Qualla: Hombourg, Belgium

Hombourg, Belgium: Introduction

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Pimvantend, CC BY-SA 4.0. Two craft beers sit on the bar at Hombourg: the brown Joup and the blonde Brice. Order one and you have, almost unwittingly, joined a side. The rivalry goes back to 1591, the year the secular Society of Saint-Brice was carrying a statue of the Virgin in procession and, for reasons the village still debates, abandoned it at the roadside. The parish priest founded a rival Society of Saint Joseph to carry the orphaned statue, and the village split between Brices and Joupes — a feud that ran for more than three centuries through shooting clubs, theatre societies, harmony bands and local council seats. Mayors tried to broker peace in 1914 and again in the 1960s. The bottles on the bar are the truce.

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Image: Pimvantend | CC BY-SA 4.0

Hombourg, Belgium: Where Three Languages Meet

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Romaine, CC0. Hombourg sits in the wedge of Wallonia that brushes against both the Netherlands and Germany, and the village has spent a thousand years being passed between empires. Records first mention it as Hunborc in 1070. By the medieval period it belonged to the Duchy of Limburg, then to ...

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Image: Romaine | CC0

Hombourg, Belgium: The Tunnel at Laschet

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Norbert Schnitzler, CC BY-SA 3.0. On the night of 3-4 August 1914, Belgian soldiers blew the head off the Laschet railway tunnel just outside the village. The tunnel ran toward Germany, and the army wanted it useless to the troops it knew were coming. The explosion was, by most reckonings, the first tangible act ...

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Image: Norbert Schnitzler | CC BY-SA 3.0

Hombourg, Belgium: Castles in the Meadow

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Rob Oo from NL, CC BY 2.0. Two castles still stand in the fields around the village. Berlieren Castle was first mentioned in 1124 and served as a working farm until 2007 — then was renovated into guest rooms and a banqueting hall, the seventeenth-century porch left intact. Vieljaeren Castle, surrounded by ...

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Image: Rob Oo from NL | CC BY 2.0

Hombourg, Belgium: Bois-Rouge, 1799

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit flamenc, CC BY-SA 3.0. When French Revolutionary troops swept through in 1794, Hombourg did not submit quietly. The villagers waited for the Austrians to return, and when the wait grew long, they conspired. On 8 February 1799, in the woods at Rémersdael, the conjuration du Bois-Rouge took shape — a pla...

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Image: flamenc | CC BY-SA 3.0