region formed, if not yet a middle state, yet a middle system, apart alike from France and the Empire, though in various ways connected with both. Mainly Imperial, mainly Teutonic, they were not wholly so. ♦French influence.♦ Besides the homage lawfully due to France from Flanders and Artois, French influence in various ways, in politics, in manners, and in language, had made great inroads in the southern Netherlands.