Editing Southern Netherlands (section)

==French annexation==
{{History of the Low Countries}}

In the course of the [[French Revolution]], the entire region (including territories that were never under Habsburg rule, like the [[Prince-Bishopric of Liège]]) was overrun by [[First French Republic|French]] armies after they won the [[Battle of Sprimont]] in 1794. The territory was then annexed to the Republic (October 1, 1795).

Only a minority of the population – mostly the local [[Jacobin]]s and other members of "Societies of Friends of Liberty and Equality" in urban areas – supported the annexation. The majority were hostile to the French regime, above all because of the imposition of the [[assignat]], wholesale conscription, and the ferocious antireligious policies of the French revolutionaries. The opposition was first led by the Catholic clergy, which became an irreducible enemy of the French Republic after it dissolved convents and monasteries and confiscated ecclesiastical properties, ordered the separation of Church and State, shut down the [[Old University of Leuven|University of Louvain]] and other Catholic educational institutions, regulated church attendance and introduced divorce. In 1797, nearly 8000 priests refused to swear the newly introduced Oath of Hatred of Kings ("serment de haine à la royauté"), and went into hiding to escape arrest and deportation. The situation, particularly in the religious field, eased with the rise to power of Bonaparte in 1799, but soon, the intensification of conscription, the police state and the [[Continental System]], which brought ruin to [[Ostend]] and Antwerp, reignited opposition to French rule.{{sfn|Bitsch|1992|p=73-75}} During that period Belgium was divided into nine [[département]]s: [[Deux-Nèthes]], [[Dyle (department)|Dyle]], [[Escaut (department)|Escaut]], [[Forêts]], [[Jemmape (department)|Jemmape]], [[Lys (department)|Lys]], [[Meuse-Inférieure]], [[Ourthe (department)|Ourthe]] and [[Sambre-et-Meuse]].

[[Empire of Austria|Austria]] confirmed the loss of its territories by the [[Treaty of Campo Formio]], in 1797.

In anticipation of Napoleon's defeat in 1814, it was hotly debated inside Austrian ruling circles whether Austria should get the Southern Netherlands back or, in view of the experience gained after the War of the Spanish Succession about the difficulty of defending non contiguous possessions, whether she should not instead obtain contiguous territorial compensations in Northern Italy.{{sfn|Kann|1974|pp=229–230}} This latter viewpoint won and the Congress of Vienna allotted the Southern Netherlands to the new [[United Kingdom of the Netherlands]]. After the [[Belgian Revolution]] of 1830, the region separated to become the independent Kingdom of [[Belgium]].