The Battle of Tourcoing was fought near the town of Tourcoing, just north of Lille in northeastern France on 18 May 1794 and resulted in the victory of the French under Major-Generals Joseph Souham and Jean Moreau over the British under the Duke of York and the Austrians under General the Prince of Saxe-Coburg. It is sometimes referred to the Battle of Turcoine, as a gesture towards the British pronunciation of the town.

Under the temporary leadership of Souham, Maj-Gen Charles Pichegru's Army of the North (Armée du Nord) encountered an Austro-British-German force at Tourcoing. Despite a slight advantage in numbers, the 74,000 Allied troops under Saxe-Coburg were out-led and out-fought by Souham's 70,000 French troops. (However, one authority gives the French total as 82,000.)

Souham devised a strategic pincer movement consisting of his division attacking southwards from Kortrijk (Courtrai) and Maj-Gen Bonnaud's division northeastwards from Lille, thus catching the separated allied columns of Von dem Bussche, Rudolf Ritter von Otto and the Duke of York between them. Meanwhile part of Moreau's command held off the assault of the Count of Clerfayt from the north. It was a sprawling engagement fought out over many square miles of countryside just west of the Scheldt River in Flanders. Together with Maj-Gen Jean-Baptiste Jourdan's victory at the Battle of Fleurus on 16 June, Tourcoing marked the start of the allied evacuation of its forces from Flanders and French supremacy in Western Europe.

Coordinates: 50°43′56″N 3°06′14″E / 50.7323°N 3.1040°E / 50.7323; 3.1040

Tourcoing (French pronunciation: [tuʁ.kwɛ̃]) is a city in northern France. It is designated municipally as a commune within the département of Nord.

Tourcoing is situated near the cities of Lille and Roubaix and the Belgian border.

The city was the site of a significant victory for France during the French Revolutionary Wars. Marshal Charles Pichegru and his generals Joseph Souham and Jean Moreau defeated a combined force of British and Austrian troops in the Battle of Tourcoing on 29 Floréal II (18 May 1794).

The Gare de Tourcoing is a railway station offering direct connections to Lille and Paris (high speed trains), Kortrijk, Ostend, Ghent and Antwerp.

Louis Victor Jules Vierne (8 October 1870 – 2 June 1937) was a French organist and composer.

Louis Vierne was born in Poitiers, Vienne, nearly blind due to congenital cataracts, but at an early age was discovered to have an unusual gift for music. (At age two he heard the piano for the first time. The pianist played him a Schubert lullaby and he promptly began to pick out the notes of the lullaby on the piano.)

After completing school in the provinces, Louis Vierne entered the Paris Conservatory. From 1892, Vierne served as an assistant to the organist Charles-Marie Widor at the church of Saint-Sulpice in Paris. Vierne subsequently became principal organist at the cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris, a post he held from 1900 until his death in 1937.

Vierne had a life that was physically and emotionally very difficult, with severe spiritual trials that are reflected in much of his music. His congenital cataracts did not make him completely blind, but he was what would be called today "legally blind." Early in his career, he composed on outsized manuscript paper, using "a large pencil" as his friend Marcel Dupré described. Later in life, as his limited sight continued to diminish, he resorted to Braille to do most of his work.