Montbéliard [key], industrial town (1990 pop. 30,639), Doubs dept., E France, on the Rhône-Rhine Canal. Automobiles are the town's primary manufacture. With its surrounding countryside it constituted a county (after the 12th cent.) of the Holy Roman Empire. The county passed (1397) to the counts (later dukes) of Württemberg, who held it, with interruptions, until its capture by French Revolutionary troops in 1793. The town was a Huguenot refuge during the Reformation. It was formally ceded to France by the Treaty of Lunéville (1801). The castle of the Montbéliard counts was rebuilt in the 18th cent.
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