[Flem. België, Fr. Belgique] West European country bordering to the north with the Netherlands, the east with Germany, the south-east with Luxembourg, and the south with France. For 65 km it borders the North Sea to the west (see fig.). The rivers Scheldt, Leie, Meuse, and Sambre, which run through Belgium, have their estuaries north of the country, which therefore belongs geographically mainly to the Lower-Rhine plain; the Ardennes form an indented plateau in the south with a high-point of 692 m. The country is bisected by the Germanic-Romanic language border and is divided into ten provinces, three communities (Flanders, which is Dutch-speaking; Wallonia, which is French-speaking; and the German-speaking community of Eupen–Malmédy–Sankt-Vith), and, with the bilingual capital Brussels, into three regions. The Belgian state, created in 1830, corresponds largely to the area formerly known as the Southern Netherlands, which existed under Spanish rule in the 17th century and Austrian in the 18th (...