the Austrian Netherlands. Though the French defeated the Austrian army in the Battle of Jemappes in 1792 and briefly occupied the Austrian Netherlands and Liège, they were pushed out by an Austrian counterattack in the Battle of Neerwinden the following year. In June 1794, French revolutionary troops expelled Holy Roman forces from the region for the last time after the Battle of Fleurus. The French government voted to formally annex the territory in October 1795 and it was split into nine provincial départements within France. French rule in the region, known as the French period (Franse tijd or période française), was marked by the rapid implementation and extension of numerous reforms which had been passed in post-Revolution France since 1789. Administration was organised under the French model, with meritocratic selection. Legal equality and state secularism were also introduced. Legacy After the defeat of the French in the Napoleonic Wars in 1815, Belgium came under Dutch rule. The Belgian Revolution, which broke out on 25 August 1830 after the performance of a nationalist opera in Brussels led to a minor insurrection among the capital's bourgeoisie, was inspired to some extent by the Brabant Revolution. The day after the revolution broke out, revolutionaries began flying their own flag, clearly influenced by the colours chosen by the Brabant Revolution of 1789. The colours (red, yellow and black) today form the national flag of Belgium. Some historians have also argued that the Vonckists and Statists were the forerunners of the major political factions, the Liberals and the Catholics, which would dominate Belgian politics after independence. Historical analysis The Brabant Revolution has been extensively used for historical comparisons with other revolutions of the time. The leading Belgian historian, Henri Pirenne, contrasted the Brabant Revolution, which he termed "defensive" or "conservative", with the more enlightened uprisings in France and Liège in his Histoire de Belgique series. Other historians have agreed, commenting that the Brabant revolutionaries had an ideology which was deliberately opposed to the Enlightened and Democratic vision of the French Revolutionaries. The historians Jacques Godechot and Robert Roswell Palmer characterised the ideology of the French revolutionaries as founded on beliefs in the "enlightenment" and "national consciousness". Palmer argued for similarities between the Brabant Revolution and the counter-revolutionary activities of pre-revolutionary institutions, like the guilds and the aristocracy, in France which were ultimately defeated and abolished. Some historians have similarly drawn parallels between the Brabant Revolution