LOUVIERS, one of the three principal cloth-manufacturing towns of France, and the capital of the arrondissement of the same name in the department of Eure, is advantageously situate on the River Eure, 17 miles S.S.E. of Rouen. It has 30 manufactories for cloth, and 19 spinning mills of woollen yarn, which employ about 12,000 persons in and around the town. The cloth manufactured at Louviers is remarkable for its fine quality; yet the town is being gradually outstripped by Elbeuf. Louviers is an old town, of which the newer part, on the right bank of the Eure, is well built; but the older part on the left is "constructed of wood, and traversed by narrow dirty lanes, where the working classes are huddled together in ignorance, demoralization, and wretchedness." The principal building in the town is the church of Notre Dame, erected in 1496. The chief factories are for the most part well built, and the machinery of admirable construction and arrangement. Its manufacture of fine cloths dates as far back as 1680; but in 1789 it produced only from 3000 to 4000 pieces annually, while at the present day it sends forth as much as from 30,000 to 40,000 pieces. There are also dyeworks, bleachfields, tanneries, and sugar refineries
in the town. Louviers suffered severely from the early wars between France and England. Taken by Henry V. of England in 1418, and retaken by the French in 1450, it sustained a protracted siege during the following year from the Duke of Bedford, who, after taking it, razed it to the ground. It was rebuilt ten years afterwards. Louviers has a civil and commercial tribunal, and a council of prud'hommes, and (in 1851) a pop. of 10,380.