Meuse  

From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia

(Redirected from Meuse river)
Jump to: navigation, search

"The country called Belgium at the present day, which was originally peopled with a race of Celtic origin, and was subsequently overrun by Teutonic invaders, was conquered by Caesar, and remained under Roman supremacy until the beginning of the 5th century, when the Salic Franks established themselves in the district between the Schelde, the Meuse, and the Lower Rhine. In the 9th century the country formed part of the Empire of Charlemagne. By the treaty of Verdun (843) the western provinces, Flanders and Artois, became part of France, while the eastern, including Brabant, fell to the share of Germany."--Belgium and Holland: Handbook for Travellers (1891) by Baedeker


"The valley of the Maes — home of Hubert and John Van Eyck — is noted as classic ground by the earliest historians of Flemish art; and even the grave Van Mander likens it to the vales of the Arno, the Tiber, and the Po. Maeseyck, where the Van Eycks were born, lies North of Maestricht at the edge of the barren Kempenland, touching the waste on one side, looking on the other into the gardens and orchards of the country of Liege. To the 'Eastward, by Dinant and Namur, we see the beautiful landscapes of town-crested rock and flowing river which John Van Eyck so lovingly repeated in the backgrounds of his pictures. Due North, towards Venloo and the sluggard Rhine, are the sweeps of flat country endeared to us in their melancholy by the canvases of the later Dutch."--Early Flemish Painters (1856) by Joseph A. Crowe and Giovanni Battista Cavalcaselle

Related e

Wikipedia
Wiktionary
Shop


Featured:

The Meuse is a major European river, rising in France and flowing through Belgium and the Netherlands before draining into the North Sea. It has a total length of 925 km.

History

From 1301 the upper Meuse roughly marked the western border of the Holy Roman Empire with the Kingdom of France, after Count Henry III of Bar had to receive the western part of the County of Bar (Barrois mouvant) as a French fief from the hands of King Philip IV. The border remained stable until the annexation of the Three Bishoprics Metz, Toul and Verdun by King Henry II in 1552 and the occupation of the Duchy of Lorraine by the forces of King Louis XIII in 1633. Its lower Belgian (Walloon) portion, part of the sillon industriel, was the first fully industrialized area in continental Europe.

The Afgedamde Maas was created in the late Middle Ages, when a major flood made a connection between the Maas and the Merwede at the town of Woudrichem. From that moment on, the current Afgedamde Maas was the main branch of the lower Meuse. The former main branch eventually silted up and is today called the Oude Maasje. In the late 19th century and early 20th century the connection between the Maas and Rhine was closed off and the Maas was given a new, artificial mouth – the Bergse Maas. The resulting separation of the rivers Rhine and Maas reduced the risk of flooding and is considered to be the greatest achievement in Dutch hydraulic engineering before the completion of the Zuiderzee Works and Delta Works. The former main branch was, after the dam at its southern inlet was completed in 1904, renamed Afgedamde Maas and no longer receives water from the Maas.

The Meuse and its crossings were a key objective of the Battle of France in May 1940 (Battle of Sedan (12–15 May 1940)) and of the last but one major German WWII counter-offensive on the Western Front, the Battle of the Bulge (Battle of the Ardennes) in December 1944 and January 1945.

The Meuse is represented in the documentary The River People released in 2012 by Xavier Istasse.

In July 2021, the Meuse basin was one of the many regions in Europe to experience catastrophic flooding during the 2021 European floods.





Unless indicated otherwise, the text in this article is either based on Wikipedia article "Meuse" or another language Wikipedia page thereof used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License; or on research by Jahsonic and friends. See Art and Popular Culture's copyright notice.

Personal tools