The ', renamed fort Saint-Privat by the French in 1919 is a fortification near Metz. It is part of the first fortified belt forts of Metz and had its baptism of fire in late 1944, during the Battle of Metz. == Historical context == Fort Saint-Privat belongs to the first fortified belt of Metz designed during Second Empire by . The first fortified belt of Metz consists of forts Saint-Privat (1870) of Queuleu (1867), des Bordes (1870) Saint-Julien (1867), Gambetta, Déroulède, Decaen, Plappeville (1867) and St. Quentin (1867), most of them unfinished in 1870, when the Franco-Prussian War burst out. During The Annexation, Metz, which oscillates between a German garrison of 15,000 and 20,000 men at the beginning of the period〔.〕 (and which exceeds 25,000 men before the First World War)〔.〕 gradually became the first stronghold of the German Reich.〔François Roth, « Metz annexée à l’Empire allemand », dans François-Yves Le Moigne, Histoire de Metz, Toulouse, Privat, , p. 350.〕