Cloth Seal, French, Department de la Roer

Cloth Seal, French, Department de la Roer, Image & Found by John Los.
Found near Amsterdam, 32mm.

I490 overstamped on another number / 28 1/2 // privy mark type 4 with anchor as vertical T&C overlaid all in crowned cartouch supported by lion rampant to right, DEPT DE LA ROER curved around base

With help of Philippe Lanez, "Roer was a department of the First French Empire in present-day Germany and the Netherlands. It was named after the river Roer (Rur), which flows through the department. It was formed in 1795, when the Southern Netherlands and the left bank of the Rhine were occupied by the French. The department was formed from the duchies of Jülich and Cleves, the part of the Archbishopric of Cologne left of the Rhine, the Free City of Aachen, the Prussian part of the duchy of Guelders and some smaller territories. In 1805 the city of Wesel was added to the department. The capital was Aix-la-Chapelle (Aachen).

The department was subdivided in the following arrondissements and cantons (situation in 1812):

Aachen (Aix-la-Chapelle), cantons: Aachen (2 cantons), Burtscheid, Düren, Eschweiler, Froitzheim, Geilenkirchen, Gemünd, Heinsberg, Linnich, Monschau and Sittard.
Cleves, cantons: Cleves, Geldern, Goch, Horst, Kalkar, Kranenburg, Wankum, Wesel and Xanten.
Krefeld (Crefeld), cantons: Krefeld, Bracht, Erkelenz, Kempen, Moers, Neersen, Neuss, Odenkirchen, Rheinberg, Uerdingen, Viersen
Cologne, cantons: Cologne (4 cantons), Bergheim, Brühl, Dormagen, Elsen, Jülich, Kerpen, Lechenich, Weiden and Zülpich.

After Napoleon was defeated in 1814, the department was divided between the United Kingdom of the Netherlands (left bank of the Meuse and a strip along its right bank including Gennep, Tegelen and Sittard, in present-day Dutch Limburg) and the Kingdom of Prussia (Province of Jülich-Cleves-Berg, now part of North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany)."