Silva Carbonaria

The Silva Carbonaria (Latin for 'charcoal forest') was the dense old-growth forest of beech and oak that formed a natural boundary during the Late Iron Age through Roman times into the Early Middle Ages across what is now western Wallonia. The Silva Carbonaria was a vast forest that stretched from the rivers Zenne and the Dijle in the north to the Sambre in the south. Its northern outliers reached the then marshy site of modern Brussels. Further to the southeast, the higher elevation and deep river valleys were covered by the even less penetrable ancient Arduenna Silva, the deeply folded Ardennes, which are still partly forested to this day. To the east, the forested zone was possibly considered to extend to the Rhine. It was there in Cologne in 388 CE that the magistri militum praesentalis Nannienus and Quintinus began a counter-attack against a Frankish incursion from across the Rhine, which was fought in the Silva Carbonaria.