Though the seven Northern provinces could be considered as definitely lost after the failure of Farnese's last attempt to reconquer them, the Spanish Netherlands still included, at the beginning of the seventeenth century, the three duchies of Brabant, Limburg (with its dependencies beyond the Meuse, Daelhem, Fauquemont and Rolduc), Luxemburg and a small part of Gelder with Ruremonde; four counties, Flanders, Artois, Hainault and Namur, and the two seigneuries of Malines and Tournai. When, in 1715, the Southern Netherlands passed under Austrian sovereignty, they had lost Maestricht and part of Northern Limburg, Northern Brabant, Zeeland Flanders, Walloon Flanders and Artois, and various small enclaves, most of their fortified towns being further obliged to receive foreign garrisons, maintained at the expense of the State. Antwerp remained closed, and the efforts made during the first years of the seventeenth century to restore the economic situation through industrial and agricultural activity were practically annihilated by incessant wars. This situation was evidently caused by the weakness of Spain, which, though clinging to its Northern possessions, did not possess the means to defend them against the ambition of European Powers, more especially France. It was due also to the policy of the United Provinces, who considered Belgium as a mere buffer State which they could use for their own protection and whose ruin, through the closing of Antwerp, was one of the conditions of their own prosperity. Up to the War of the Spanish Succession, England played a less prominent part in the various conflicts affecting the Southern Netherlands, but she succeeded, on several occasions, in checking the annexationist projects of France, whose presence along the Belgian coast was a far greater danger than that of a weak and impoverished Spain. [_WEAKNESS OF BELGIUM_]