HAINAUT

Flemish Henegouwen province, southwestern Belgium. Hainaut extends northeastward from the French border. It has an area of 1,462 square miles (3,787 square km) and is drained by the Scheldt (Schelde), Dender, and Sambre rivers. It is divided into seven administrative arrondissements (Ath, Charleroi, Mons, Mouscron, Soignies, Thuin, and Tournai) with the capital at Mons (q.v.). Occupied since prehistoric times, Hainaut bears traces of the oldest Stone Age industry of the area, namely flint extraction and cutting, especially at Spiennes. Under the Romans, Hainaut enjoyed some three centuries of calm and witnessed the construction of numerous roads which converged at Bavai. The Romans were succeeded by Merovingian royalty whose capital was Tournai. By 925 the region was part of the future German Empire. Mainly French-speaking except in the north, the centre of the province was once part of the old and great county of Hainaut, which was considerably larger than the modern Belgian province. The county was bounded north by Flanders, east by Brabant and by part of the bishopric of Lige, southeast by the French Rethelois and Thirache, southwest by the bishopric of Cambrai and by the county of Artois, and west by the district of Tournai. This territory, inhabited in ancient times by the Celto-German tribe of the Nervii, was included in the kingdom of Austrasia under the Merovingian Franks and in those of Lotharingia (Lorraine) and then of East Francia (Germany) under the Carolingians. The county emerged as a unit at the end of the 9th century under Rainier (or Regnier) I. Rainier, who in his latter years was in control of Lower Lorraine, had two sons: the elder, Giselbert, eventually became duke of Lorraine; the younger, Rainier II, succeeded his father in Hainaut in 916. The latter's great-grandson, Rainier V, count from 1013 to c. 1029, left a daughter, Richildis (d. 1086), whose second marriage, to the future Baldwin VI of Flanders (Baldwin I of Hainaut), led to a temporary union of Hainaut and Flanders; but this was dissolved on Baldwin's death (1070), Hainaut being reserved for Baldwin II, second son of Richildis. His great-grandson Baldwin V, however, became Baldwin VIII of Flanders in 1191. Baldwin VI (Baldwin IX of Flanders) became Latin emperor of Constantinople as Baldwin I. His second daughter, Margaret, agreed, however, in 1246 to leave Hainaut to the son of her first marriage and Flanders to the son of her second; on her death (1280) John of Avesnes, her elder son's heir from 1257, became count of Hainaut. John became count of distant Holland in 1299. Thenceforward Hainaut was linked with Holland under the house of Avesnes, the Wittelsbachs, the Burgundians, and finally the Habsburgs. The Spanish Habsburgs had to cede Le Quesnoy, Landrecies, and Avesnes to France under the Treaty of the Pyrenees (1659) and Valenciennes, Cond, Bavay, and Maubeuge to France under the Treaty of Nijmegen (1678): Valenciennes then became the capital of French Hainaut (now part of Nord dpartement). The rest of Hainaut was annexed to France during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars and formed into the dpartement of Jemappes, but it was given to the Kingdom of the Netherlands in 1814, whence it passed to Belgium in 1831. The valley of the upper Scheldt River, in the western part of the province, near Tournai, is part of the Flanders clay plain. A small portion of the Ardennes with heath, moorland, and coniferous plantations extends into the southeastern sector of the province, near Chimay. Most of the province, however, forms the low Hainaut Plateau, an alluvial area of rich sand and clay loams that is hilly in the north and slopes up to flat tableland in the south. A well-farmed region with varied agriculture, it produces wheat, oats, barley, sugar beets, fodder crops, chicory (in the west), and some flax. Pigs, beef and dairy cattle, and heavy Belgian draft horses are raised. Three of the main districts of the southern Belgian coalfields lie in Hainaut: the Mons basin, including the Borinage industrial region, the Centre basin around La Louvire, and the Charleroi basin. Many of the coalfields are abandoned. The region has coke ovens, blast furnaces, steelworks, and machinery factories. The glass and ceramic industries are important; and chalk deposits near Mons, the Centre, and Tournai are used for cement. The textile industry of the Flanders plain extends into western Hainaut, centred on Tournai. Electrical equipment and chemicals are manufactured near Charleroi (q.v.). Limestone, granite, and porphyry are quarried. Hainaut is served by several railway lines and numerous canals, including the Charleroi-Brussels, Centre, Nimy-Blaton, Haine, and Blaton-Ath canals. There are more than 100 castles in the province, notably at Beloeil, Mariemont, Chimay, Le Roeulx, and caussines. The famous annual carnival at Binche commemorates a feast given by Mary of Hungary (sister of the Holy Roman emperor Charles V) in honour of Francisco Pizarro's victories (153133) over the Incas in Peru. Casteau, within the Mons region, has been the Supreme Headquarters, Allied Powers in Europe (SHAPE), since 1967. Pop. (1990 est.) 1,278,039.