Rhône-et-Loire was the short-lived department of

France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans. Its metropolitan area ...

whose prefecture (capital) was

Lyon Lyon,, ; Occitan language, Occitan: ''Lion'', hist. ''Lionés'' also spelled in English as Lyons, is the List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, third-largest city and Urban area (France), second-largest metropolitan area of F ...

. Its name takes into the two rivers which is flowing in the department:

Rhône The Rhône ( , ; wae, Rotten ; frp, Rôno ; oc, Ròse ) is a major river in France and Switzerland, rising in the Alps and flowing west and south through Lake Geneva and southeastern France before discharging into the Mediterranean Sea. At Ar ...

and

Loire The Loire (, also ; ; oc, Léger, ; la, Liger) is the longest river in France and the 171st longest in the world. With a length of , it drains , more than a fifth of France's land, while its average discharge is only half that of the Rhône ...

. Created on 4 March 1790, like the other French departments, Rhône-et-Loire was disbanded on 12 August 1793 when it was split into two departments:

(prefecture: Lyon) and

(prefecture:

Feurs Feurs (; frp, Fuèrs) is a commune in the department of Loire, Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, France. History Antiquity The city was founded by the Romans. The name Feurs is a contraction of ''Segusiavorum Forum''. With a forum the Gallo-Roman era, c ...

, then Montbrison, and then Saint-Étienne, the current capital). The division of Rhône-et-Loire was a response to counterrevolutionary activities in

which, by population, was the country's second largest city. By splitting Rhône-et-Loire, which was the natural economic and, potentially, military hinterland of Lyon, the

government A government is the system or group of people governing an organized community, generally a state. In the case of its broad associative definition, government normally consists of legislature, executive, and judiciary. Government is ...

sought to protect the

French Revolution The French Revolution ( ) was a period of radical political and societal change in France that began with the Estates General of 1789 and ended with the formation of the French Consulate in coup of 18 Brumaire, November 1799. Many of its ...

from the potential power and influence of the counterrevolutionary revolt in the Lyon region. In the 19th and 20th centuries, the Rhône department was enlarged several times by incorporating into it areas from neighboring departments, so that today the two departments of Rhône and Loire combined are larger than the former Rhône-et-Loire department. If Rhône-et-Loire still existed, its population at the 1999 French census would have been 1,799,812 inhabitants, whereas in 1999 the Rhône department had 1,578,869 inhabitants, and the Loire department had 728,524 inhabitants.

See also