Charbonniers

from the common noun charbonnier used as a determinant of toponym, oronym, and hydronym in the Haute Moselle valley in the Vosges massif. In the 16th century, the Dukes of Lorraine encouraged the immigration of miners, foresters, and charcoal burners in the form of franchises and privileges for the exploitation of the mines of the Ban de Ramonchamp. These were mainly Tyroleans, Swiss, Saxons, and Swedes in French-speaking territory. The charcoal burners, a nomadic and closed population, lived apart from the people of the finage. A transverse valley of the Moselle, very remote, was exploited and colonized according to tradition by Swedes, whose first prefect of the Vosges, Henri-Zacharie Desgouttes, discovered in 1800 that they still lived in complete self-sufficiency on national territory with their own original language and requested that the sub-prefect bring him some kind of title. In the absence of legal documentation, the forest agents enforced republican legislation in the valley, not without resistance from the charcoal burners, who eventually merged with the local population.