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Abstract: „During the 16th century, a border of sovereignty was gradually being devised between the Kingdom of France and the Duchy of Luxembourg. At the dawn of modern times, a border was not thought of as a fixed and delimited line but as a moving space, characterized by the entanglement of feudal rights, shaped by the relations between various seigniorial entities. This article reflects on the transformation of feudal structures inherited from the Middle Ages, marked by subjection to local lords, and the gradual emergence of a new conception of sovereignty, territorializing power and asserting state authority over larger spaces. The Duchy of Lorraine and Bar was a buffer state caught up in the confrontation between the Valois and the Habsburgs. It became part of a border march between the Meuse and the Moselle marked out by fortresses: a clear expression of the military front produced by the new balance of power. However, the dynamics of war alone cannot account for the efforts made to stabilize the border. The border was also a space of negotiation around which a princely order emerged. The recognition of a judicial and political concept of sovereignty implied a new relationship between princely power and society, shaped by a new administrative system of controlling a territory and its population. The border came to be redefined as the outward face of a society organized around the sovereignty of the state. Yet this process was far from being achieved at the beginning of the 17th century.“