A 12.5-metre stone cross, erected in 1899 on the hillside just below the Abbey of Saint-Maurice, commemorates the Klëppelkrich — the "Cudgel War" of October 1798, when the rural Catholic peasants of northern Luxembourg rose against the French revolutionary administration. The insurrection began here in the Clervaux valley and spread across the Oesling region before being crushed by French troops at the village of Mersch.
The peasants, armed mostly with clubs and farm tools, were resisting French conscription, anticlerical measures, and the abolition of traditional rural rights. The revolt is remembered in Luxembourgish national memory as the first organised resistance to a foreign occupier — a precursor of the 19th-century national awakening.
The cross is a five-minute walk from the abbey; combine the two on a half-hour loop above the town. A short inscription in French records the dates of the revolt and lists the names of the leaders executed afterward.