AUBE, department, France, south-east of Paris, including the courses of the Seine and Aube from near the edge of the Jurassic rocks of Cote d'Or to the lowland in which Aube, Seine, Yonne and Loing unite. Its north boundary is largely an old frontier zone, e.g., between Remi and Senones of early Gallo-Roman times, between the archbishoprics of Sens and Reims, between France and Burgundy till the days of Hugh Capet. The two main rivers traverse the Champagne Humide and the Champagne Pouil leuse, the clay and the chalk, in succession. Much of the depart ment is a sterile and monotonous plain with habitations near the Sommes or springs coming from the chalk, but a large outlier of Tertiary rocks covering the chalk in the south-west, the Foret d'Othe, is shared between Aube and Yonne. On the Jurassic rocks in the south-east a height of 1,200ft. is reached and thence the general slope is down to the north-west. As an unforested region of early times it seems to have had some prehistoric importance, and as the unforested lowland north-east of the highland ways through Cote d'Or to Paris it was long a traders' route and had great fairs at .Troyes and Arcis-sur-Aube. The transition in the north-west from chalk to Tertiary deposits gives a broken sur face. The climate is fairly mild and the rainfall mostly between 600 and 70o mm. per annum, but greater along the edge of the highland in the south-east, where porous Jurassic rocks give slopes useful for the vine. The river zones have good natural pasture and are famed for cattle and cheese, helped by good forage crops.
The capital of the department is Troyes, and that city, Bar-sur Aube, and Nogent-sur-Seine give their names to arrondissements. The department is in the military circumscription of the XXth Army Corps, its courts refer to the Court of Appeal at Paris, its educational area (academie) is that of Dijon. The archbishopric of Sens includes a bishopric of Troyes, and that cathedral's famed collection of painted (16th century) glass is the crowning example of a remarkable feature of the churches of the department. Within the department is the historic abbey of Clairvaux.