MONTBELIARD  , a

town of eastern France, capital of an arrondissement in the department of Doubs, 49 M . N.E. of Besancon on the Paris–Lyon line between that town and Belfort . Pop . (1906), town, 8723; commune, 10,455 . Montbeliard is situated 1050 ft. above sea-level on the right bank of the Allaine at its junction with the Luzine (Lizaine or Lisaine) . It is an important point in the frontier defences of France since 1871 . Forts on outlying hills connect it with Belfort on the one side and (through Blamont and the Lomont fortifications) with Besancon on the other . The old castle of the counts of Montbeliard is now used as barracks; its most conspicuous features, the Tour Bossue and the Tour Neuve, date respectively from 1425 and 1594 . Most of the inhabitants are Protestant, and the church of St Martin, built early in the 17th century, now serves as a Protestant place of worship . The old market-hall and some old houses of the 16th century also remain . A bronze statue of George Cuvier, the most illustrious native of Montbeliard, and several fountains adorn the town . Montbeliard is the seat of a sub-prefect and has a tribunal of first instance, a board of trade-arbitrators, a communal college, a practical school of industry, a chamber of arts and manufactures and a museum of natural history .

Since 1870 a considerable impetus has been given to its prosperity by the Alsatian immigrants . Its

industries include watch and clock making and dependent trades, cotton spinning and weaving, the manufacture of hosiery, textile machinery, tools, nails and wire, and brewing . There is commerce in wine, cheese, wood and Montbeliard cattle . After belonging to the Burgundians and Franks, Montbeliard (Mons Peligardi) was, by the treaty of Verdun (843), added to Lorraine . In the 11th century it became the capital of a count-ship, which formed part of the second kingdom of Burgundy and latterly of the German Empire . Its German name is Mompelgard . In 1397 it passed by marriage to the house of Wurttemberg, to whom it belonged till 1793 . It resisted the attacks of Charles the Bold (1473), and Henry I. of Lorraine, 1 (1618-1699), a son of Arnauld d'Andelly and minister of foreign affairs in succession to Lionne.(1587 and 1588), duke of Guise, but was taken in 1676 by Marshal Luxemburg, who razed its fortifications . The tolerance of the princes of Wurttemberg attracted to the town at the end of the 16th century a colony of Anabaptists from Frisia, and their descendants still form a separate community in the neighbour-hood . In 1793 the inhabitants voluntarily submitted to annexation by France . In 1871 the battle of the Lisaine between the French and Germans was fought in the neighbourhood and partly within its walls .