Lys department

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Map of the departments in today's Benelux region

The Département de la Lys ( German  Departement der Lys also Leie ; Dutch Departement van de Leie ) was a department belonging to the French state from 1795 to 1814 on the territory of what is now the Belgian province of West Flanders . It was named after the Leie River , a tributary of the Scheldt .

history

Until the end of the 18th century, the area of ​​the department belonged to the County of Flanders , which was part of the Austrian Netherlands . In 1790 this resulted in the United Belgian States , which were united with the French Republic on the basis of a resolution passed by the French National Convention on October 1, 1795 .

As early as 1795, the administration and the judiciary were adapted to the still new French system, a total of nine departments emerged on the territory of the formerly Austrian Netherlands and other territories in the region , which were administratively divided into arrondissements , cantons and communes. The cantons were also district courts of justice . In 1796 the Batavian Republic ceded the then "State of Flanders" (now Zeeuws Vlaanderen ) to France and incorporated it into the Département de la Lys.

After the victory over Napoleon in the Battle of Leipzig (1813) and the agreements reached at the Congress of Vienna (1815), the department first became part of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands as the province of West Flanders and has been part of Belgium since 1839 . "State Flanders" remained in the Netherlands and became part of the province of Zeeland .

structure

The main town ( chief lieu ) of the department or seat of the prefecture was the city of Bruges . It was divided into four arrondissements and 36 cantons , as well as 250 municipalities:

Arrondissement Main towns in the cantons, seat of the courts of justice
Bruges  ( Bruges ) Ardooie , Bruges (5 cantons), Gistel , Oostende , Ruiselede , Tielt , Torhout (2 cantons)
Kortrijk  ( Courtrai ) Avelgem , Harelbeke , Ingelmunster , Kortrijk (4 cantons), Menen , Meulebeke , Moorsele , Oostrozebeke , Roeselare
Veurne  ( Furnes ) Diksmuide , Haringe (now part of Poperinge ), Nieuwpoort , Veurne
Ypres  ( Ypres ) Elverdinge , Hooglede , Mesen ( Messines ), Passendale , Poperinge , Wervik , Ypres (2 cantons)

The department had an area of ​​3,669 square kilometers and in 1812 a total of 491,143 inhabitants.

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Carl von Rotteck : General Political Annals , Volume 7, Cotta'sche Buchhandlung, 1831, pp. 105 ff ( Google Books )
  2. ↑ a b c Almanach Impérial 1812 , Paris, p. 427 ( Bibliothèque nationale de France )
  3. ^ Albrecht Friedrich Ludolph Lasius : The French Kayser State under the government of the Kayser Napoleon the Great in 1812 . A Geographical-Historical Manual, First Department, Osnabrück: Johann Gottfried Kißling, 1813, p. 296 ( Google Books )
  4. ^ Heinrich Karl Wilhelm Berghaus : Germany for a Hundred Years , Second Section, Third Volume, Leipzig: Voigt & Günther, 1862, p. 78 ( Google Books )