Briey (; german: Brietz) is a former

commune A commune is an alternative term for an intentional community. Commune or comună or comune or other derivations may also refer to: Administrative-territorial entities * Commune (administrative division), a municipality or township ** Communes of ...

in the

Meurthe-et-Moselle Meurthe-et-Moselle () is a department in the Grand Est region of France, named after the rivers Meurthe and Moselle. It had a population of 733,760 in 2019.department Department may refer to: * Departmentalization, division of a larger organization into parts with specific responsibility Government and military *Department (administrative division), a geographical and administrative division within a country, ...

in northeastern

France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...

. On 1 January 2017, it was merged into the new commune

Val de Briey Val de Briey () is a commune in the department of Meurthe-et-Moselle, northeastern France. The municipality was established on 1 January 2017 by merger of the former communes of Briey (the seat), Mancieulles and Mance.Arrêté préfectoral
28 June 2016 It is located both above and in a steep section of the valley of the river Woigot, five kilometers to the north of the autoroute that connects

Strasbourg Strasbourg (, , ; german: Straßburg ; gsw, label=Bas Rhin Alsatian, Strossburi , gsw, label=Haut Rhin Alsatian, Strossburig ) is the prefecture and largest city of the Grand Est region of eastern France and the official seat of the Eu ...

with

Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...

, and 22 km northwest of

Metz Metz ( , , lat, Divodurum Mediomatricorum, then ) is a city in northeast France located at the confluence of the Moselle and the Seille rivers. Metz is the prefecture of the Moselle department and the seat of the parliament of the Grand E ...

. The population of the town itself has been around 5,000 since the 1960s.

Geography

Briey forms a part of an extensive grouping of once heavily industrialized towns that also includes

Jœuf Jœuf () is a commune in the Meurthe-et-Moselle department in north-eastern France. Population People It is the birthplace of: *Michel Platini, football player * Éric Occansey, basketball player See also *Communes of the Meurthe-et-Moselle d ...

and

Homécourt Homécourt () is a commune in the Meurthe-et-Moselle department in north-eastern France. Population See also * Communes of the Meurthe-et-Moselle department The following is a list of the 591 communes of the Meurthe-et-Moselle departmen ...

, along with

Hagondange Hagondange (; german: Hagendingen; Lorraine Franconian: ''Hoendéngen''/''Hoendéng'') is a commune in the Moselle department in Grand Est in north-eastern France.Amnéville and Rombas in the adjacent department. The town is arranged into four principal quarters, and traversed by the Woigot (itself a tributary of the

Orne Orne (; nrf, Ôrne or ) is a département in the northwest of France, named after the river Orne. It had a population of 279,942 in 2019.medieval In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the Post-classical, post-classical period of World history (field), global history. It began with t ...

citadel A citadel is the core fortified area of a town or city. It may be a castle, fortress, or fortified center. The term is a diminutive of "city", meaning "little city", because it is a smaller part of the city of which it is the defensive core. In ...

, stretches out towards the villages of Mance and Moutier, and overhangs Briey-Bas (Lower Briey), which occupies the banks of the Woigot. The steeply angled "grand-rue" (" Main Street") connects the two areas of the town, which elsewhere are separated by a cliff-face garden. South of the valley is Briey-les-Hauts, another "high town", facing the villages of Lantéfontaine and Valleroy. Beyond Briey-Haut, the fourth quarter is Briey-en-Forêt, a 1960s development dominated by Le Corbusier's "Cité Radieuse", a substantial apartment block, which displays an architectural assertiveness characteristic of its time: the Cité Radieuse has frequently struggled to attract residents, triggering aesthetic and political controversy since first it emerged from the surrounding

woodland A woodland () is, in the broad sense, land covered with trees, or in a narrow sense, synonymous with wood (or in the U.S., the ''plurale tantum'' woods), a low-density forest forming open habitats with plenty of sunlight and limited shade (see ...

History

The name "Briey" comes from the

Celtic Celtic, Celtics or Keltic may refer to: Language and ethnicity *pertaining to Celts, a collection of Indo-European peoples in Europe and Anatolia **Celts (modern) *Celtic languages **Proto-Celtic language * Celtic music *Celtic nations Sports Fo ...

word "Briga", which denotes a

fortress A fortification is a military construction or building designed for the defense of territories in warfare, and is also used to establish rule in a region during peacetime. The term is derived from Latin ''fortis'' ("strong") and ''facere'' ...

. There is a record of the

Counts of Bar The County of Bar, later Duchy of Bar, was a principality of the Holy Roman Empire encompassing the '' pays de Barrois'' and centred on the city of Bar-le-Duc. It was held by the House of Montbéliard from the 11th century. Part of the county, t ...

having held a

castle A castle is a type of fortified structure built during the Middle Ages predominantly by the nobility or royalty and by military orders. Scholars debate the scope of the word ''castle'', but usually consider it to be the private fortified r ...

here in 1072. Briey received

town privileges Town privileges or borough rights were important features of European towns during most of the second millennium. The city law customary in Central Europe probably dates back to Italian models, which in turn were oriented towards the tradition ...

in 1263. The turbulent years following the

Black Death The Black Death (also known as the Pestilence, the Great Mortality or the Plague) was a bubonic plague pandemic occurring in Western Eurasia and North Africa from 1346 to 1353. It is the most fatal pandemic recorded in human history, causi ...

and the resulting sudden shifts in economic power were marked by an upsurge of violence across the region, and in 1369 Briey was burned out by a force from nearby

. The increasing fragility of the

Duchy of Burgundy The Duchy of Burgundy (; la, Ducatus Burgundiae; french: Duché de Bourgogne, ) emerged in the 9th century as one of the successors of the ancient Kingdom of the Burgundians, which after its conquest in 532 had formed a constituent part of the ...

(with was finally absorbed into France following the 1477

Battle of Nancy The Battle of Nancy was the final and decisive battle of the Burgundian Wars, fought outside the walls of Nancy on 5 January 1477 by Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, against René II, Duke of Lorraine, and the Swiss Confederacy. René's ...

) created areas of political uncertainty on both sides of the

Rhine ), Surselva, Graubünden, Switzerland , source1_coordinates= , source1_elevation = , source2 = Rein Posteriur/Hinterrhein , source2_location = Paradies Glacier, Graubünden, Switzerland , source2_coordinates= , so ...

and ushered in several centuries of warfare which tended, at least until the

Battle of Sedan The Battle of Sedan was fought during the Franco-Prussian War from 1 to 2 September 1870. Resulting in the capture of Emperor Napoleon III and over a hundred thousand troops, it effectively decided the war in favour of Prussia and its allies, ...

(1871), to involve France on one side and various neighboring countries on the other, whose leaders did not wish France to expand. Briey found itself captured by

Charles the Bold Charles I (Charles Martin; german: Karl Martin; nl, Karel Maarten; 10 November 1433 – 5 January 1477), nicknamed the Bold (German: ''der Kühne''; Dutch: ''de Stoute''; french: le Téméraire), was Duke of Burgundy from 1467 to 1477. ...

in 1475, ravaged by

Protestants Protestantism is a branch of Christianity that follows the theological tenets of the Protestant Reformation, a movement that began seeking to reform the Catholic Church from within in the 16th century against what its followers perceived to b ...

1591 Events January–June * March 13 – Battle of Tondibi: In Mali, forces sent by the Saadi dynasty ruler of Morocco, Ahmad al-Mansur, and led by Judar Pasha, defeat the fractured Songhai Empire, despite being outnumbered by at l ...

, and captured by a

Swedish army The Swedish Army ( sv, svenska armén) is the land force of the Swedish Armed Forces. History Svea Life Guards dates back to the year 1521, when the men of Dalarna chose 16 young able men as body guards for the insurgent nobleman Gustav Vas ...

1635 Events January–March * January 23 – 1635 Capture of Tortuga: The Spanish Navy captures the Caribbean island of Tortuga off of the coast of Haiti after a three-day battle against the English and French Navy. * January 25 ...

. The relative strength of the natural defensive position of the old

preserved Briey from yet more frequent devastations, but it was nonetheless reportedly occupied briefly by a

Russian army The Russian Ground Forces (russian: Сухопутные войска �В Sukhoputnyye voyska V, also known as the Russian Army (, ), are the Army, land forces of the Russian Armed Forces. The primary responsibilities of the Russian Gro ...

during the final days of the

Napoleonic War The Napoleonic Wars (1803–1815) were a series of major global conflicts pitting the French Empire and its allies, led by Napoleon I, against a fluctuating array of European states formed into various coalitions. It produced a period of Fren ...

s in

1815 Events January * January 2 – Lord Byron marries Anna Isabella Milbanke in Seaham, county of Durham, England. * January 3 – Austria, Britain, and Bourbon-restored France form a secret defensive alliance treaty against Prussi ...

. In 1801 Briey became a sub-prefecture in the

Moselle The Moselle ( , ; german: Mosel ; lb, Musel ) is a river that rises in the Vosges mountains and flows through north-eastern France and Luxembourg to western Germany. It is a bank (geography), left bank tributary of the Rhine, which it jo ...

department Department may refer to: * Departmentalization, division of a larger organization into parts with specific responsibility Government and military *Department (administrative division), a geographical and administrative division within a country, ...

. However, after the Franco-Prussian War most of the Moselle department became part of the

German Empire The German Empire (),Herbert Tuttle wrote in September 1881 that the term "Reich" does not literally connote an empire as has been commonly assumed by English-speaking people. The term literally denotes an empire – particularly a hereditary ...

's territory of Alsace-Lorraine under the terms of the

Treaty of Frankfurt The Treaty of Frankfurt may refer to one of three treaties signed at Frankfurt, as follows: * Treaty of Frankfurt (1489) - Treaty between Maximilian of Austria and the envoys of King Charles VIII of France *Treaty of Frankfurt (1539) - Initiated ...

. The former French department ceased to exist and its residuum, including Briey, was integrated into a new department of

Meurthe-et-Moselle Meurthe-et-Moselle () is a department in the Grand Est region of France, named after the rivers Meurthe and Moselle. It had a population of 733,760 in 2019.Lorraine Lorraine , also , , ; Lorrain: ''Louréne''; Lorraine Franconian: ''Lottringe''; german: Lothringen ; lb, Loutrengen; nl, Lotharingen is a cultural and historical region in Northeastern France, now located in the administrative region of Gr ...

was recovered by France in

1919 Events January * January 1 ** The Czechoslovak Legions occupy much of the self-proclaimed "free city" of Pressburg (now Bratislava), enforcing its incorporation into the new republic of Czechoslovakia. ** HMY ''Iolaire'' sinks off the c ...

it was decided not to return Briey to its former department. Thus in terms of departmental boundaries, the town remains administratively separated from the eastern portion of the Briey Basin.

Population

Economy

At the beginning of the twentieth century, the Briey Basin was one of Europe’s leading

steel Steel is an alloy made up of iron with added carbon to improve its strength and fracture resistance compared to other forms of iron. Many other elements may be present or added. Stainless steels that are corrosion- and oxidation-resistant ty ...

producing regions: in the 1970s the Hagondange-Briey agglomeration still had a population of above 130,000, although by 1990 this figure had fallen to 112,000. Intensive

heavy industry Heavy industry is an industry that involves one or more characteristics such as large and heavy products; large and heavy equipment and facilities (such as heavy equipment, large machine tools, huge buildings and large-scale infrastructure); o ...

is now a receding memory, as the

service sector The tertiary sector of the economy, generally known as the service sector, is the third of the three economic sectors in the three-sector model (also known as the economic cycle). The others are the primary sector (raw materials) and the second ...

has provided the principal sources of employment growth in recent years, with increasing numbers of the working-age residents

commuting Commuting is periodically recurring travel between one's place of residence and place of work or study, where the traveler, referred to as a commuter, leaves the boundary of their home community. By extension, it can sometimes be any regul ...

to nearby Metz or Luxembourg.

References

External links

* {{authority control Duchy of Bar Former communes of Meurthe-et-Moselle Subprefectures in France