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Vosges Vosges is a French dpartement, named after the Vosges mountain range. History The Vosges dpartement was created on March 4, 1790 like the 83 other original dpartements of France. It was made of territories formerly part of Lorraine. In 1793 the independent principality of Salm (town of Senones and its surroundings), enclosed inside the Vosges dpartement, was annexed to France and incorporated into Vosges. In 1795 the area of Schirmeck was detached from the Bas-Rhin dpartement and incorporated into the Vosges dpartement. The Vosges dpartement had now an area of 6,127 km² (2,366 sq. miles) which it kept until 1871. In 1794 the Vosges was the site of a sizeable battle between the forces of Revolutionary France and the Allied Coalition. See Battle of the Vosges. The Place des Vosges in Paris was so renamed in 1799 when the dpartement became the first to pay the new Revolutionary taxes. After the French defeat in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1871, 4% of the Vosges dpartement in the extreme northeast of the dpartement were annexed to the German Empire by the Treaty of Frankfurt on the ground that the people there spoke Germanic dialects. The area annexed on May 18, 1871 corresponded to the canton of Schirmeck and the northern half of the canton of Saales. Schirmeck and Saales had been historically part of Alsace. These territories, along with the rest of Alsace and the annexed territories of Lorraine, became part of the Reichsland of Elsa-Lothringen. The area of the Vosges dpartement was thus reduced to its current 5,874 km² (2,268 sq. miles). In 1919, with the French victory in the First World War, Alsace-Lorraine was returned to France by Germany at the Treaty of Versailles. However, Schirmeck and Saales were not returned to the Vosges dpartement, but instead were incorporated into the recreated Bas-Rhin dpartement. Geography The Sane river rises at Viomnil, in the Vosges. Economy Demographics Culture The Roman fortified town of Grand, located 30km from Toul, has an amphitheatre and a temple to the Cult of Apollo. Miscellaneous topics External link - Conseil General website: http://www.vosges.fr/
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