Everything about Briey totally explained
Briey is a
commune of the
Meurthe-et-Moselle Departement, in
France, located above and in a steep section of the valley of the little, some thirty kilometers to the west of the
autoroute that connects
Metz with
Luxembourg. The town itself had a gently declining population through much of the twentieth century, but the level has recently recovered to around 5,000.
Geography
Briey forms a part of an extensive grouping of once heavily industrialised towns that also includes
Jœuf and
Homécourt, along with
Hagondange,
Amnéville and
Rombas in
the adjacent department.
The town is arranged into four principal quarters, and traversed by the (itself a tributary of the
Orne). North of the river, Briey-Haut (Upper Briey), the area centred on the former
medieval citadel, 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 out of the surrounding
woodland.
Economy
At the beginning of the twentieth century the Briey Basin was one of Europe’s leading
steel 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 industrialisation is now a receding memory, and the
service sector has provided the principal sources of
employment growth in recent years, with increasing numbers of the working-age residents
commuting to nearby
Metz or
Luxembourg.
History
The origin of the name "Briey" comes from the
Celtic word "Briga" which denotes a
fortress. There is a record of the
Counts of Bar having held a
castle here in 1072. Briey received
Town Privileges in 1263. The turbulent years following the traumas of
1348/1349 and 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
Metz.
The increasing fragility of
the old middle kingdom culminating with its disappearance in
1477 created areas of political uncertainty on both sides of the
Rhine and ushered in several centuries of
warfare which tended, at least till
1871, to involve on the one side
France and on the other side various neighbouring countries whose leaders didn't wish
France to become larger. Briey found itself captured by
Charles the Bold in
1475, ravaged by
protestants in
1591, and captured by a
Swedish army in
1635. No doubt the relative strength of the natural defensive position of the old
citadel preserved Briey from yet more frequent devastations, but it was nonetheless reportedly occupied briefly by a
Russian army during the final days of the
Napoleonic War in
1815.
In 1801 Briey became a
sub-prefecture in the
Moselle Department. However, after
1871 most of the
Moselle Department was subsumed within the
German Empire under the terms of the
Treaty of Frankfurt. The
former French department ceased to exist and its residuum, including Briey, was integrated into a new
Department of
Meurthe-et-Moselle. When
Lorraine was recovered by
France in
1919 it was decided not to return Briey to its
former Department which is why, in terms of departmental boundaries, the town remains administratively separated from the eastern portion of the Briey Basin.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Briey'.
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