Editing Southern Netherlands (section)

== Place in the broader Netherlands ==
[[File:Habsburg Map 1547.jpg|thumb|A map of the dominion of the [[Habsburg]]s following the [[Battle of Mühlberg]] (1547) as depicted in ''The Cambridge Modern History Atlas'' (1912); Habsburg lands are shaded green. From 1556 the dynasty's lands in the [[Low Countries]], the east of France, Italy, Sardinia, and Sicily were retained by the Spanish Habsburgs.]]
[[File:Karel II AR Florin 82001326.jpg|thumb|Silver florin of [[Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor|Emperor Charles V]] with the coat of arms of the House of Burgundy (Low Countries, etc.) c. 1553.]]

As they were very wealthy, the Netherlands in general were an important territory of the [[House of Habsburg|Habsburg]] crown which also ruled Spain and Austria among other places. But unlike the other Habsburg dominions, they were led by a merchant class. It was the merchant economy which made them wealthy, and the Habsburg attempts at increasing taxation to finance their wars{{NoteTag|name=fn_1}} was a major factor in the population’s (merchants') efforts to defend their privileges. This, added to resistance to penal laws enforced by the [[Habsburg monarchy]] that made [[heresy]] a [[Capital punishment|capital crime]], led to a general rebellion of the Netherlands against Habsburg rule towards 1570 (protests and hostilities started the [[Eighty Years' War]] {{Circa|1566}}–1568). Although the northern seven provinces, led by [[Holland]] and [[Zeeland]], established their independence as the [[Dutch Republic|United Provinces]] after 1581, the ten southern Netherlands were reconquered by the Spanish general [[Alexander Farnese, Duke of Parma]]. Liège, Stavelot-Malmédy and Bouillon maintained their independence.

The Habsburg Netherlands passed to the Austrian Habsburgs after the [[War of the Spanish Succession]] in 1714. Under Austrian rule, the ten provinces' defence of their privileges proved as troublesome to the reforming Emperor [[Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor]] as it had to his ancestor [[Philip II of Spain|Philip II]] two centuries earlier, leading to a major rebellion in 1789–1790. The Austrian Netherlands were ultimately lost to the [[French Revolutionary Wars|French Revolutionary armies]], and annexed to France in 1794. Following the war, Austria's loss of the territories was confirmed, and they were joined with the northern Netherlands as a single kingdom under the [[House of Orange]] at the 1815 [[Congress of Vienna]]. The southeastern third of Luxembourg Province was made into the autonomous Grand Duchy of [[Luxembourg]], because it was claimed by both the Netherlands and Prussia.

In 1830 the predominantly Roman Catholic southern half became independent as the [[Kingdom of Belgium]] (the northern half being predominantly [[Calvinist]]){{cn|date=October 2018}}. In 1839 the final border between the [[kingdom of the Netherlands]] and Belgium was determined and the eastern part of Limburg went to the Netherlands as the [[Limburg (Netherlands)|province of Limburg]]. The autonomy of Luxembourg was recognised in 1839, but an instrument to that effect was not signed until 1867. The King of the Netherlands was Grand Duke of Luxembourg until 1890, when [[William III of the Netherlands|William III]] was succeeded by his daughter, [[Wilhelmina of the Netherlands]] – but Luxembourg still followed the [[Salic law]] at the time, which forbade a woman to rule in her own right; so the union of the Dutch and Luxembourgish crowns then ended. The northwestern two-thirds of the original Luxembourg remains a province of Belgium.