Up until 1815 the Lower Rhine region changed hands between the French and the Prussians several times. During the French occupation of Wesel in 1806 triggered a significant building boom with the French investing over five million francs in fortification work. The Rhine crossing at Wesel played an important role not only for the French, but also for the Prussians; a large French contingent of troops was stationed here until the 1814 withdrawal. The French administration had the old Prussian facilities converted: in 1809 the Citadel became the Barrack VIII and included a bakery building; the much larger planned complex remained incomplete until the end of the French occupation. In 1933 the northern part of the building was seperated by the newly constructed Schillstraße, so today two halves of this architectural monument are on each side of the street. After 1806 the French built another two citadels with the purpose of securing the Wesel crossing; the Citadelle Napoléon still survives as a ruin on the left bank of the Rhine. In 1815 the western Lower Rhine finally became Prussian according to the terms of the Wiener Congress and the citadel was renamed after General Field Marshall Gebhard Leberecht von Blücherwho was the most popular hero of the liberation war at the time: "Fort Blücher" continued to be used by the Prussian military. The village of Buederich located on the west of the Rhine was eradicated in order to gain a free field of fire. The Frensch had intended to rebuild the village but the Prussians undertook this task and designed Neu-Büderich as a model village following a strictly rectangular layout. The central marketplace of this religiously tolerant town saw the construction of two churches of about equal size and exposure for both the Catholic and Evangelical communities.

In front of the westwork of St. Viktor's in Xanten, a funeral monument reminds us of the French rule in the Lower Rhine region. The town of Xanten, which was under French rule from 1794 until 1814, had an obelisk erected in 1811 to commemorate the polymath Cornelis de Pauw, who died in 1799. He had been canon of the cathedral since 176 and was a respected writer during the Enlightenment and among the admirers of his popular writings was Napoleon who commanded that the obelisk be erected.

Forty years later the Ruhrort-Homberg Trajektanstalt was erected as another memorial to the Prussian-French conflict. Although in 1815 the Prussians had complete control of the western Lower Rhine, in 1852 a railway ferry and two lifting works carried freight vehicles across the Rhine instead of building a permanent bridge across the Rhine between Homberg and Ruhrort which was not desired for military reasons. By 1873 subsequently a bottleneck hindered the growth of commercial traffic. Military concerns were abandoned and a permanent railroad bridge was built.