Vieux-Condé (; ) is a commune in the Nord department in northern

France France, officially the French Republic, is a country located primarily in Western Europe. Overseas France, Its overseas regions and territories include French Guiana in South America, Saint Pierre and Miquelon in the Atlantic Ocean#North Atlan ...

.INSEE commune file
/ref> The village stands on a canalised section of the river

Scheldt The Scheldt ( ; ; ) is a river that flows through northern France, western Belgium, and the southwestern part of Netherlands, the Netherlands, with its mouth at the North Sea. Its name is derived from an adjective corresponding to Old Englis ...

, adjacent to the northwest of

Condé-sur-l'Escaut Condé-sur-l'Escaut (, literally ''Condé on the Escaut''; ) is a commune of the Nord department in northern France. It lies on the border with Belgium. The population as of 1999 was 10,527. Residents of the area are known as Condéens or Con ...

. It is part of the agglomeration ('' unité urbaine'') of

Valenciennes Valenciennes (, also , , ; ; or ; ) is a communes of France, commune in the Nord (French department), Nord Departments of France, department, Hauts-de-France, France. It lies on the Scheldt () river. Although the city and region experienced ...

Name

The name of the village was formerly simply 'Condé', which is a place-name widespread in France, deriving possibly from a

Gaulish Gaulish is an extinct Celtic languages, Celtic language spoken in parts of Continental Europe before and during the period of the Roman Empire. In the narrow sense, Gaulish was the language of the Celts of Gaul (now France, Luxembourg, Belgium, ...

word for a confluence of rivers. The name is found in the

Anglo-Saxon Chronicle The ''Anglo-Saxon Chronicle'' is a collection of annals in Old English, chronicling the history of the Anglo-Saxons. The original manuscript of the ''Chronicle'' was created late in the ninth century, probably in Wessex, during the reign of ...

for the year 883, reporting that

Vikings Vikings were seafaring people originally from Scandinavia (present-day Denmark, Norway, and Sweden), who from the late 8th to the late 11th centuries raided, pirated, traded, and settled throughout parts of Europe.Roesdahl, pp. 9� ...

sailed up the Scheldt to occupy ''Cundoþ''. It is found as ''Vetus Condatum'' in the 'cartulaire de Vicogne' of 1215 and as ''Vies Condet'' in a work by Jacques de Guise of the 14th centuryPage 420, statistique archéologique du Département du Nord - seconde partie - 1867 - Librairie Quarré et Leleu à Lille, A. Durand, 7 rue Cujas à Paris - archive of Harvard College Library - via

Google Books Google Books (previously known as Google Book Search, Google Print, and by its code-name Project Ocean) is a service from Google that searches the full text of books and magazines that Google has scanned, converted to text using optical charac ...

As the Prince of Condé was a prominent royalist, at the French Revolution the village was renamed 'Vieux-Nord-Libre' until 1810.

Name

Population

Heraldry

Twinning

See also

References