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The southern part of WUrttemberg was the core of the medieval duchy of Swabia; WUrttemberg N of Stuttgart was part of Franconia. The various territories were subdivided among the branches of the family, but in 1482 Count Eberhard V declared the indivisibility of the holdings. WUrttemberg was raised to ducal rank in 1495. In 1519, however, the Swabian League of cities, fearing the rising power of WUrttemberg, expelled Duke Ulrich I from his domains, and in 1520 it sold the duchy to the newly elected emperor Charles V.
Ulrich, a turbulent individual, never ceased in his attempts to recover his lands. A Protestant convert, Ulrich secured (1534) the help of Philip of Hesse, a leading defender of the Reformation, and, through Philip, of Francis I of France; at the same time the peasants of WUrttemberg were rising against the unpopular government of King (later Emperor) Ferdinand I. At the battle of Lauffen (1534), Ulrich and Philip routed Ferdinand's troops. Ferdinand was obliged to restore WUrttemberg to Ulrich, although nominally Ulrich was to hold the duchy as a fief from Austria. Immediacy under the empire was restored only in 1599.
With Ulrich's return, Lutheranism was introduced. However, large parts of S WUrttemberg remained in the hands of the house of Hapsburg and of a number of powerful abbeys; these territories were incorporated into WUrttemberg only later. As a result, a large minority of the present population is Roman Catholic.
WUrttemberg was repeatedly the scene of fighting in the wars of the 17th and 18th cent. Duke Frederick II (1754–1816), through his alliance with Napoleon I, obtained the rank of elector in 1803 and became king of WUrttemberg as Frederick I in 1806, after joining the Confederation of the Rhine. Between 1802 and 1810 the territories of WUrttemberg were more than doubled and reached their final frontiers after an alliance with France under Napoleon. Frederick retained both his royal title and his lands at the Congress of Vienna, after having passed (1813) from the French to the Allied camp.
William I, his successor, granted a liberal constitution in 1819. During the reign (1864–91) of King Charles, WUrttemberg sided against Prussia in the Austro-Prussian War of 1866, joined Prussia's side in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71, and became (1871) a member of the German Empire. Charles's successor, William II, abdicated in 1918, and WUrttemberg joined (1919) the Weimar Republic. After World War II, N WUrttemberg was a part of the temporary state of WUrttemberg-Baden, and S WUrttemberg was a part of the temporary state of WUrttemberg-Hohenzollern until the two were joined as Baden-WUrttemberg in 1952.
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