All Dumouriez's promises had been long forgotten and no account whatever was taken now of the wishes of the population. Old charters were destroyed and people were obliged to plant "trees of liberty" in the market-places. The names of the streets were altered, the use of the Republican calendar enforced and the "decadi" (observance of the tenth day) substituted for Sunday. Religious festivals were replaced by feasts in honour of "Nature" or "Mankind," and most of the churches were closed or transformed into barracks, storehouses or temples devoted to the worship of the "Supreme Being." Finally, in 1795, a proposal was made to the Committee of Public Safety to annex the territory of the Austrian Netherlands. In spite of a few protests, the proposal was adopted, on October 1, 1795, and the country divided into nine departments--Lys, Escaut, Deux Nethes, Meuse Inferieure, Dyle, Ourthe, Jemappes, Sambre et Meuse and Forets. The regime of the Directoire was equally hateful to the Belgians, who derived scant benefit from their annexation. The Flemish language was proscribed from official documents, all public manifestations of Catholic worship were forbidden, and the estates of religious communities confiscated. After the coup d'etat of the eighteenth Fructidor, the Directoire exacted from every priest an oath of hatred against monarchy. Most of the Belgian priests having refused to take this oath, deportations and persecutions followed. Many churches were destroyed, among them St. Lambert, the cathedral of Liege. By the treaty of Campo Formio (1797), Francis II submitted to the annexation of the Austrian Netherlands, but Great Britain refused to give up the fight, faithful to her traditional policy, which could not admit the presence of the French on the Belgian coast, which was all the more threatening now that they held the left bank of the Scheldt. The next year the second coalition was formed, and the Directoire applied to the Belgian departments the new law of conscription.