French Flanders

French Flanders (French: La Flandre française; Dutch: Frans-Vlaanderen) is a part of the historical County of Flanders in present-day France. The region lies in the modern-day region of Hauts-de-France and roughly corresponds to the arrondissements of Lille, Douai and Dunkirk on the southern border of the present Kingdom of Belgium. Together with French Hainaut, it makes up the French Department of Nord.

French Flanders is mostly flat marshlands in the coal-rich area just south of the North Sea. It consists of two regions:

Once a part of ancient and medieval Francia since the inception of the Frankish kingdom (descended from the Empire of Charlemagne) under the Merovingian monarchs such as Clovis I, who was crowned at Tournai, Flanders gradually fell under the control of the English and then Spanish. When French national military power returned under the Bourbons with King Louis XIV "The Sun King" (1638-1715), a part of historically French Flanders was returned to the Kingdom.

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