LIBERTY, EQUALITY, FRATERNITY
One of the reasons of Joseph II's failure to reform Belgian
institutions was that his monarchical power rested mainly on the
nobility, the clergy and the peasants, who were bound to resent the
sacrifice of their privileges and traditions. The French Republic and
its outcome, the Napoleonic regime, were more successful, not because
they displayed more diplomacy and moderation, but because, in spite of
their excesses and autocratic procedure, they really brought a new idea
into the country and based their power on a new conception of society.
The bourgeois elements of the Vonckist school and the population of the
great towns had by now been permeated with the spirit of the
Revolution. They had adopted the principle of the Rights of Man and of
equal citizenship, and, for the sake of such ideals, they were prepared
to make some allowances. The first years of the French regime were
nevertheless a bitter disappointment.
[_JEMAPPES_]
By the declaration of Pillnitz (1791), Leopold II, brother of the
French queen, had laid the basis of the first coalition and manifested
his intention of intervening in favour of Louis XVI. After his death
(1792) Francis II pursued a still more aggressive policy towards the
Revolution, and the Girondins, who had just come into power, obliged
the King of France to declare war against Austria. The first attacks
against Belgium were easily repulsed by the imperial troops, commanded
by national leaders, but the victory of Jemappes (November 6th), won by
Dumouriez with the help of a Belgian legion, opened the Belgian
provinces to the revolutionary troops. General Dumouriez was a moderate
and intended to remain faithful to the principles of liberty. He issued
a proclamation, approved by the Convention, declaring that his soldiers
were coming as allies and as brothers. When, on November 14th, he was
offered the keys of Brussels by the magistrates, he refused them,
saying: "Keep the keys yourselves and keep them carefully; let no
foreigner rule you any more, for you are not made for such a fate."
Greatly impressed by the warm reception given him in Mons and Brussels
by the Vonckists, he did not realize that the country was far from
being unanimous. The French general declared the Scheldt open, in
accordance with a decree of the Republic which had proclaimed the
freedom of the river.
Illustration: BELGIUM UNDER FRENCH RULE.
While the Belgians hesitated to declare a Convention and to organize
themselves according to the Republican regime, they began to feel the
first effects of the occupation. The French army, in the region of
Liege, lived only on requisitions. Cambon had presented to the
Convention (December 1792) a decree suppressing all distinctions and
privileges in the conquered territories, these being replaced by the
sovereignty of the people. This sovereignty being without expression in
Belgium, the provinces were practically administered by a number of
Jacobin Commissaries, whose most important task was to confiscate the
goods of the nobles and of the clergy and to enforce the circulation
of the revolutionary paper money (assignats). These measures provoked a
reaction in favour of Statism, and the conservatives obtained an
overwhelming majority in the elections held in December. Meanwhile,
England and the United Provinces, alarmed by the progress of the French
in the Netherlands, had joined the first coalition (January 1793), and
the Jacobins, dominating the Convention, had entered upon an
annexationist policy, nothing short of the left bank of the Rhine being
able, according to them, to secure France against the attacks of the
reaction. In order to appease the scruples of the French moderates, the
Jacobins endeavoured to provoke manifestations in favour of annexation
in the Belgian provinces. A regular propaganda was organized by the
Clubs. Orators, wearing the scarlet hood and armed with pikes,
addressed the crowds in the market-places. The deputy Chepy, who had
taken the leadership of the movement, declared that he was determined
to obtain reunion by "the power of reason, the touching insinuations of
philanthropy and by all means of revolutionary tactics." On many
occasions crowds driven into a church were surrounded by armed "Sans
Culottes" and obliged to manifest their attachment to the Republic by
loud acclamations. In March 1793 a rising was imminent, ten thousand
armed peasants being already concentrated near Grammont. It was
prevented, at the last moment, by the return of Dumouriez, who ordered
Chepy to be arrested, liberated hostages and enforced the restitution
of the spoils taken from churches and castles. In a letter to the
Convention, he protested against the mad policy pursued by the Jacobin
Commissaries, and adjured them to read through the story of the
Netherlands, where they would find that the good will of the Belgian
people could never be obtained by force.
[_NEERWINDEN_]
Defeated at Neerwinden (March 1793), Dumouriez was obliged to retreat,
and on April 28th the Austrians re-entered Brussels. The restoration
was favourably greeted by the people, especially as Francis II adhered
faithfully to the old privileges, abstaining from levying recruits,
after the refusal of the States of Brabant, and personally taking the
oath of the Joyous Entry (April 1794). This was the last time that this
ancient ceremony was performed.
A few days later, Pichegru started a great offensive movement in
Flanders, and on June 26th, the victory of Fleurus again placed the
Belgian provinces in French hands. While Jourdan pursued the
imperialists towards the Rhine, taking Maestricht on his way, Pichegru
continued the campaign in Holland. Zeeland Flanders had already been
conquered by Moreau, and the treaty of The Hague (May 1795) restored to
the Belgian provinces most of the districts lost by the treaty of
Muenster, nearly a century and a half before. France obtained Zeeland
Flanders with the left bank of the Scheldt, and, in Limburg, the key
positions of Maestricht and Venloo. She obtained, besides, the right to
place garrisons, in war-time, in Bois-le-Duc and other towns of North
Brabant. Holland was promised compensation in Gelder.
[_REPUBLICAN RULE_]
While the internal policy of the Republic was veiled in so much
ideology and marred by tyrannous cupidity, its foreign policy was based
on sound realism. The French plenipotentiaries, like Joseph II, but far
more clearly, perceived that the possession of the key positions on the
Scheldt and on the Meuse was essential to the security of the country
and to its commercial prosperity. A comparison between the clauses of
the treaty of The Hague and of the treaty of Muenster is particularly
enlightening. Apparently, the demands of the French were moderate; in
fact, they entirely reversed the situation created in the seventeenth
century. No wholesale annexations would have given the French
equivalent advantages. The choice of the Republic was dictated by sound
strategic principles and determined by the same motives as had guided
the Dutch in 1648.
But the Belgian people, suffering from all the evils of foreign
occupation, could derive but scant satisfaction from the restoration of
the lost districts. The Convention was waging war on the world and
bleeding Belgium white in order to find the necessary resources. The
provinces were obliged to pay a contribution of 80,000,000 francs,
amounting to six times the previous yearly budget. Hostages were taken
from the towns which could not contribute their share. Requisitions of
all raw material were systematically organized. Cambon boasted to the
Convention that the Netherlands not only provided for the upkeep of the
Republican armies, but also enriched the national treasury. Under the
management of the "Agence de Commerce et d'Extraction de la Belgique,"
the treasuries of churches, convents, corporations and municipalities
were carted away, together with pictures, works of art and industrial
machines. The Republican agents, nicknamed the "French sponges," even
went as far as plundering private property. At the same time, the value
of the assignats had fallen to a ridiculously low level, and in order
to check the corresponding rise in prices the authorities had fixed a
"maximum" and obliged the traders to keep their shops open.
All Dumouriez's promises had been long forgotten and no account
whatever was taken now of the wishes of the population. Old charters
were destroyed and people were obliged to plant "trees of liberty" in
the market-places. The names of the streets were altered, the use of
the Republican calendar enforced and the "decadi" (observance of the
tenth day) substituted for Sunday. Religious festivals were replaced by
feasts in honour of "Nature" or "Mankind," and most of the churches
were closed or transformed into barracks, storehouses or temples
devoted to the worship of the "Supreme Being." Finally, in 1795, a
proposal was made to the Committee of Public Safety to annex the
territory of the Austrian Netherlands. In spite of a few protests, the
proposal was adopted, on October 1, 1795, and the country divided into
nine departments--Lys, Escaut, Deux Nethes, Meuse Inferieure, Dyle,
Ourthe, Jemappes, Sambre et Meuse and Forets.
The regime of the Directoire was equally hateful to the Belgians, who
derived scant benefit from their annexation. The Flemish language was
proscribed from official documents, all public manifestations of
Catholic worship were forbidden, and the estates of religious
communities confiscated. After the coup d'etat of the eighteenth
Fructidor, the Directoire exacted from every priest an oath of hatred
against monarchy. Most of the Belgian priests having refused to take
this oath, deportations and persecutions followed. Many churches were
destroyed, among them St. Lambert, the cathedral of Liege.
By the treaty of Campo Formio (1797), Francis II submitted to the
annexation of the Austrian Netherlands, but Great Britain refused to
give up the fight, faithful to her traditional policy, which could not
admit the presence of the French on the Belgian coast, which was all
the more threatening now that they held the left bank of the Scheldt.
The next year the second coalition was formed, and the Directoire
applied to the Belgian departments the new law of conscription.
Up to that moment, with the exception of the rising avoided by
Dumouriez, the Belgians had not attempted to rebel. Exhausted by the
Brabanconne revolution, divided among themselves, they had merely shown
a passive resistance to Republican propaganda and to the efforts made
by their masters to induce them to take part in rationalistic worship.
This last measure, however, provoked a rising among the peasantry. Many
young men, liable to conscription, preferred to die fighting for their
liberty than for the French. The movement was quite desperate. It could
expect no help from outside, neither could it be supported by the
nobles, who had fled the country, or by the high clergy, who were now
powerless. The peasants were assembled in the villages, at the sound
of the tocsin, wearing their working clothes and often armed only with
clubs or forks. They raided small towns and villages, cut down the
trees of liberty, destroyed the registers on which the conscription
lists were based and molested those who were suspected of French
sympathies. The rising, begun in the Pays de Waes, spread to Brabant,
and especially to the Campine. The repression, entrusted to General
Jardon, was merciless. Most of the leaders were shot and their
followers dispersed after heavy losses.
[_NAPOLEON_]
The rule of Napoleon restored peace to the Low Countries. The emperor
carried the war far from the Belgian frontiers. The United Provinces
had become a vassal kingdom, under the sceptre of Napoleon's brother
Louis (1806), and, with the exception of a British landing on the
island of Walcheren which miscarried (1809), the Belgian provinces were
spared military operations up to the eve of the fall of the imperial
regime.
In spite of the aversion caused by incessant conscription levies and by
the strict censorship which stifled intellectual life, the Belgians
benefited largely from the stern rule of the emperor, who
re-established discipline and succeeded in substituting many Belgian
notables for the French officials who had, up to then, governed the
country. Prefects were placed at the head of the departments, which
were divided into arrondissements and municipalities, each of these
divisions possessing its own councils and its own courts: justices of
the peace, courts of the first instance, courts of assize with a jury,
above which were installed Courts of Appeal and a Court of Cassation.
A "general code of simple laws," still known as the Code Napoleon, was
substituted, in 1804, for the confused and intricate customs and laws
preserved from the Middle Ages, and the fiscal methods were similarly
transformed, inaugurating a system of direct and indirect taxes.
The Concordat, signed in 1801, re-established religious peace,
Catholicism being recognized as the State religion. Churches were
reopened and the observance of Sunday re-established.
Already, as First Consul, Napoleon devoted great attention to external
trade. Ostend, which had been bombarded by the British in 1798, was
restored, and after the peace of Amiens Antwerp enjoyed a few years of
remarkable prosperity. In 1802, 969 ships entered the port; in 1803 the
customs receipts rose to over 6,000,000 francs, in 1804 to over
8,000,000, and in 1805 to over 15,000,000. But the emperor's decree of
November 21, 1806, establishing the Continental blockade, after the
Battle of Trafalgar, converted Antwerp into a powerful naval base and a
great centre of naval dockyards, without any benefit to the rest of the
country. The activity of the nation was again confined to agriculture
and industry. In this latter domain the period is marked by the
introduction of spinning machinery by the Gantois Lievin Bauwens, who
succeeded in obtaining models of the new British jennies. This was the
origin of the prosperity of Ghent. While, in 1802, only 220 persons
were employed in this industry, there were over 10,000 in 1810. Another
innovation was brought about by a British engineer, William Cockerill,
who, in 1799, initiated the use of new carding and spinning machines
in Verviers. Many French cloth manufacturers were sent to the Walloon
town by the French Government in order to study the new process.
[_WATERLOO_]
There are no periods of Belgian history where intellectual and artistic
production reached such a low level as under the Napoleonic regime. How
could it be otherwise at a time when official patronage directed every
activity towards imperial worship? In France, such worship, stimulated
by brilliant victories, might have inspired some sincere
manifestations, but in Belgium, where the people submitted to the
French regime only as to a necessary evil, military glory could not
provoke any genuine enthusiasm. It was more than compensated for by
conscription and arbitrary imprisonments. According to La Tour du Pain,
prefect of the Dyle, the Belgians were "neither English, nor Austrian,
nor anti-French--they were Belgian." In the way of administration and
judicial organization, they learnt their lesson, but it was a
distasteful lesson. They were too wise to disregard the benefit which
they might derive from the simplification of procedure brought about by
the reforms, and they remembered them at the right time, but they
remained stubbornly hostile to a foreign domination which could not be
supported by any dynastic loyalism, and most of them greeted with
enthusiasm the arrival of the allied armies which penetrated into the
country in January 1814, after the battle of Leipzig. This enthusiasm
was considerably cooled by the time of Waterloo, when it was known
that, in order to constitute a powerful State on the northern
frontiers of France and to reward William of Orange for his services to
the allied cause, Belgium's destinies would henceforth be linked with
those of the Northern provinces. This decision, already declared in the
secret protocol of London, was confirmed by the Congress of Vienna.
From August 1, 1814, the Prince of Orange administered the Southern
provinces on behalf of the Powers.
Illustration: UNITED KINGDOM OF THE NETHERLANDS.