Lyons does a large trade in metals, iron, steel and copper, and utilizes them in the manufacture of iron buildings, framework, bridges, machinery, railway material, scales, metal cables, pins and needles, copper-founding and the making of clocks and bronzes. Gold and silver-working is of importance, especially for embroidery and articles used in religious ceremonies. Other industries are those of printing, the manufacture of glass goods, of tobacco (by the State), the preparation of hides and skins (occupying 20,000 workmen), those connected with the miller's trade, the manufacture of various forms of dried flour-paste (macaroni, vermicelli, etc.), brewing, hat-making, the manufacture of chocolate, and the pork-butcher's industry. Apart from the dealings in silk and silk goods, trade is in cloth, coal and char coal, metals and metal goods, wine and spirits, cheese and chest nuts. Four miles south-west of Lyons is Oullins (pop. 9,859) which has the important works of the P.L.M. railway.
Lyons is the seat of the Credit Lyonnais, one of the chief banks of France; also of coal and metallurgical companies and gas companies, home and foreign.
The earliest Gallic people who occupied the territory at the confluence of the Rhone and the Saone were the Segusians. In 59 B.C. some Greek refugees from the banks of the Herault, hav ing obtained permission of the natives to establish themselves beside the Croix-Rousse, called their new town by the Gallic name Lugudunum (q.v.) or Lugdunum; and in 43 B.c. Lucius Munatius Plancus brought a Roman colony to Fourvieres from Vienne. This settlement soon acquired importance, and was made by Agrippa the starting-point of four great roads. Augustus, besides building aqueducts, temples and a theatre, gave it a senate and made it the seat of an annual assembly of deputies from the sixty cities of Gallia Comata. At the same time the place became the Gallic centre for the worship of Rome and the emperor. Under the emperors the colony of Forum Vetus and the municipium of Lugdunum were united, receiving the jus senatus. The town was burnt in A.D. 59 and afterwards rebuilt in a much finer style with money given by Nero; it was also adorned by Trajan, Adrian and Antoninus.
After having been ravaged by the barbarians and abandoned by the empire, Lyons in 478 became capital of the kingdom of the Burgundians. It afterwards fell into the hands of the Franks, and suffered severely from the Saracens, but revived under Charlemagne, and after the death of Charles the Bald became part of the kingdom of Provence. From 1032 it was a fief of the emperor of Germany. Subsequently the authority over the town was a subject of dispute between the archbishops of Lyons and the counts of Forez; but the supremacy of the French kings was established under Philip the Fair in 1312. The citizens were
constituted into a commune ruled by freely elected consuls (1320). In the 13th century two ecclesiastical councils were held at Lyons—one in 1245, presided over by Innocent IV., at which the emperor Frederick II. was deposed; the second, the oecu menical, under the presidency of Gregory X., in 1274, at which five hundred bishops met. Pope Clement V. was crowned here in 1305, and his successor, John XXII., elected in 1316. The Protestants obtained possession of the place in 1562; their acts of violence were fiercely avenged in 1572 after the St. Bartholo mew massacre. Under Henry III. Lyons sided with the League; but it pronounced in favour of Henry IV. The executions of Henri d'Effiat, marquis of Cinq-Mars, and of Francois de Thou, who had plotted to overthrow Richelieu, took place on the Place des Terreaux in 1642. In 1793 the Royalists and Girondists, powerful in the city, rose against the Convention, but were com pelled to yield to the army of the republic under General Keller mann after enduring a siege of seven weeks (October 1 o).
Terrible chastisement ensued: the name of "Lyon" was changed to that of "Ville-affranchie"; the demolition of its buildings was set about on a wholesale scale; and vast numbers of the proscribed, whom the scaffold had spared, were butchered with grape shot. The town resumed its old name after the fall of and the terrorists in their turn were drowned in large numbers in the Rhone. Napoleon rebuilt the Place Bellecour, reopened the churches, and made the bridge of Tilsit over the Saone between Bellecour and the cathedral. In 1814 and 1815 Lyons was occupied by the Austrians. In 1831, 1834, 1849, 187o and 1871 it was the scene of violent industrial or political disturbances. In 1840 and 1856 disastrous floods laid waste portions of the city. Inter national exhibitions were held here in 1872 and 1894, the latter occasion being marked by the assassination of President Carnot.
Since 1916 an annual international fair is held at Lyons. It has shown a notable increase of business and aims at rivalling Leipzig. A permanent exhibition building on the banks of the Rhone has been erected and space for exhibitors is reserved on both sides of the road on the left bank of the river and in the square near the main railway station. Poland and Soviet Russia were represented at the exhibition for the first time in 1923. The Wilson bridge over the Rhone was opened in 1918.