Low Franconian

The Low Franconians speak Dutch dialects from Flemish to the Limburgish and Kleverlandish speeches of the Lower Rhine, generally regarded as the most direct descendants of the language of the Salian Franks.

From the ninth century Flanders' counts built a rich North Sea principality, and Ghent and Bruges turned English wool into luxury textiles; in 1302 Flemish militias crushed French chivalry at the Golden Spurs. Burgundy inherited Flanders in 1384 and gathered the seventeen provinces into the Burgundian Netherlands, which passed to the Habsburgs with Mary of Burgundy in 1477.

Resistance to Spanish taxation and the Reformation ignited the Eighty Years' War of 1568 to 1648, which produced the Calvinist Dutch Republic of 1588. Its merchants built the VOC empire and led the Golden Age of Rembrandt and Vermeer, the southern provinces staying with Catholic Spain and later Austria. French armies overran both in 1794 to 1795; the United Kingdom of the Netherlands reunited them in 1815 until the 1830 Belgian Revolution split them.