Coal forest

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At the time of the Great Migration , the coal forest separated the settlement areas of the Rhine Franks and the Sal Franks
The Hallerbos in Belgium, southwest of Brussels, a remnant of the old coal forest

The coal forest ( Latin Silva carbonaria , Dutch Kolenwoud , French Forêt Charbonnière ) was a forest zone in what is now Belgium and northern France , which stretched from the Sambre near Charleroi in the east to the Scheldt between Tournai in the north and Cambrai in the south; according to another opinion it even reached as far as Arras in the west and Liège in the east. The forest thus had an extension of at least 80 kilometers in north-south and at least 40 kilometers in west-east. It was first mentioned by the late antique historian Sulpicius Alexander .

Because of its size, the coal forest represented a natural tribal, language and national border in ancient times and in the Middle Ages; in the Thidrek saga it is referred to as a retreat for robbers.

In the time of the Roman Empire, the coal forest was the border between the provinces of Belgica II and Germania II. At the beginning of the 5th century, the Franks penetrated from Toxandria to the north as far as the coal forest; it now formed the southern border of the Frankish Empire . During this time it became a language border: in the south the forerunners of today's French were spoken , in the north that of today's Dutch . In Merovingian times, the coal forest was considered the border between the Sal Franconia in the west and the Rhine Franconia in the east, and later as part of the border between Neustria and Australia .

In 640 founded Itta, wife of Pippin the Elder , the carbon forest in what is now the city of Nivelles the Monastery Nivelles . The coal forest formed the border between the dioceses of Maastricht and Cambrai . The land east of the coal forest ( Lommegau , Hespengau and southern Toxandria ) was the home of the Carolingians .

The Treaty of Ribemont (880) established the coal forest as part of the border between the West Franconian and East Franconian empires. This line still exists today, essentially as the border between France and Belgium .

Over the centuries, the coal forest has been further and further decimated.

Remnants of it are: