IX. THE LAST YEARS OF THE SPANISH RULE (1633-1715) 125 X. BELGIUM UNDER THE HOUSE OF AUSTRIA (1713-89) 130 XI. BELGIUM UNDER FRENCH DOMINATION (1792-1814) 141 XII. THE DUTCH RULE AND THE BELGIAN REVOLT OF 1830 145 XIII. INDEPENDENT BELGIUM 163 XIV. THE GREAT TRIAL 170 BIBLIOGRAPHY 183 INDEX 187 INTRODUCTION There has been much discussion about the time at which Belgian history should be said to begin. Belgium, as an entirely autonomous, independent kingdom, has existed only since 1830. But the Belgium of 1830 was, in a certain way, a creation of European diplomacy and the result of centuries of struggle for personal and political freedom. Belgium, as a country, and the Belgians, as a people, existed long before. Since the time of Caesar (57 B.C.), history tells us of the Belgians, “the bravest of all the people of Gaul,” and, although the Germanic invasions of the fourth and fifth centuries have added a new ethnical element to the old Belgian stock, it is from the time of the Roman conqueror that the history of the Belgian people really begins. As for Belgium as a united political body, one must go back to the fifteenth century, when the dukes of Burgundy succeeded in unifying all the Belgian duchies and counties under one dynasty. Before that time, Belgium had practically consisted of two very distinct parts, Lotharingia in the east, Flanders in the west, separated by the river Scheldt. Lotharingia was, politically speaking, a part of the mediaeval German empire; Flanders was in subjugation to the kingdom of France. Each succeeded--Lotharingia first, then Flanders--in evading the political domination of Germany and France, respectively, and drew closer and closer together during the last centuries of the Middle Ages. That work of union was achieved by the Burgundian dukes, who inherited from the local Lotharingian and Flemish dynasties, in the fifteenth century. But in the Middle Ages not only did the increasing tendency of union between Lotharingia and Flanders exist, but there was also a strong factor of national union, the common civilization, the common culture, of Lotharingia and Flanders. The inhabitants of the different duchies and counties were united by the same religion, the same artistic and economic aims, the same political institutions, although there were, of course, some local differences of minor importance. Since early in the Middle Ages the Belgian people had possessed a distinctive though mutually common civilization, and the local differences which existed and which were more or less well defined at the outset disappeared gradually as the different parts of the country drew closer together politically.