Sambre

 ( Rivers Of Belgium ) 

The Sambre () is a river in northern France and in Wallonia, Belgium. It is a left-bank tributary of the Meuse, which it joins in the Wallonian capital Namur.

The source of the Sambre is near Le Nouvion-en-Thiérache, in the Aisne department. It passes through the Franco-Belgian coal basin, formerly an important industrial district. The navigable course begins in Landrecies at the junction with the Canal de la Sambre à l'Oise, which links with the central French waterway network (or did, until navigation was interrupted in 2006 following structural failures).

It runs 54 km and 9 locks 38.50 m long and 5.20 m wide down to the Belgian border at Jeumont. From the border the river is canalised in two distinct sections over a distance of 88 km with 17 locks. The Haute-Sambre is 39 km long and includes 10 locks of the same dimensions as in France, down to the industrial town of Charleroi. The rest of the Belgian Sambre was upgraded to European Class IV dimensions (1350-tonne barges) in the immediate post-World War II period. It lies at the western end of the sillon industriel, which is still Wallonia's industrial backbone, despite the cessation of all the coal-mining and a decline in the steel industry. The river flows into the Meuse at Namur, Belgium.

The navigable waterway is managed in France by Voies Navigables de France and in Belgium by the Service Public Wallon - Direction générale opérationnelle de la Mobilité et des Voies hydrauliques (Operational Directorate of Mobility and Inland Waterways)

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Course The Sambre flows through the following departments of France, provinces of Belgium and towns:

• Aisne (F): Barzy-en-Thiérache
• Nord (F): Landrecies, Aulnoye-Aymeries, Hautmont, Maubeuge
• Hainaut (B): Thuin, Montigny-le-Tilleul, Charleroi
• Namur (B): Floreffe, Namur

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Main tributaries

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Events

• On 24 February 1912, Regina Magritte, the mother of the famous Surrealism painter Réné Magritte, drowned herself in this river at Châtelet.

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Battles The 19th-century theory that the Sambre was the location of Julius Caesar's battle against a Belgae confederation (57 BC), was discarded a long time ago,Pierre Turquin ("La Bataille de la Selle (du Sabis) en l' An 57 avant J.-C." in Les Études Classiques 23/2 (1955), 113-156) has proved beyond reasonable doubt that the battle was fought at the River Selle, west of modern Saulzoir. but is still repeated.

Three important battles were fought in Fleurus, a suburb of Charleroi on the north bank of the Sambre: the Thirty Years' War Battle of Fleurus (1622), the Nine Years' War Battle of Fleurus (1690), and the crucial 26 June 1794 Battle of Fleurus (1794), the most significant battle of the Flanders Campaign in the Low Countries during the French Revolutionary Wars. The last was fought on both banks of the river, culminating a campaign that had involved multiple crossings and re-crossings of the river.

Heavy fighting occurred along the river during World War I, especially at the siege of Namur in 1914 (Battle of Charleroi) and in the last month of the war Battle of the Sambre (1918).

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External links

• River Sambre and Canal de la Sambre à l'Oise with maps and details of places, moorings and facilities for boats, by the author of Inland Waterways of France, Imray
• Navigation details for 80 French rivers and canals (French waterways website section)
• Site of the Walloon regional archives. Flooding of the Sambre in January 1995.

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