Crossing the plain of Neervinden, one enters the province of the Liègeois, where the French were defeated by the Austrians in 1793, thus releasing Belgium from the Gallic yoke.
At Landen one recalls that it is the town of the inception of the family of Charlemagne which gave to France her second race of kings.
Liège has been called the Birmingham of Continental Europe. It might better be called one of the foremost industrial centres of the world, for such it is to-day.
It is beautifully placed in an amphitheatre-like valley, and its tall chimneys, its smoke, and its grind of wheels bespeak an activity and unrest of which the former ages knew not.
Formerly the Liègeois were a turbulent and truculent folk, if one is to believe history.
If, however, one does not care to go back to history, he might turn to the pages of "Quentin Durward" and read of the spirit of romance which once surrounded Liège and its people.
The famous "Legend of the Liègeois" recounts[{297}] how a working blacksmith found an inexhaustible supply of coals for his forge through the aid of a gnomish old man.
GENERAL
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LIÈGE
Previously the smith's fires had burned low, and only the old man's song inspired him to forage on the hillside, with the result that the future prosperity of the city grew up from the accessibility of this inexhaustible coal supply.