Home : History : Background History
Most of our ancestors, as far as
we have been able to trace their genealogy, were already established in
The 30 years war caused
tremendous ravages in
Even though the treaty of
The Thirty year war caused
ravages also in Dieulouard and in the surrounding villages where our ancestors
resided at that time [Footnote 2]. People took
refuge in fortified cities. We find people from Villey St Etienne refugees in
Toul, people from Blenod les Pont à Mousson refugees in Pont a Mousson, and people
from
Here is what Michel Lorrain
wrote about the consequences of the war according to a document (Dieulouard BJ
998 - 28 May 1693) [Footnote 5] in which a lady,
Barbe Ruton (100 years old) is invited to witness in court about the true owner
of a piece of land: "I think it is the nicest document that I have found,
first of all because it identifies a lot of ancestors that we have added in our
genealogy, but also because it teaches us about the difficulties the land
owners of that time period encountered in order to preserve their ownership of
land for which they no longer had any legal document to prove their ownership.
We see them here testifying in court. In order to understand how they had come
to this, we must remember that after the thirty year war life in our towns and
villages was very disorganized. Part of the people had died, others had left.
In Dieulouard like everywhere else, people were at a loss and felt no security
in the future. Moreover, everyone was still haunted by the possibility of more
invasions, therefore they had abandon parcels of land farther away from
populated areas. The land had become filled with hedges and bushes of all sorts
and it was difficult to re-establish the limits. The owners of such property
sometimes had died and their children did not know their inheritance. It became
very difficult for everyone to re-establish their real estate ownership and it
is quite possible that people needed also to re-establish new boundaries.
Around 1680 started a new
reorganization which increased with the return to peace about 1713-14. It is
only at that time that land owners really got things under control. The
document mentioned with Barbe Ruton
witnessing in court, typifies this kind
of difficulty. This state of things is
explained by the fact that documents proving land ownership had almost
completely disappeared and neither the
Lords nor the peasants knew their rights nor their duty.
We saw many burgess and
congregations take advantage of the circumstances and invest their money in
real estate supposedly abandoned without heirs."
Again it is Michel Lorrain who
clarified the story of the "Prisoners of Trarbach" [Footnote 6] mentioned in the notarial documents of
Pont à Mousson. And as Michel puts it into words "our poor ancestors were
never relieved from the miseries caused by wars. The "Trarbach hostages".
Fifty four localities from the
The bursars of the three
bishoprics were refusing to pay their part of war tax, such as was agreed after
the battle of Oudenarde in 1708. The intrusion of the General had for purpose
to compensate this refusal. Not only 54
villages were pillaged of their riches but hostages were taken and detained in
captivity in the prisons of Trarbach in
See also the word for word
report of the Abbott Lejont relating to Trarbach, copied by Michel Lorrain in
the Archives in
A number of villages disappeared
during the thirty year war. An old village "Martin Fontaine" was on
the hill of Harmaumont across from
Bezaumont. The disappearance of this village which was close to Ville au Val
and Bezaumont stands as a witness of the difficulties and of the destruction
that our ancestors had to face. Now I
would like to speak to you of the villages of Bezaumont and Ville au Val,
villages where we had many ancestors. Between these two villages, half way down
the hill was the
Michel Lorrain [Footnote 8] made a study of the old
documents and tells us that there was a fairly important vicarage. He also
found in
© 2004, 2005 Jean-Marc Samson and Yvette Longstaff