Roer is the name of a
département of the
First French Empire in present day
Germany and the
Netherlands. It was named after the river
Rur, which flows through the département. It was formed in 1795, when the
Southern Netherlands and the left bank of the
Rhine were occupied by the French. The département de la Roer was formed from the duchies of
Jülich and
Cleves, the part of the
Archbishopric of Cologne left of the Rhine, the free city of
Aachen, the
Prussian part of the duchy of
Guelders and some smaller territories. In
1805 the city
Wesel was added to the département.
The capital was Aix-la-Chapelle. The département was subdivided in the following arrondissements and cantons (situation in 1812):
- Aachen, cantons: Aachen, Burtscheid, Düren, Eschweiler, Froitzheim, Geilenkirchen, Gemünd, Heinsberg, Linnich, Monschau and Sittard.
- Cleves, cantons: Cleves, Geldern, Goch, Horst, Kalkar, Kranenburg, Wankum, Wesel and Xanten.
- Krefeld, cantons: Krefeld, Bracht, Erkelenz, Kempen, Moers, Neersen, Neuss, Odenkirchen, Rheinberg, Uerdingen, Viersen
- Cologne, cantons: Cologne, Bergheim, Brühl, Dormagen, Elsen, Jülich, Kerpen, Lechenich, Weiden and Zülpich.
After Napoleon was defeated in 1814, the département was divided between the United Kingdom of the Netherlands (left bank of the Meuse and a strip along its right bank including Gennep, Tegelen and Sittard, in present Limburg (Netherlands)) and the Kingdom of Prussia (province Jülich-Cleves-Berg, presently part of North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany).