FROM THE PEACE OF UTRECHT TO THE INCORPORATION OF BELGIUM WITH
THE FRENCH REPUBLIC
A.D. 1713--1795
During a period of thirty years following the treaty of Utrecht,
the republic enjoyed the unaccustomed blessing of profound peace.
While the discontents of the Austrian Netherlands on the subject
of the treaty of the Barrier were in debate, the quadruple alliance
was formed between Holland, England, France and the emperor, for
reciprocal aid against all enemies, foreign and domestic. It was
in virtue of this treaty that the pretender to the English throne
received orders to remove from France; and the states-general
about the same time arrested the Swedish ambassador, Baron Gortz,
whose intrigues excited some suspicion. The death of Louis XIV.
had once more changed the political system of Europe; and the
commencement of the eighteenth century was fertile in negotiations
and alliances in which we have at present but little direct interest.
The rights of the republic were in all instances respected; and
Holland did not cease to be considered as a power of the first
distinction and consequence. The establishment of an East India
Company at Ostend, by the emperor Charles VI., in 1722, was the
principal cause of disquiet to the United Provinces, and the most
likely to lead to a rupture. But, by the treaty of Hanover in
1726, the rights of Holland resulting from the treaty of Munster
were guaranteed; and in consequence the emperor abolished the
company of his creation, by the treaty of Seville in 1729, and
that of Vienna in 1731.
The peace which now reigned in Europe allowed the United Provinces
to direct their whole efforts toward the reform of those internal
abuses resulting from feudality and fanaticism. Confiscations
were reversed, and property secured throughout the republic.
It received into its protection the persecuted sectarians of
France, Germany, and Hungary; and the tolerant wisdom which it
exercised in these measures gives the best assurance of its justice
and prudence in one of a contrary nature, forming a solitary
exception to them. This was the expulsion of the Jesuits, whose
dangerous and destructive doctrines had been long a warrant for
this salutary example to the Protestant states of Europe.
In the year 1732 the United Provinces were threatened with imminent
peril, which accident alone prevented from becoming fatal to
their very existence. It was perceived that the dikes, which
had for ages preserved the coasts, were in many places crumbling
to ruin, in spite of the enormous expenditure of money and labor
devoted to their preservation. By chance it was discovered that the
beams, piles and other timber works employed in the construction
of the dikes were eaten through in all parts by a species of
sea-worm hitherto unknown. The terror of the people was, as may
be supposed, extreme. Every possible resource was applied which
could remedy the evil; a hard frost providentially set in and
destroyed the formidable reptiles; and the country was thus saved
from a danger tenfold greater than that involved in a dozen wars.
The peace of Europe was once more disturbed in 1733. Poland,
Germany, France, and Spain, were all embarked in the new war.
Holland and England stood aloof; and another family alliance
of great consequence drew still closer than ever the bonds of
union between them. The young Prince of Orange, who in 1728 had
been elected stadtholder of Groningen and Guelders, in addition
to that of Friesland which had been enjoyed by his father, had
in the year 1734 married the princess Anne, daughter of George
II. of England; and by thus adding to the consideration of the
House of Nassau, had opened a field for the recovery of all its
old distinctions.
The death of the emperor Charles VI., in October, 1740, left his
daughter, the archduchess Maria Theresa, heiress of his throne
and possessions. Young, beautiful, and endowed with qualities of
the highest order, she was surrounded with enemies whose envy
and ambition would have despoiled her of her splendid rights.
Frederick of Prussia, surnamed the Great, in honor of his abilities
rather than his sense of justice, the electors of Bavaria and
Saxony, and the kings of Spain and Sardinia, all pressed forward
to the spoliation of an inheritance which seemed a fair play for
all comers. But Maria Theresa, first joining her husband, Duke
Francis of Lorraine, in her sovereignty, but without prejudice to
it, under the title of co-regent, took an attitude truly heroic.
When everything seemed to threaten the dismemberment of her states,
she threw herself upon the generous fidelity of her Hungarian
subjects with a dignified resolution that has few examples. There
was imperial grandeur even in her appeal to their compassion.
The results were electrical; and the whole tide of fortune was
rapidly turned.
England and Holland were the first to come to the aid of the
young and interesting empress. George II., at the head of his
army, gained the victory of Dettingen, in support of her quarrel,
in 1743; the states-general having contributed twenty thousand
men and a large subsidy to her aid. Louis XV. resolved to throw
his whole influence into the scale against these generous efforts
in the princess's favor; and he invaded the Austrian Netherlands
in the following year. Marshal Saxe commanded under him, and at
first carried everything before him. Holland, having furnished
twenty thousand troops and six ships of war to George II. on
the invasion of the young pretender, was little in a state to
oppose any formidable resistance to the enemy that threatened
her own frontiers. The republic, wholly attached for so long
a period to pursuits of peace and commerce, had no longer good
generals nor effective armies; nor could it even put a fleet of
any importance to sea. Yet with all these disadvantages it would
not yield to the threats nor the demands of France; resolved
to risk a new war rather than succumb to an enemy it had once
so completely humbled and given the law to.
Conferences were opened at Breda, but interrupted almost as soon
as commenced. Hostilities were renewed. The memorable battle of
Fontenoy was offered and gloriously fought by the allies; accepted
and splendidly won by the French. Never did the English and Dutch
troops act more nobly in concert than on this remarkable occasion.
The valor of the French was not less conspicuous; and the success
of the day was in a great measure decided by the Irish battalions,
sent, by the lamentable politics of those and much later days,
to swell the ranks and gain the battles of England's enemies.
Marshal Saxe followed up his advantage the following year, taking
Brussels and many other towns. Almost the whole of the Austrian
Netherlands being now in the power of Louis XV., and the United
Provinces again exposed to invasion and threatened with danger,
they had once more recourse to the old expedient of the elevation
of the House of Orange, which in times of imminent peril seemed
to present a never-failing palladium. Zealand was the first to
give the impulsion; the other provinces soon followed the example;
and William IV. was proclaimed stadtholder and captain-general,
amid the almost unanimous rejoicings of all. These dignities
were soon after declared hereditary both in the male and female
line of succession of the House of Orange Nassau.
The year 1748 saw the termination of the brilliant campaigns of
Louis XV. during this bloody war of eight years' continuance.
The treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, definitively signed on the 18th of
October, put an end to hostilities; Maria Theresa was established
in her rights and power; and Europe saw a fair balance of the
nations, which gave promise of security and peace. But the United
Provinces, when scarcely recovering from struggles which had so
checked their prosperity, were employed in new and universal
grief and anxiety by the death of their young stadtholder, which
happened at The Hague, October 13, 1751. He had long been kept
out of the government, though by no means deficient in the talents
suited to his station. His son, William V., aged but three years
and a half, succeeded him, under the guardianship of his mother,
Anne of England, daughter of George II., a princess represented
to be of a proud and ambitious temper, who immediately assumed
a high tone of authority in the state.
The war of seven years, which agitated the north of Europe, and
deluged its plains with blood, was almost the only one in which the
republic was able to preserve a strict neutrality throughout. But
this happy state of tranquillity was not, as on former occasions,
attended by that prodigious increase of commerce, and that
accumulation of wealth, which had so often astonished the world.
Differing with England on the policy which led the latter to
weaken and humiliate France, jealousies sprung up between the
two countries, and Dutch commerce became the object of the most
vexatious and injurious efforts on the part of England. Remonstrance
was vain; resistance impossible; and the decline of the republic
hurried rapidly on. The Hanseatic towns, the American colonies, the
northern states of Europe, and France itself, all entered into the
rivalry with Holland, in which, however, England carried off the
most important prizes. Several private and petty encounters took
place between the vessels of England and Holland, in consequence
of the pretensions of the former to the right of search; and had
the republic possessed the ability of former periods, and the
talents of a Tromp or a De Ruyter, a new war would no doubt have
been the result. But it was forced to submit; and a degrading but
irritating tranquillity was the consequence for several years;
the national feelings receiving a salve for home-decline by some
extension of colonial settlements in the East, in which the island
of Ceylon was included.
In the midst of this inglorious state of things, and the domestic
abundance which was the only compensation for the gradual loss
of national influence, the installation of William V., in 1766;
his marriage with the princess of Prussia, niece of Frederick
the Great, in 1768; and the birth of two sons, the eldest on
the 24th of August, 1772; successively took place. Magnificent
fetes celebrated these events; the satisfied citizens little
imagining, amid their indolent rejoicings, the dismal futurity of
revolution and distress which was silently but rapidly preparing
for their country.
Maria Theresa, reduced to widowhood by the death of her husband,
whom she had elevated to the imperial dignity by the title of
Francis I., continued for a while to rule singly her vast
possessions; and had profited so little by the sufferings of her
own early reign that she joined in the iniquitous dismemberment
of Poland, which has left an indelible stain on her memory, and on
that of Frederick of Prussia and Catherine of Russia. In her own
dominions she was adored; and her name is to this day cherished
in Belgium among the dearest recollections of the people.
The impulsion given to the political mind of Europe by the revolution
in North America was soon felt in the Netherlands. The wish for
reform was not merely confirmed to the people. A memorable instance
was offered by Joseph II., son and successor of Maria Theresa,
that sovereigns were not only susceptible of rational notions
of change, but that the infection of radical extravagance could
penetrate even to the imperial crown. Disgusted by the despotism
exercised by the clergy of Belgium, Joseph commenced his reign
by measures that at once roused a desperate spirit of hostility
in the priesthood, and soon spread among the bigoted mass of the
people, who were wholly subservient to their will. Miscalculating
his own power, and undervaluing that of the priests, the emperor
issued decrees and edicts with a sweeping violence that shocked
every prejudice and roused every passion perilous to the country.
Toleration to the Protestants, emancipation of the clergy from the
papal yoke, reformation in the system of theological instruction,
were among the wholesale measures of the emperor's enthusiasm,
so imprudently attempted and so virulently opposed.
But ere the deep-sown seeds of bigotry ripened to revolt, or
produced the fruit of active resistance in Belgium, Holland had
to endure the mortification of another war with England. The
republic resolved on a futile imitation of the northern powers,
who had adopted the difficult and anomalous system of an armed
neutrality, for the prevention of English domination on the seas.
The right of search, so proudly established by this power, was not
likely to be wrenched from it by manifestoes or remonstrances;
and Holland was not capable of a more effectual warfare. In the
year 1781, St. Eustache, Surinam, Essequibo, and Demerara, were
taken by British valor; and in the following year several of the
Dutch colonies in the East, well fortified but ill defended,
also fell into the hands of England. Almost the whole of those
colonies, the remnants of prodigious power acquired by such
incalculable instances of enterprise and courage, were one by one
assailed and taken. But this did not suffice for the satisfaction
of English objects in the prosecution of the war. It was also
resolved to deprive Holland of the Baltic trade. A squadron of
seven vessels, commanded by Sir Hyde Parker, was encountered on
the Dogher Bank by a squadron of Dutch ships of the same force
under Admiral Zoutman. An action of four hours was maintained
with all the ancient courage which made so many of the memorable
sea-fights between Tromp, De Ruyter, Blake, and Monk drawn battles.
A storm separated the combatants, and saved the honor of each;
for both had suffered alike, and victory had belonged to neither.
The peace of 1784 terminated this short, but, to Holland, fatal
war; the two latter years of which had been, in the petty warfare
of privateering, most disastrous to the commerce of the republic.
Negapatam, on the coast of Coromandel, and the free navigation of
the Indian seas, were ceded to England, who occupied the other
various colonies taken during the war.
Opinion was now rapidly opening out to that spirit of intense
inquiry which arose in France, and threatened to sweep before
it not only all that was corrupt, but everything that tended
to corruption. It is in the very essence of all kinds of power
to have that tendency, and, if not checked by salutary means,
to reach that end. But the reformers of the last century, new
in the desperate practice of revolutions, seeing its necessity,
but ignorant of its nature, neither did nor could place bounds
to the careering whirlwind that they raised. The well-meaning
but intemperate changes essayed by Joseph II. in Belgium had a
considerable share in the development of free principles, although
they at first seemed only to excite the resistance of bigotry and
strengthen the growth of superstition. Holland was always alive
to those feelings of resistance, to established authority which
characterize republican opinions; and the general discontent at the
result of the war with England gave a good excuse to the pretended
patriotism which only wanted change, while it professed reform.
The stadtholder saw clearly the storm which was gathering, and
which menaced his power. Anxious for the present, and uncertain
for the future, he listened to the suggestions of England, and
resolved to secure and extend by foreign force the rights of
which he risked the loss from domestic faction.
In the divisions which were now loudly proclaimed among the states
in favor of or opposed to the House of Orange, the people, despising
all new theories which they did not comprehend, took open part
with the family so closely connected with every practical feeling
of good which their country had yet known. The states of Holland
soon proceeded to measures of violence. Resolved to limit the
power of the stadtholder, they deprived him of the command of
the garrison of The Hague, and of all the other troops of the
province; and, shortly afterward, declared him removed from all
his employments. The violent disputes and vehement discussions
consequent upon this measure throughout the republic announced
an inevitable commotion. The advance of a Prussian army toward
the frontiers inflamed the passions of one party and strengthened
the confidence of the other. An incident which now happened brought
about the crisis even sooner than was expected. The Princess
of Orange left her palace at Loo to repair to The Hague; and
travelling with great simplicity and slightly attended, she was
arrested and detained by a military post on the frontiers of the
province of Holland. The neighboring magistrates of the town of
Woesden refused her permission to continue her journey, and forced
her to return to Loo under such surveillance as was usual with a
prisoner of state. The stadtholder and the English ambassador
loudly complained of this outrage. The complaint was answered
by the immediate advance of the duke of Brunswick with twenty
thousand Prussian soldiers. Some demonstrations of resistance
were made by the astonished party whose outrageous conduct had
provoked the measure; but in three weeks' time the whole of the
republic was in perfect obedience to the authority of the
stadtholder, who resumed all his functions of chief magistrate,
with the additional influence which was sure to result from a
vain and unjustifiable attempt to reduce his former power. We
regret to be beyond the reach of Mr. Ellis's interesting but
unpublished work, detailing the particulars of this revolution.
The former persual of a copy of it only leaves a recollection
of its admirable style and the leading facts, but not of the
details with sufficient accuracy to justify more than a general
reference to the work itself.
By this time the discontent and agitation in Belgium had attained
a most formidable height. The attempted reformation in religion
and judicial abuses persisted in by the emperor were represented,
by a party whose existence was compromised by reform, as nothing
less than sacrilege and tyranny, and blindly rejected by a people
still totally unfitted for rational enlightenment in points of
faith, or practices of civilization. Remonstrances and strong
complaints were soon succeeded by tumultuous assemblages and
open insurrection. A lawyer of Brussels, named Vander Noot, put
himself at the head of the malcontents. The states-general of
Brabant declared the new measures of the emperor to be in opposition
to the constitution and privileges of the country. The other
Belgian provinces soon followed this example. The prince Albert
of Saxe-Teschen, and the archduchess Maria Theresa, his wife,
were at this period joint governors-general of the Austrian
Netherlands. At the burst of rebellion they attempted to temporize;
but this only strengthened the revolutionary party, while the
emperor wholly disapproved their measures and recalled them to
Vienna.
Count Murray was now named governor-general; and it was evident
that the future fate of the provinces was to depend on the issue
of civil war. Count Trautmansdorff, the imperial minister at
Brussels, and General D'Alton, who commanded the Austrian troops,
took a high tone, and evinced a peremptory resolution. The soldiery
and the citizens soon came into contact on many points; and blood
was spilled at Brussels, Mechlin, and Antwerp.
The provincial states were convoked, for the purpose of voting
the usual subsidies. Brabant, after some opposition, consented; but
the states of Hainault unanimously refused the vote. The emperor
saw, or supposed, that the necessity for decisive measures was
now inevitable. The refractory states were dissolved, and arrests
and imprisonments were multiplied in all quarters. Vander Noot,
who had escaped to England, soon returned to the Netherlands,
and established a committee at Breda, which conferred on him the
imposing title of agent plenipotentiary of the people of Brabant.
He hoped, under this authority, to interest the English, Prussian,
and Dutch governments in favor of his views; but his proposals
were coldly received: Protesiant states had little sympathy for
a people whose resistance was excited, not by tyrannical efforts
against freedom, but by broad measures of civil and religious
reformation; the only fault of which was their attempted application
to minds wholly incompetent to comprehend their value.
Left to themselves, the Belgians soon gave a display of that
energetic valor which is natural to them, and which would be
entitled to still greater admiration had it been evinced in a
worthier cause. During the fermentation which led to a general
rising in the provinces, on the impulse of fanatic zeal, the
truly enlightened portion of the people conceived the project of
raising, on the ruins of monkish superstition and aristocratical
power, an edifice of constitutional freedom. Vonck, also an advocate
of Brussels, took the lead in this splendid design; and he and
his friends proved themselves to have reached the level of that
true enlightenment which distinguished the close of the eighteenth
century. But the Vonckists, as they were called, formed but a
small minority compared with the besotted mass; and, overwhelmed
by fanaticism on the one hand, and despotism on the other, they
were unable to act effectually for the public good. Vander Mersch,
a soldier of fortune, and a man of considerable talents, who had
raised himself from the ranks to the command of a regiment, and
had been formed in the school of the seven years' war, was appointed
to the command of the patriot forces. Joseph II. was declared
to have forfeited his sovereignty in Brabant; and hostilities
soon commenced by a regular advance of the insurgent army upon
that province. Vander Mersch displayed consummate ability in
this crisis, where so much depended upon the prudence of the
military chief. He made no rash attempt, to which commanders are
sometimes induced by reliance upon the enthusiasm of a newly
revolted people. He, however, took the earliest safe opportunity
of coming to blows with the enemy; and, having cleverly induced
the Austrians to follow him into the very streets of the town
of Turnhout, he there entered on a bloody contest, and finally
defeated the imperialists with considerable loss. He next manoeuvred
with great ability, and succeeded in making his way into the
province of Flanders, took Ghent by assault, and soon reduced
Bruges, Ypres, and Ostend. At the news of these successes, the
governors-general quitted Brussels in all haste. The states of
Flanders assembled, in junction with those of Brabant. Both provinces
were freed from the presence of the Austrian troops. Vander Noot
and the committee of Breda made an entrance into Brussels with
all the pomp of royalty; and in the early part of the following
year (1790) a treaty of union was signed by the seven revolted
provinces, now formed into a confederation under the name of
the United Belgian States.
All the hopes arising from these brilliant events were soon,
however, to be blighted by the scorching heats of faction. Joseph
II., whose temperament appears to have been too sensitive to
support the shock of disappointment in plans which sprung from the
purest motives, saw, in addition to this successful insurrection
against his power, his beloved sister, the queen of France, menaced
with the horrors of an inevitable revolution. His over-sanguine
expectations of successfully rivalling the glory of Frederick
and Catherine, and the ill success of his war against the Turks,
all tended to break down his enthusiastic spirit, which only
wanted the elastic resistance of fortitude to have made him a
great character. He for some time sunk into a profound melancholy;
and expired on the 20th of January, 1791, accusing his Belgian
subjects of having caused his premature death.
Leopold, the successor of his brother, displayed much sagacity
and moderation in the measures which he adopted for the recovery
of the revolted provinces; but their internal disunion was the
best ally of the new emperor. The violent party which now ruled
at Brussels had ungratefully forgotten the eminent services of
Vander Mersch, and accused him of treachery, merely from his
attachment to the noble views and principles of the widely-increasing
party of the Vonckists. Induced by the hope of reconciling the
opposing parties, he left his army in Namur, and imprudently
ventured into the power of General Schoenfeld, who commanded
the troops of the states. Vander Mersch was instantly arrested
and thrown into prison, where he lingered for months, until set
free by the overthrow of the faction he had raised to power; but
he did not recover his liberty to witness the realization of
his hopes for that of his country. The states-general, in their
triumph over all that was truly patriotic, occupied themselves
solely in contemptible labors to establish the monkish absurdities
which Joseph had suppressed. The overtures of the new emperor were
rejected with scorn; and, as might be expected from this combination
of bigotry and rashness, the imperial troops under General Bender
marched quietly to the conquest of the whole country; town after
town opening their gates, while Vander Noot and his partisans
betook themselves to rapid and disgraceful flight. On the 10th
of December, 1791, the ministers of the emperor concluded a
convention with those of England, Russia, and Holland (which
powers guaranteed its execution), by which Leopold granted an
amnesty for all past offences, and confirmed to all his recovered
provinces their ancient constitution and privileges; and, thus
returning under the domination of Austria, Belgium saw its best
chance for successfully following the noble example of the United
Provinces paralyzed by the short-sighted bigotry which deprived
the national courage of all moral force.
Leopold enjoyed but a short time the fruits of his well-measured
indulgence: he died, almost suddenly, March 1, 1792; and was
succeeded by his son Francis II., whose fate it was to see those
provinces of Belgium, which had cost his ancestors so many struggles
to maintain, wrested forever from the imperial power. Belgium
presented at this period an aspect of paramount interest to the
world; less owing to its intrinsic importance than to its becoming
at once the point of contest between the contending powers, and
the theatre of the terrible struggle between republican France and
the monarchs she braved and battled with. The whole combinations
of European policy were staked on the question of the French
possession of this country.
This war between France and Austria began its earliest operations
on the very first days after the accession of Francis II. The
victory of Jemappes, gained by Dumouriez, was the first great
event of the campaign. The Austrians were on all sides driven
out. Dumouriez made his triumphal entry into Brussels on the
13th of November; and immediately after the occupation of this
town the whole of Flanders, Brabant, and Hainault, with the other
Belgian provinces, were subjected to France. Soon afterward several
pretended deputies from the Belgian people hastened to Paris, and
implored the convention to grant them a share of that liberty
and equality which was to confer such inestimable blessings on
France. Various decrees were issued in consequence; and after
the mockery of a public choice, hurried on in several of the
towns by hired Jacobins and well-paid patriots, the incorporation
of the Austrian Netherlands with the French republic was formally
pronounced.
The next campaign destroyed this whole fabric of revolution.
Dumouriez, beaten at Nerwinde by the prince of Saxe-Coburg, abandoned
not only his last year's conquest, but fled from his own army to
pass the remainder of his life on a foreign soil, and leave his
reputation a doubtful legacy to history. Belgium, once again in
the possession of Austria, was placed under the government of
the archduke Charles, the emperor's brother, who was destined
to a very brief continuance in this precarious authority.
During this and the succeeding year the war was continued with
unbroken perseverance and a constant fluctuation in its results.
In the various battles which were fought, and the sieges which took
place, the English army was, as usual, in the foremost ranks, under
the Duke of York, second son of George III. The Prince of Orange,
at the head of the Dutch troops, proved his inheritance of the
valor which seems inseparable from the name of Nassau. The archduke
Charles laid the foundation of his subsequent high reputation.
The emperor Francis himself fought valiantly at the head of his
troops. But all the coalesced courage of these princes and their
armies could not effectually stop the progress of the republican
arms. The battle of Fleurus rendered the French completely masters
of Belgium; and the representatives of the city of Brussels once
more repaired to the national convention of France, to solicit
the reincorporation of the two countries. This was not, however,
finally pronounced till the 1st of October, 1795, by which time
the violence of an arbitrary government had given the people a
sample of what they were to expect. The Austrian Netherlands and
the province of Liege were divided into nine departments, forming
an integral part of the French republic; and this new state of
things was consolidated by the preliminaries of peace, signed
at Leoben in Styria, between the French general Bonaparte and the
archduke Charles, and confirmed by the treaty of Campo-Formio
on the 17th of October, 1797.