Luxembourg

Luxembourg, officially the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, lies between Belgium, Germany and France, two thousand five hundred square kilometres and seven hundred thousand people, nearly half of them foreigners, round the capital on its cliff. A county of the old Reich since the eleventh century, pawned and partitioned among Burgundians, Spaniards, Austrians and French, it emerged from Vienna in 1815 as a grand duchy under the Dutch king and joined the German Confederation with a Prussian garrison in its fortress. The 1839 settlement cut the French west away to Belgium; 1867 bought neutrality, the garrison's exit and the fortress's demolition. Nassau-Weilburg dukes ruled after the Dutch line failed, steel mills lined the southern red lands, and banks filled the liberated ramparts. German helmets marched through in 1914 and stayed from 1940 to 1944, Grand Duchess Charlotte broadcasting from London while her people endured. Freed in 1944, the world's only grand duchy joined NATO and the Coal and Steel Community.