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Ferrière-la-Grande

Avesnes-sur-Helpe Arrondissement geography stubsCommunes of Nord (French department)Pages with French IPA
Ferriere la grande
Ferriere la grande

Ferrière-la-Grande (French pronunciation: [fɛʁjɛʁ la ɡʁɑ̃d]) is a commune in the Nord department in northern France. The river Solre flows through the commune. In 1828 Pierre François Dumont applied for a concession to operate iron mines in the canton of Maubeuge, and for authorization to establish two iron furnaces at Ferrière-la-Grande powered by steam. Dumont founded the factories at Ferrière-la-grande in 1830, the first coke-fired blast furnaces in the north of France to produce and mould pig-iron from the local minerals. By decree of 23 April 1859 Dumont was granted a concession to build a railway line to link the factories Ferrière-la-Grande to the Saint-Quentin line at Erquelinnes. The line was built on land acquired by Dumont or expropriated on the grounds of public utility.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article Ferrière-la-Grande (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors, Images).

Ferrière-la-Grande
Résidence Nelson Mandela, Avesnes-sur-Helpe

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Geographical coordinates (GPS)

Latitude Longitude
N 50.2556 ° E 3.9933 °
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Résidence Nelson Mandela

Résidence Nelson Mandela
59680 Avesnes-sur-Helpe
Hauts-de-France, France
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Ferriere la grande
Ferriere la grande
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Siege of Maubeuge
Siege of Maubeuge

The siege of Maubeuge took place from 24 August – 7 September 1914, at the Entrenched Camp of Maubeuge (le camp retranché de Maubeuge) the start of the First World War on the Western Front. The railway from Thionville (Diedenhofen, 1871–1919) to Luxembourg City, Arlon and Namur into Belgium had been cut by the demolition of the rail bridge over the Meuse at Namur in Belgium. During the siege, the German armies in the north could use only the single-track line from Trier to Liège, Brussels, Valenciennes and Cambrai, which could accommodate a maximum of forty trains a day. At the end of August the garrison made several sorties but the third was a costly failure, after which the French prepared to receive the German attack. The German bombardment began at 1:00 p.m. on 29 August, assisted by agents in the Entrenched Position who passed reports on the fall of shot, greatly increasing the accuracy of the German guns. The forts and infantry shelters (ouvrages) were wrecked by the German and Austrian super-heavy howitzers; German medium artillery proved unexpectedly effective. Parts of Maubeuge were set on fire, causing an exodus of civilians and deserters to the village of Hautmont to the south-west. From 1 to 7 September, the French were forced out into the open and infantry attacks from the east gradually overran the French defences on both sides of the Sambre, forcing the survivors back level with Maubeuge. Brigadier-General Joseph Fournier, the governor of Maubeuge, surrendered to General Hans von Zwehl on 7 September, effective at noon the next day. The French suffered 5,000 casualties and up to 49,000 troops went into captivity, along with several hundred guns and machine-guns; German casualties were 1,100–5,000 men. The garrison had withstood bombardment by heavy and super-heavy artillery, air raids and infantry attacks for fifteen days, longer than any other besieged fortress in Belgium or France, leaving the German 2nd Army short of troops as it pursued the Franco-British Armies southwards towards the Marne.