| The city's official name is a contraction of the Dutch des Hertogen bosch - "the Duke's forest". The duke in question was Henry I, Duke of Brabant, whose house then for at least four centuries had had a large estate at nearby Orthen. He founded a new town located on some afforested dunes in the middle of a marsh. At age 26, he granted 's-Hertogenbosch city rights and the corresponding trade privileges in 1185. This is however the traditional date given by later chroniclers; the first mention in contemporaneous sources is in 1196. The original charter has been lost. His reason for doing so was to protect his own interest against Gelre and Holland: the city from the very beginning was conceived as fortress town. It was destroyed in 1203 by a joint expedition of Gelre and Holland but soon rebuilt. Of the original stone city walls still some remnants can be seen. Around 1475 a much larger wall was erected to protect the greatly expanded settled area. Artificial waterways were dug to serve as a city moat; through them the rivers Dommel and Aa were led. Townhall.Until 1520, the city flourished: it then was the second largest population centre at the territory of the present Netherlands, after Utrecht. It was also the birthplace and home of one of the greatest painters of the northern renaissance, Hieronymus Bosch (c. 1450 â?? 1516). The wars of the reformation would soon change the course of the city. It became an independent bishopric. During the Eighty Years' War the city took the side of the Habsburg authorities. A calvinist coup was thwarted. It was besieged several times by Prince Maurice of Orange, stadtholder of Holland, who wanted to put 's-Hertogenbosch under the rule of the rebel United Provinces. Afterwards the fortifications were greatly expanded. As the surrounding marshes made a siege of the conventional type impossible, the fortress was deemed impregnable and nicknamed the Marsh Dragon. The town was nevertheless finally conquered by Frederik Hendrik of Orange in 1629 in a typically Dutch way: he diverted the rivers Dommel and Aa, created a polder by constructing a forty kilometre dyke and then pumped out the water by mills. After a siege of three months the city had to surrender, an enormous blow to Habsburg strategy during the Thirty Years' War. This cut the town off from the rest of the duchy. The area was treated by the Republic as an occupation zone without political liberties. The fortifications were again expanded. In 1672, the Dutch rampjaar, the city held against the army of Louis XIV. In 1794, French revolutionary troops under command of Charles Pichegru took the city with hardly a fight Name |  |