La Cité ardente’ is the name given to Liège by Henry Carton de Wiart to depict “the city itself, with its impulses and repulsions, its drives, its swoons and ardours”.
A few weeks after the publication of this historical novel in Paris, the future King Albert 1st used the same expression to describe the city at the inauguration of the Universal Exhibition in Liège on 26 April 1905: ‘the ardent city whose inhabitants are the tireless continuators of a past of hard work and age-old valour’.
From then on, Liège became the ‘Cité ardente’, just as Paris became the ‘Ville lumière’.
The events recounted in the novel are real: the sack of Dinant in 1466, the Battle of Brusthem in 1467, the 600 Franchimontois in 1468. The characters are real: Compagnons de la Verte Tente,, Guillaume de Berlo, Raes de Heers, Vincent de Bueren …
