La Neuveville-sous-Châtenois
Encyclopedia
La Neuveville-sous-Châtenois is a commune
in the Vosges
department in Lorraine
in northeastern France
.
Inhabitants are called Novavillois.
3 kilometres (2 miles to the west) and Mirecourt
, 20 kilometres (12 mi) to the east. The other part is set back from the main road on higher ground overlooking the Vair River. Originally the two parts were two separate hamlets.
La Neuveville is separated by the river from the neighbouring village of Houécourt
. Two kilometres to the west is the A31 Autoroute
, the principal north-south highway crossing Lorraine between Toul
and Langres
.
By the middle of the thirteenth century La Neuveville had become sufficiently important to become a parish in its own right, and the size of the church at this time provides one clue as to the population of the parish. The nave was 36 feet long by 22 feet wide, with seating for approximately 120, which gives an inferred population level of perhaps 180 - 200.
Half a century later, in 1306, the Duke of Lorraine
and the master of the bailiwick established at "La Nueveville desouz Chastenois" a weekly market, to take place each Tuesday under a covered market place ("sous la Haulle"), as well as an annual trade fair. The markets of that time are still recalled by a street name in the village, la rue de la Halle.
The arrival of the Black Death
in 1348 caused a massive decline in population in the ensuing ten or so years, leading to a labour shortage which permanently shifted the balance of economic power between owners of land and providers of manual labour. The Dukes of Lorraine were accordingly conforming to a more widespread pattern in replacing traditional serfdom
with a less powerless status for workers. Overall Neuveville appears to have thrived under the changed arrangements, and by the end of the fifteenth century it is thought that the population was on a rising trend which would persist through the middle years of the sixteenth century, with the population peaking at 435 in 1562 according to one estimate, comfortably ahead of the levels seen in the twentieth century.
The first half of the sixteenth century was not an unbroken period of growth however. Digot relates that the century opened with a year that combined famine, as torrential rains destroyed the harvest of 1500, with a particularly deadly outbreak of plague, causing the population to slump. Duke Anthony, the Duke of Lorraine
who succeeded his father in 1508 is remembered as a benevolent ruler. The duchy was not spared the plague which returned in 1522 and exercised a savage impact on the population at least until 1531 when, responding to the please of the wretched citizenry, the Duke agreed to a halving of the tax level. Conditions seem to have improved through the 1530s, 1540s and 1550s.
The final four decades of the sixteenth century are known to anglophone historians of western Europe for the French Wars of Religion
. Lorraine was not yet part of France, but the duchy was nevertheless badly affected by fighting involving German Protestants from the east and Calvinist forces from closer to home. In 1572 we again find the citizens of La Neuveville appealing for a tax exemption because of acute hunger ("à cause de la disette"). The French wars of religion are generally reckoned to have ended in 1598 with the Edict of Nantes
, but by that date, for La Neuveville, other problems were more pressing. Plague returned to Lorraine in 1585 and La Neuveville seems to have been particularly badly affected. A census record in 1593 indicated significant population levels in several surrounding villages without mentioning the village at all. A record from 1596 indicates that La Neuveville itself contained sixteen and a half taxable households which according to a subsequent extrapolation implies a population level of approximately 120, or less than a third of the level from just 34 years earlier.
The population barely recovered during the next hundred years: poor harvests and plague continued to feature especially during the first half of the sixteenth century. Surviving records from the period 1652 to 1661 indicate no more than one or two baptisms per year. The second half of the century saw increasing attention from France
and Lorraine was periodically invaded from the west as part of Louis XIV's project to extend France's eastern frontier to the River Rhine. Nevertheless, during a century when plenty of villages in Lorraine simply disappeared. Marriage records from the years 1697 - 1720 indicate several people moving into La Neuveville from neighbouring parishes, and by 1736 the population of the parish seems to have increased sharply. The potato
was probably unknown here in 1703 since it did not feature on a schedule of crops subject to the tithe
in that year. A legal case of 1745 involving a priest's claim to a tithe payment in nearby Poussay
refers to potatatoes in a manner indicating that they were commonplace, so by 1545 potatoes had presumably been cultivated here for some years: that is consistent with population increase because potatoes have a far higher food value per acre than the grains and root crops on which populations in the region depended before the eighteenth century.
The Seven Years War burdened the village with fresh demands for fighting men and requisitions of supplies, but the growth nevertheless seems to have continued over the century as a whole, with the number of taxable homesteads increasing from 20 in 1703 to 110 in 1788, by which time the total population in the village was probably up to about 480. In 1779 the community decided to build a school house
in Church Street (la rue de l'Église), and it is recorded that in 1785 the church itself had become too small by this time so that each Sunday more than 100 people had to remain outside the church during Mass and follow the service from the adjacent graveyard. A new larger church was constructed and consecrated in 1790.
The French Revolution
ushered in 25 years of republican and imperial wars
which involved military glory and rural depression. A large young men of working and fighting age were called to the service of France: from parish records it is clear that many never returned. The census of 1820 painted a picture of continued depression. La Neuveville was more badly hit than neighbouring parishes because the civic coffers had been emptied by a massively costly legal dispute with the presbytery of Vair
which lasted sixteen years. Despite the hardship, the population continued to grow, to hit an all-time peak in 1826 of 578. There was talk of enlarging the church again. In the event, the church was not enlarged which turned out to be prescient since the population now started to decline, and would be down by a third by the end of the century. The population decline of the nineteenth century was a widespread feature of rural France during the nineteenth century. Improvements in transport made villages less vulnerable to localised famines and improved health in the countryside probably improved resistance to disease. However, industrialisation and the growth of commerce in, especially, Alsace
and the Paris
and Lyon
regions enticed the more ambitious country dwellers to move into the cities, drawn by the lure of higher wages and the perception of better prospects. Emigration to Frances's overseas territories
and North America also played their part in depleting the population of rural Lorraine. Contemporaries also pointed to a decline in family size, although this was to some extent off-set by a decline in infant mortality in the rural parishes.
It seemed that the dawn of the twentieth century might usher in an end to this decline, with the establishment in 1902 of a glass factory at nearby Gironcourt
offering a significant number of jobs at factory level wages at a time when agricultural incomes remained depressed, as they had since the 1870s since when a succession of improvements in transport and preservation techniques had increasingly exposed European agriculture to competition from north and south America. The Gironcourt factory did indeed lead to a resurgence in the population of La Neuveville where formerly abandoned houses were reoccupied by workers moving in from outside the village.
Communes of France
The commune is the lowest level of administrative division in the French Republic. French communes are roughly equivalent to incorporated municipalities or villages in the United States or Gemeinden in Germany...
in the Vosges
Vosges
Vosges is a French department, named after the local mountain range. It contains the hometown of Joan of Arc, Domrémy.-History:The Vosges department is one of the original 83 departments of France, created on February 9, 1790 during the French Revolution. It was made of territories that had been...
department in Lorraine
Lorraine (région)
Lorraine is one of the 27 régions of France. The administrative region has two cities of equal importance, Metz and Nancy. Metz is considered to be the official capital since that is where the regional parliament is situated...
in northeastern France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
.
Inhabitants are called Novavillois.
Geography
Part of the little town is positioned on the road to ChâtenoisChâtenois
Châtenois may refer to:* Châtenois, Bas-Rhin, a commune of the French region of Alsace* Châtenois, Haute-Saône, a commune of the French region of Franche-Comté* Châtenois, Jura, a commune of the French region of Franche-Comté...
3 kilometres (2 miles to the west) and Mirecourt
Mirecourt
Mirecourt is a commune in the Vosges department in Lorraine in northeastern France. Mirecourt is known for lace-making and the manufacture of musical instruments, particularly those of the violin family...
, 20 kilometres (12 mi) to the east. The other part is set back from the main road on higher ground overlooking the Vair River. Originally the two parts were two separate hamlets.
La Neuveville is separated by the river from the neighbouring village of Houécourt
Houécourt
Houécourt is a commune in the Vosges department in Lorraine in northeastern France.-References:*...
. Two kilometres to the west is the A31 Autoroute
A31 autoroute
The A31 autoroute is a French autoroute. It runs from the Franco-Luxembourg border to Beaune where it joins the A6. The north of the autoroute is free, up to the town of Toul, but it is a toll road south of there...
, the principal north-south highway crossing Lorraine between Toul
Toul
Toul is a commune in the Meurthe-et-Moselle department in north-eastern France.It is a sub-prefecture of the department.-Geography:Toul is located between Commercy and Nancy, and situated between the Moselle River and the Canal de la Marne au Rhin....
and Langres
Langres
Langres is a commune in north-eastern France. It is a subprefecture of the Haute-Marne département in the Champagne-Ardenne region.-History:As the capital of the Romanized Gallic tribe the Lingones, it was called Andematunnum, then Lingones, and now Langres.The town is built on a limestone...
.
Etymology
La Neuveville (Latin Nova Villa: English New Town) was built at one end of the village of "Haut du Mont" after the old village, having been destroyed by Hungarian invaders in the tenth century, was abandoned.History
Between the tenth and the twelfth century the political situation seems to have become calmer and the impact of epidemics reduced. There is some evidence to indicate rising prosperity and population. According to the nineteenth century historian Auguste Digot, life became easier in the villages of Lorraine during this time ("une certaine aisance règna dans les villages de Lorraine").By the middle of the thirteenth century La Neuveville had become sufficiently important to become a parish in its own right, and the size of the church at this time provides one clue as to the population of the parish. The nave was 36 feet long by 22 feet wide, with seating for approximately 120, which gives an inferred population level of perhaps 180 - 200.
Half a century later, in 1306, the Duke of Lorraine
Theobald II, Duke of Lorraine
Theobald II was the duke of Lorraine from 1303 to his death. He was the son and successor of Frederick III and Margaret, daughter of King Theobald I of Navarre....
and the master of the bailiwick established at "La Nueveville desouz Chastenois" a weekly market, to take place each Tuesday under a covered market place ("sous la Haulle"), as well as an annual trade fair. The markets of that time are still recalled by a street name in the village, la rue de la Halle.
The arrival of the Black Death
Black Death
The Black Death was one of the most devastating pandemics in human history, peaking in Europe between 1348 and 1350. Of several competing theories, the dominant explanation for the Black Death is the plague theory, which attributes the outbreak to the bacterium Yersinia pestis. Thought to have...
in 1348 caused a massive decline in population in the ensuing ten or so years, leading to a labour shortage which permanently shifted the balance of economic power between owners of land and providers of manual labour. The Dukes of Lorraine were accordingly conforming to a more widespread pattern in replacing traditional serfdom
Serfdom
Serfdom is the status of peasants under feudalism, specifically relating to Manorialism. It was a condition of bondage or modified slavery which developed primarily during the High Middle Ages in Europe and lasted to the mid-19th century...
with a less powerless status for workers. Overall Neuveville appears to have thrived under the changed arrangements, and by the end of the fifteenth century it is thought that the population was on a rising trend which would persist through the middle years of the sixteenth century, with the population peaking at 435 in 1562 according to one estimate, comfortably ahead of the levels seen in the twentieth century.
The first half of the sixteenth century was not an unbroken period of growth however. Digot relates that the century opened with a year that combined famine, as torrential rains destroyed the harvest of 1500, with a particularly deadly outbreak of plague, causing the population to slump. Duke Anthony, the Duke of Lorraine
Antoine, Duke of Lorraine
Antoine , known as the Good, was Duke of Lorraine from 1508 until his death in 1544.-Biography:Antoine was born at Bar-le-Duc, the son of René II, Duke of Lorraine and Philippa of Guelders...
who succeeded his father in 1508 is remembered as a benevolent ruler. The duchy was not spared the plague which returned in 1522 and exercised a savage impact on the population at least until 1531 when, responding to the please of the wretched citizenry, the Duke agreed to a halving of the tax level. Conditions seem to have improved through the 1530s, 1540s and 1550s.
The final four decades of the sixteenth century are known to anglophone historians of western Europe for the French Wars of Religion
French Wars of Religion
The French Wars of Religion is the name given to a period of civil infighting and military operations, primarily fought between French Catholics and Protestants . The conflict involved the factional disputes between the aristocratic houses of France, such as the House of Bourbon and House of Guise...
. Lorraine was not yet part of France, but the duchy was nevertheless badly affected by fighting involving German Protestants from the east and Calvinist forces from closer to home. In 1572 we again find the citizens of La Neuveville appealing for a tax exemption because of acute hunger ("à cause de la disette"). The French wars of religion are generally reckoned to have ended in 1598 with the Edict of Nantes
Edict of Nantes
The Edict of Nantes, issued on 13 April 1598, by Henry IV of France, granted the Calvinist Protestants of France substantial rights in a nation still considered essentially Catholic. In the Edict, Henry aimed primarily to promote civil unity...
, but by that date, for La Neuveville, other problems were more pressing. Plague returned to Lorraine in 1585 and La Neuveville seems to have been particularly badly affected. A census record in 1593 indicated significant population levels in several surrounding villages without mentioning the village at all. A record from 1596 indicates that La Neuveville itself contained sixteen and a half taxable households which according to a subsequent extrapolation implies a population level of approximately 120, or less than a third of the level from just 34 years earlier.
The population barely recovered during the next hundred years: poor harvests and plague continued to feature especially during the first half of the sixteenth century. Surviving records from the period 1652 to 1661 indicate no more than one or two baptisms per year. The second half of the century saw increasing attention from France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
and Lorraine was periodically invaded from the west as part of Louis XIV's project to extend France's eastern frontier to the River Rhine. Nevertheless, during a century when plenty of villages in Lorraine simply disappeared. Marriage records from the years 1697 - 1720 indicate several people moving into La Neuveville from neighbouring parishes, and by 1736 the population of the parish seems to have increased sharply. The potato
Potato
The potato is a starchy, tuberous crop from the perennial Solanum tuberosum of the Solanaceae family . The word potato may refer to the plant itself as well as the edible tuber. In the region of the Andes, there are some other closely related cultivated potato species...
was probably unknown here in 1703 since it did not feature on a schedule of crops subject to the tithe
Tithe
A tithe is a one-tenth part of something, paid as a contribution to a religious organization or compulsory tax to government. Today, tithes are normally voluntary and paid in cash, cheques, or stocks, whereas historically tithes were required and paid in kind, such as agricultural products...
in that year. A legal case of 1745 involving a priest's claim to a tithe payment in nearby Poussay
Poussay
Poussay is a commune in the Vosges department in Lorraine in northeastern France.Inhabitants are called Porsuavitains .-Geography:...
refers to potatatoes in a manner indicating that they were commonplace, so by 1545 potatoes had presumably been cultivated here for some years: that is consistent with population increase because potatoes have a far higher food value per acre than the grains and root crops on which populations in the region depended before the eighteenth century.
The Seven Years War burdened the village with fresh demands for fighting men and requisitions of supplies, but the growth nevertheless seems to have continued over the century as a whole, with the number of taxable homesteads increasing from 20 in 1703 to 110 in 1788, by which time the total population in the village was probably up to about 480. In 1779 the community decided to build a school house
School
A school is an institution designed for the teaching of students under the direction of teachers. Most countries have systems of formal education, which is commonly compulsory. In these systems, students progress through a series of schools...
in Church Street (la rue de l'Église), and it is recorded that in 1785 the church itself had become too small by this time so that each Sunday more than 100 people had to remain outside the church during Mass and follow the service from the adjacent graveyard. A new larger church was constructed and consecrated in 1790.
The French Revolution
French Revolution
The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...
ushered in 25 years of republican and imperial wars
Napoleonic Wars
The Napoleonic Wars were a series of wars declared against Napoleon's French Empire by opposing coalitions that ran from 1803 to 1815. As a continuation of the wars sparked by the French Revolution of 1789, they revolutionised European armies and played out on an unprecedented scale, mainly due to...
which involved military glory and rural depression. A large young men of working and fighting age were called to the service of France: from parish records it is clear that many never returned. The census of 1820 painted a picture of continued depression. La Neuveville was more badly hit than neighbouring parishes because the civic coffers had been emptied by a massively costly legal dispute with the presbytery of Vair
Vair
Vair is the heraldic representation of patches of squirrel fur in an alternating pattern of blue and white. As a tincture, vair is considered a fur and is therefore exempted from the Rule of tincture . Variations of vair are laid out in different patterns, each with their own name...
which lasted sixteen years. Despite the hardship, the population continued to grow, to hit an all-time peak in 1826 of 578. There was talk of enlarging the church again. In the event, the church was not enlarged which turned out to be prescient since the population now started to decline, and would be down by a third by the end of the century. The population decline of the nineteenth century was a widespread feature of rural France during the nineteenth century. Improvements in transport made villages less vulnerable to localised famines and improved health in the countryside probably improved resistance to disease. However, industrialisation and the growth of commerce in, especially, Alsace
Alsace
Alsace is the fifth-smallest of the 27 regions of France in land area , and the smallest in metropolitan France. It is also the seventh-most densely populated region in France and third most densely populated region in metropolitan France, with ca. 220 inhabitants per km²...
and the Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
and Lyon
Lyon
Lyon , is a city in east-central France in the Rhône-Alpes region, situated between Paris and Marseille. Lyon is located at from Paris, from Marseille, from Geneva, from Turin, and from Barcelona. The residents of the city are called Lyonnais....
regions enticed the more ambitious country dwellers to move into the cities, drawn by the lure of higher wages and the perception of better prospects. Emigration to Frances's overseas territories
French colonial empire
The French colonial empire was the set of territories outside Europe that were under French rule primarily from the 17th century to the late 1960s. In the 19th and 20th centuries, the colonial empire of France was the second-largest in the world behind the British Empire. The French colonial empire...
and North America also played their part in depleting the population of rural Lorraine. Contemporaries also pointed to a decline in family size, although this was to some extent off-set by a decline in infant mortality in the rural parishes.
It seemed that the dawn of the twentieth century might usher in an end to this decline, with the establishment in 1902 of a glass factory at nearby Gironcourt
Gironcourt-sur-Vraine
Gironcourt-sur-Vraine is a commune in the Vosges department in Lorraine in northeastern France.-References:*...
offering a significant number of jobs at factory level wages at a time when agricultural incomes remained depressed, as they had since the 1870s since when a succession of improvements in transport and preservation techniques had increasingly exposed European agriculture to competition from north and south America. The Gironcourt factory did indeed lead to a resurgence in the population of La Neuveville where formerly abandoned houses were reoccupied by workers moving in from outside the village.