Namur

Namur lies at the confluence of the Sambre and the Meuse, where a Roman settlement grew at the spot called the Grognon and a citadel on the cliff above commanded both rivers. The counts of Namur were tied in turn to the houses of Flanders and Hainaut, Courtenay, Luxembourg and Dampierre. In 1256 Henry V of Luxembourg seized the county in the absence of Baldwin II of Courtenay, then busy in Constantinople, and Guy of Dampierre, count of Flanders, won it back by marrying Henry's daughter. His grandsons John II and Philip III and then William the Rich followed each other quickly, until John III, the last count, sold the county in 1421 to Philip the Good of Burgundy. The city's arms became a crowned lion, to distinguish the Namur lion from the Flemish, Brabantine and Hainaut ones.

Namur became part of the Burgundian Netherlands, and after the death of Charles the Bold in 1477 it came under the Habsburgs, lying on a shifting frontier between France and Austria. Around 1420 the harvests failed badly in the Namur region. From the sixteenth century the importance of its military role grew, thanks to its position at the confluence of two waterways, and a fortress system developed to replace the older walls.

Charles V's walls were thickened by the Dutch, and later Menno van Coehoorn and Vauban improved the defences. Louis XIV took Namur in 1692, and the Dutch retook it in 1695; Coehoorn strengthened the forts again afterwards. The diocese of Namur was created in 1559. The Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle of 1748 made the Austrian Netherlands a buffer state, and Joseph II ordered the fortress dismantled and the forts sold, so that the French revolutionary armies of 1792 found a weaker city than their predecessors.