Place:Namur, Belgium

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Namur is a province of Wallonia, one of the three regions of Belgium. It borders (clockwise from the West) on the Walloon provinces of Hainaut, Walloon Brabant, Liège and Luxembourg in Belgium, and the French departments of Nord and Ardennes. Its capital and largest city is the city of Namur. As of January 2019, the province of Namur has population of 494,325.

History

Namur is an artificially created province, honed largely through the circumstances of the regional military and political events. The "Comté de Namur" was from its origine to the French Revolution squeezed between the Comté of Hainaut and the Prinicipality of Liège. While Namur's natural resources were limited, its strategic position was always the source of greedy desires, which translated into a long history of repeated invasions.

A skeleton discovered in the Spy cavern (Jemeppe-sur-Sambre) attests to the occupation of the valley by Neanderthal people. Later the Namur valleys were settled by Gauls (Condruzes and Aduatics) who were vanquished by the Roman legions of Julius Caesar. The region thus underwent a period of Gallo-Roman civilization.

The " Pax romana " is interrupted in the 2nd and 4th centuries by the Frank invasions. The Franks soon convert to christianism, starting with Clovis, and participe in the Carolingian Renaissance. The Namur County comes into being in the 10th century and undergoes several reorganizations, principally in favor of the Liege Principality (Couvin, Ciney, Dinant, Fosses, etc.). It reaches its largest size during the reign of Henri the Blind (second half of the 12th century).

In the 13th century Baudoin de Courtenay, Count of Namur is the last Latin emperor of Constantinople. From the end of the 13th century to the beginning of the 15th, the Comté benefits from a dynastic alliance with Flanders and cities and industry flourish thanks to the rich iron and plastic earth deposits in the Sambre and Meuse region.

In 1429 the Comté is sold to the House of Burgundy and becomes part of the Burgundian Netherlands, belonging to Spain, then Austria. During that time, the fortified Namur citadel plays a European role, in particular during the wars carried out by Louis XIV.

During the French Revolution, the old Comté de Namur, except for a few towns but including several enclaves from the Liege region, becomes part the department of Sambre et Meuse. Thus the current Namur province, from a territorial point of view, is only a creation of the French regime, established when Belgium was annexed by the French Republic in 1795. The departement consisted until 1814 of the old Comté de Namur, minus Charleroi, Fosses and Fleurus and enlarged in the East by the cantons of Marche-en-Famenne, Beauraing, Gedinne, Saint-Hubert and Wellin. In 1815, after the final defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo, Namur becomes a Dutch province. The cantons of Marche-en-Famenne and Saint-Hubert become part of the Province of Luxembourg but the cantons of Gedinne, Couvin, Philippeville and Mariembourg are removed from the French departement of Ardennes and reattached to the Namur province.

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