The German High Command hoped to exploit the ethnic tension between the Flemish and Walloons, and envisioned a post-war German protectorate in Flanders, while Wallonia was to be used for industrial materials and labour along with much of northeastern France.
Jean Lemaire de Belges, late Medieval, early Renaissance poet and historian
Walloons |
Spanish history remembers this battle for the vain gallantry of the Guard and Walloon regiments under Vicente Genaro de Quesada.
In 1758 the 'Seigneurie de Seneffe' was bought by Joseph Depestre, a Walloon merchant who earned a fortune by selling goods to the Imperial Austrian troops stationed in the Austrian Netherlands.
The Walloon families had originally arrived at Noten Island (Governors Island) across from Fort Amsterdam in the Upper New York Bay, They had been sent south in order to begin the population of the province of New Netherland.
The impoverished family was not able to provide better, and Isabella married a Walloon knight, Walter III of Enghien, whose lordships in and around the Hainaut were not unsubstantial (Condé, Enghien).
On the suppression of the academy of Sedan in 1681, Jurieu received an invitation to a church at Rouen, but, afraid to remain in France on account of his forthcoming work, La Politique du clergé de France, he went to Holland and was pastor of the Walloon church of Rotterdam till his death.
During the era following the Reformation, usually known as the period of Lutheran Orthodoxy, small groups of non-Lutherans, especially Calvinist Dutchmen, the Moravian Church and Walloons or French Huguenots from Belgium, played a significant role in trade and industry, and were quietly tolerated as long as they kept a low religious profile.