Minden

Minden, a Prussian town in Westphalia, on the Weser, 40 miles W. of Hanover. Till 1873 a fortress of the second class, it was already a town in Charlemagne's day, and suffered much in the Thirty Years' War, and again in the Seven Years' War, when, on 1st August 1759, the French were defeated here by an Anglo-Hanoverian army under Ferdinand of Brunswick and Lord George Sackville. It has a fine new bridge (1874), a Gothic town-hall, a Catholic church (till 1811 cathedral), built between the 11th century and 1379, and restored in 1864–85, manufactures of tobacco, beer, brandy, glass, &c., and a considerable river trade. Pop. (1890) 20,223. See also MÜNDEN.