Industry appeared very early in Sélestat. The town had already several factories at the beginning of the 19th century: a tilery, a sawmill, 12 tanneries and 11 mills. Sélestat quickly became specialised in wire gauze making but it never became a large industrial centre, remaining a small town with limited influence. The completion of the Strasbourg-Basel railway (1840), one of the first to be built in France, did not lead to significant urban development. The town walls that still encircled the town were a significant factor in its economic and demographic stagnation. After the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, Alsace and a part of Lorraine were annexed by the new German Empire. The German authorities demolished the city walls in 1874 and built new spacious neighbourhoods around the old town, as they did in Strasbourg and Metz.