History of Heusden

Heusden is renowned as a seventeenth-century fortified town. In many respects, Heusden still resembles (or more accurately resembles) the town as the Amsterdam mapmaker Joan Blaeu depicted it on his famous map of 1649. But the town is much older: if you look closely, you will see within the early modern ramparts the complete and virtually unchanged street pattern of medieval Heusden. That town arose around 1200 in the shadow of the castle that the lord of Heusden had built on a strategic spot, just north of the Old Meuse and just south of the then still strongly meandering Meuse. This castle was the successor to an earlier fortification at the site of today's Oudheusden, which therefore bears that name for a reason.

The lord of Heusden was for a long time a small but independent lord, whose territory was sandwiched between the county of Holland, the duchy of Brabant and the county (later duchy) of Gelre. These powerful neighbors were eager to add town and country of Heusden to their own territories, not only because of its strategic location at a medieval tri-border point, but certainly also because of the toll that had to be paid at Heusden by passing boatmen. Initially the lord of Heusden managed to play the surrounding princes off against each other skilfully, but in the first half of the fourteenth century he fell more and more under the influence of the duke of Brabant. This suddenly changed in 1357, when the Dutch count succeeded in taking control of Heusden and the surrounding area. For centuries, Heusden remained a Dutch town until this region became part of the province of North Brabant in 1815.