Last modified: 2008-06-21 by ivan sache
Keywords: charleroi | rooster (red) | coq hardi | stars: 12 (yellow) | fleur-de-lis (red) |
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![[Flag of Charleroi]](../images/b/be-whtcr.gif)
Municipal flag of Charleroi - Image by Arnaud Leroy, 26 May 2005
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The municipality and town (Ville) of Charleroi (201,550 inhabitants on 1 January 2007, Carolorégiens, nicknamed Carolos; 20,211 ha) is the fourth biggest town in Belgium, after Brussels, Antwerp and Ghent. Located on the river Sambre in north-eastern Hainaut, Charleroi is the biggest town in Wallonia, before Liège. The municipality of Charleroi is made since 1976 of the former municipalities of Charleroi, Couillet, Dampremy, Gilly, Gosselies, Goutroux, Jumet, Lodelinsart, Marchienne-au-Pont, Marcinelle, Monceau-sur-Sambre, Montignies-sur-Sambre, Mont-sur-Marchienne, Ransart and Roux.
Charleroi is one of the most recent town in Belgium. In 1666, the
Spaniards built a fortress on a promontory watching the valley of
Sambre; the fortress was named Charleroy after Infant-King Charles II
(1661-1700, King in 1665), the last of the Spanish Hapsburgs. The
fortress was seized in 1667 by the French, and Vauban increased and
improved the fortifications. In order to boost the new town, Louis XIV
granted privileges to its inhabitants. In 1678, the treaty of Nijmegen
retroceded Charleroi to Spain.
Due to its strategical location, Charleroi was disputed among the great
powers. The French army seized the town in 1693 and 1746. In 1794,
Charleroi was seized on the eve of the battle of Fleurus, after which
France invaded the Low Countries and stayed there for the next 20
years. The French revolutionaries renamed the town Libre-sur-Sambre
(Free [town] on Sambre). Emperor Napoléon spent a night (he hardly
slept) in Charleroi two days before the battle of Waterloo and on 16
June 1815, on the eve of his last victory in Ligny.
The Dutch built a new fortress, which was assaulted by the Belgian
patriots in 1830. The last big battle of Charleroi took place in August
1914, in the beginning of the First World War. One of the Battles of
the Frontiers, the battle of Charleroi was a major German success in
the early months of the war. The battle comprised a major action fought
between the French Fifth Army, commanded by General Lanrezac, advancing
north to the Sambre, and the German Second and Third Armies, commanded
by Von Bülow, moving southwest through Belgium.
Charleroi is the cradle of the industrial revolution in Belgium. The
Celts already extracted iron in the Entre-Sambre-et-Meuse region, more
than 2,000 years ago; coal extraction started in the XIIIth century but the
yields were very low until the invention of the "fire pumps" in the
XVIIIth century. At the same time, German glass makers introduced in
Belgium the cylindric glass-blowing process, which allowed the
production of window glass. in the beginning of the XIXth century, the
traditional metallurgical industry was drastically changed by the new
techniques imported from England. Coke was used as fuel instead of
charcoal and stem engines replaced hydraulic energy supplied by water
mills. Industry moved from the forests of Ardenne to the coal basin of
Charleroi.
The huge demand in energy, technical progress and the involvement of
big financial companies such as the Société Générale de Belgique made of the collieries the metronome of the economical life in the basin of
Charleroi, nicknamed Pays Noir (Black Country). The basin was the
biggest producer of coal in Belgium, with some ten millions tons per
year. The last colliery was closed in 1984 but the region has remained
one of the main European centers for steel and glass production. The
industrial redevelopment of Charleroi started in 1964.
The Brussels-Charleroi canal was built from 1827 to 1832 in order to
transport coal to the north of Belgium and to connect Wallonia with
the port of Antwerp. The builders of the canal had to connect the
basins of Scheldt (Brussels) and Sambre (Charleroi), with two tunnels
and the modern inclined plane at Ronquières.
The industrial landscape of Charleroi at the end of the XIXth century
was "described" by Paul Verlaine in a poem named Charleroi, part
of the Paysages belges (Belgian landscapes) section in the Romances
sans paroles book. Verlaine gives in the poem his impressions from a
train travel made nightly with Arthur Rimbaud.
Social movements developed very early in Charleroi among the workers.
There were cooperative and mutualist: the movements were Socialist,
Christian or state-funded (Intercommunales des Oeuvres Sociales,
1935). Technological progress required more and more educated workers;
Work University (Université du Travail) and the Work Chaplains
(Aumôniers du Travail) were founded in 1901. Workers were hired from
all over Europe: Walloons, Flemish, French, German, Polish, Italians...
contributed to the Charleroi melting-pot. Following the Belgo-Italian
agreement of 1946, Italian miners massively emigrated to Charleroi. The
Italian immigration stopped after the disaster of the Bois du Cazier colliery in Marcinelle (8 August 1956), which killed 262 miners,
including 156 Italians.
The Carolos also emigrated and exported their skills to very remote
areas, up to Russia and the United States; there is a town called
Charleroi in Pennsylvania.
Charleroi is the birthplace of several cultural and technological
innovations. In 1735, Marquis Desandrouin imported from England a fire
pump Newcomen, the first to be used in continental Europe. The first
Belgian smelting furnace fed with coke was built by Paul Huart-Chapel
in 1827. The chemist and industrial Ernest Solvay opened his first soda plant in Charleroi in 1864. A few years later, in 1881, Julien Dulait operated the first
hydroelectric generator. Émile Fourcaut, in 1903, invented a mechanical
process allowing the drawing out of window glasses.
In 1931, the mathematician George Lemaître (1894-1966) proposed his
theory of the "primitive atom"; Lemaître claimed that the universe
emerged via the "initial explosion" of an extremely condensed state
and is still expanding. The theory was very controversial and the
American astronom Fred Hoyle ironically called it in 1956 the "big
bang" theory. Since then, experimental and theoretical evidence have
backed up Lemaître's theory, which is widely accepted, even if
alternative hypotheses for the formation of the universe are also
plausible. Beforehand, Lemaître proposed in 1927 a relativist model of
an expanding universe. Lemaître was His Grace Lemaître and the Roman
Catholic Church eventually recognized his theory, claiming it was a
kind of "scientific proof" of the creation of universe as described in
the Bible.
In 1937, Jean Dupuis printed his first strip cartoons in Marcinelle.
His weekly Spirou has presented since then famous characters such as
Spirou and Fantasio, Boule and Bill, the Marsupilami, and, last but not
least, Gaston Lagaffe.
Sources:
Charleroi is the capital of the national Walloon movement, whose
main member was Jules Destrée (1863-1936). Born in
Marcinelle, Destrée was graduated Doctor-in-Law aged 20 and
became a famous lawyer, specialized in social and political cases. In
1886, he defended Falleur and Schmidt, two leaders of the Union
verrière glass workers' union, tried for the blaze and the sack of
the glass factory Baudoux in Jumet during social riots; Falleur and
Schmidt were sentenced in a famous case of miscarriage of justice. In
1889, 87 members of the Republican Socialist Party were tried in the
grand Complot (big plot) affair, because they had required the
universal suffrage and declared the general strike; the prosecution
said the "plotters" had attempted to overthrow the regime but they were
discharged. This was Destrée's first big victory. In 1923, Destrée
defended Léon Lesoil, Secretary of the Communist Federation of
Charleroi and his fellows, charged for the complot communiste, and
won again.
When the linguistic quarrel increased between Flanders and Wallonia, Destrée defended Wallonia in the Chamber and in the media. In
1912, he wrote his fmaous Letter to the King (Lettre au Roi), in
which he asked for the separation of Flanders and Wallonia, the union
of two independent people being better than a forced unity. On 20
October 1912, Destrée was elected President of the newly formed Walloon
Assembly. The Assembly was a kind of "Walloon Parliament", with
delegates from Wallonia and Brussels. In 1923, Destrée published his
book Wallons et Flamands. La querelle linguistique en Belgique
(Walloons and Flemish. The language quarrel in Belgium). He negociated
with the Flemish regionalist leader Kamiel Huysmans a proposal of
political agreement between the two communities, released in 1929 as the
Compromis des Belges. In 1924, Destrée published with Max Hallet a
Code du Travail (labour laws), which was an update of Napoléon's
laws, adapted to the new industry.
After the First World War, Destrée was member of national unity
governments, supported by the Liberal, Catholic and Socialist parties.
In 1919, he was the first Socialist appointed Minister of Science and
Arts, and also of State Education; he defended a state, free and
non-religious school and extended the mandatory teaching from 12 up to
14 years. He founded the Royal Academy of French Language and
Litterature in Belgium, inaugurated on 16 February 1921, and proposed a
Law on the public libraries. Destrée also founded in 1911 the Fine Arts
Museum in Charleroi, inaugurated in 1936.
Destrée's wife died in 1942 and bequeathed their house to Georges and
Martine Armand, their driver and cook, respectively. The Armand
bequeathed all the stuff related to Destrée to the municipality of
Charleroi, which opened in 1988 the Jules Destrée Museum. Destrée was
nicknamed "the Awakener of Walloon consciousness" and his legacy is
preserved by the Destrée Institute, whose main aim is to promote
the Walloon culture and identity.
Source: Institut Destrée
Ivan Sache, 26 May 2005
The municipal flag of Charleroi is white with a red rooster holding in
its right foot the municipal coat of arms.
According to Armoiries communales en Belgique. Communes wallonnes, bruxelloises et germanophones, the flag follows the proposal made by the Heraldry and Vexillology Council of the French Community as:
Blanc chargé d'un coq rouge, la patte droite posée sur le bord
supérieur de l'écu de la ville.
The rooster symbolizes the allegiance of Charleroi to the French
Community; it is of course the Walloon coq hardi.
The municipal coat of arms of Charleroi is:
De sable à la silhouette d'une forteresse hexagonale d'argent,
entourée de douze étoiles à cinq rais d'or rangées en cercle, le tout
surmonté de quinze points d'échiquier alternativement de
gueules et d'argent rangés en fasce huit et sept; au chef diminué
d'argent à une fleur de lis de gueules.
The municipal website explains the coat of arms as follows:
- the fleur-de-lis recalls that France increased the fortress built by
the Spaniards;
- the 15 square pieces recall the 15 former municipalities merged into
Charleroi;
- the 12 stars symbolize the flag of the Towns of Europe;
- Vauban's fortress is shown surrounded by the stars.
The chief of the current arms was already present in the arms of
Charleroi before the administrative reform, granted by Royal Decree on 28 August 1847 as:
De sable, au lion rampant d'or, armé d'un sabre du même, le chef
d'argent chargé d'une fleur de lys de gueules (Sable a forked-tailed lion or holding in dexter a sword of the same; in chief argent a fleur-de-lis gules).
According to Servais, these arms are crowned and have a lion as a dexter supporter.
The oldest known arms of Charleroi date from 1680 and show a black
shield with a silver chief. These arms were derived from the arms of the Isenghien
family, from Ghent, at the time Lords of Charleroi. In 1697 the King of Spain
added the lion of Namur in the lower part of the shield. In 1847
the fleur-de-lis was added as a French symbol.
The current arms, required after the administrative reform, do not
seem to have been officially adopted yet. However, the
Municipal Council adopted on 3 May 1995 a municipal seal, confirmed by
the Executive of the French Community on 28 March 1996.
The shield is made of a circle surrounding the shield:
De sable au coq hardi d'or, au chef d'argent chargé d'une fleur de lys de
gueules (Sable a rooster or a chief argent a fleur-de-lis gules).
Arnaud Leroy, Pascal Vagnat & Ivan Sache, 4 June 2007