The Brabant Revolution was a 1789-90 popular revolt against the Austrian Habsburg rule, which succeeded by surprise as local recruits massively deserted. The conservative Brussels lawyer Hendrik Vandernoot became prime minister of the independent 'United Belgian States', a federation of nine provinces (roughly Belgium), but repressed his progressive partner Jan Frans Vonck's party, only to be smashed by Habsburg troops back to before. After the French Revolution managed to annex the Southern Low Countries, their impose modernization, abandoning Catholicism and press-ganging farmer sons for their endless wars, an amateur peasant revolt 'for altar and heard' called Boerenkrijg in 1798 failed utterly to achieve any military result, but set the mood for later after centuries of relative obedience to feudal masters. The United Kingdom of the Netherlands established by the victors over Napoleon was unpopular, a 1830 revolt against king William II starting at the opera resulted in the unplanned independence under the name Belgium.