Over the next 240 years, Belgium would see more warfare and more geopolitical shifts, with first the Spanish Habsburgs then the Austrian Habsburgs coming into possession of the territory. This war concluded in 1548 with the lowlands of the Rhine-Meuse delta being divided in two, with the mostly-Protestant north consolidating into the United Provinces (which would form the First Dutch Republic) and the mostly-Catholic south officially known as the “Royal Provinces”. The area known as “La Belgique” - Belgium in English - largely begins its history as a distinct and particular area of the European political map following the Eighty Years’ War in the latter 15th and early 16th centuries. After that there'll be a piece on the 1796 - 1806 interbellum period, then a piece or two on the Second Coalition War, and then that'll be it from me.Įxcerpt from “Arise, Children of the Fatherland!: The First Coalition War”
This piece takes us all the way to 1796 and the end of the First Coalition War.
