medieval streets offered a quaint charm that replaced the industrial and commercial action that grew apace in its left bank rival. The commune of today results from the merger in 1947 of La Neuveville and Raon-l'Étape into a single commune. Their strategic position meant that both towns suffered badly in the Second World War, and the remaining residents were strongly supported by humanitarian aid from, in particular, the Swiss Red Cross in the years immediately following the conflagration. The acting mayor of La Neuveville, who was a man named Capel, wondered if rebuilding a separate mairie was worth while at a time of severe economic hardship, given that the mairie of Raon-l'Étape now looked unnecessarily large for the diminished population level on the right bank. The proposal to merge the communes was therefore essentially driven by the economics of the situation in which the communities found themselves: the responsible councils and the prefect were persuaded and the fusion of the former rival communes went ahead. Although the two communes had been intended by their founders as complementary settlements, long centuries of rivalry were not so easily set aside, and the different banks of the river continue to value their separate histories. Old Wars The Thirty Years' War 1618-1648 The closing decades of the sixteenth century and the first half of the seventeenth century were a particularly grim period for Lorraine and for much of Europe. The weather seems to have contributed an above average quota of poor or failed harvests, while the Thirty Years' War unleashed a catalogue of horrors, especially on the territories such as Lorraine that found themselves buffered between two great continental powers of that time, France and The Empire. Massacres, looting and executions were inflicted both by the locally recruited armies and by the hordes of the dispossessed that often followed in their wake. The Swedish armies, allied with the French, have a reputation for particular savagery in Lorraine during the time of Duke Charles IV. Two battles unfolded before the walls of Raon during the period. The first of them in 1635 found the troops of the recently defeated Duke of Lorraine confronting the French cavalry: on this occasion Lorraine prevailed. But in 1636 there was another battle in which the armies of Lorraine and their imperial allies were defeated. That same year Richelieu, the French king's first minister, keen to minimise opportunities for Austrian