THE DUTCH GOVERNMENT--THE REVOLUTION OF 1830
One day, soon after the Battle of Waterloo, the Tsar Alexander was at
La Belle Alliance with William, King of the Netherlands, and his son
the Prince of Orange. He asked for a glass of wine, and drank to '_la
belle alliance_, not only of nations, but of families.'
The marriage of the Grand Duchess Anna Paulowna to the Prince of Orange
had just been settled; and all the Courts of Europe believed that the
troublesome question of the Low Countries was at last finally solved by
the union of Holland and Belgium under the dynasty of Nassau, now to be
allied by marriage with one of the Great Powers which had placed it on
the throne of the new Kingdom.
The English Government had arranged that the Prince of Orange,
heir to the Kingdom of the Netherlands, should marry the Princess
Charlotte, heiress to the throne of England; and their engagement had
been announced to the States-General at The Hague in March, 1814. But
this plan had fallen through from the causes with which everyone is
familiar--the objections of the Princess Charlotte, who did not wish
to leave England, and liked the Prince less the more she saw of him;
her fancy for the impecunious Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg, whom
she afterwards married; and the intrigues of the Grand Duchess of
Oldenburgh to break off the match, in order to bring about a marriage
between her sister, the Grand Duchess Anna Paulowna and the Prince of
Orange.
The Prince was accordingly married to the Grand Duchess. His
character--careless, pleasure-loving, and extravagant--made him very
popular in Brussels, and he spent as much as possible of his time in
his palace there, or at the château of Tervueren. He preferred the
Belgians to his countrymen the Dutch, whose grave ways did not suit
him. Soon after his marriage he sent a secret message to the Duke
of Wellington, under whom he had served in the Peninsular War and
during the Hundred Days, asking for the Duke's influence to obtain
leave to fix his Court at Brussels. Wellington refused to interfere
in a domestic question, and, in reply to the Prince's suggestion
that his presence in Brussels might help to check discontent amongst
the Belgians, said that he doubted the statements as to Belgian
disaffection, _as many persons, and even nations, were interested in
breaking the union of Holland and Belgium_.
The King and Queen of the Netherlands had the greatest difficulty in
persuading the Prince to visit them in Holland. The Communal Council of
Brussels waited on them at The Hague with an address of congratulation
on their accession. 'I don't know,' said the Queen, 'what you do to
keep my son at Brussels; but he is so fond of you that we hardly
ever see him here.' It would have been better for the stability of
his throne if the King had spent more of his own time in Brussels,
for signs of that discontent about which the Prince had written to
Wellington soon began to appear, and he might, perhaps, have taken
warning before it was too late, if he had known the truth.
Like Joseph II., William came to the throne full of good intentions;
like him, he alienated the clergy at the outset; and, like him, he
tried to give the Catholic Netherlands a liberal Constitution on his
own terms. His aim was to make them free and happy, but 'Alone I did
it' must be written over all. His character was a combination of sage
ideas and Dutch obstinacy; and one great root of bitterness between him
and the clergy was that never-ending question of education, over which
parties are fighting in Belgium at the present day. It was not that he
wished to make the southern provinces Protestant. But he was bent on
raising the intellectual standard of the country; and for this purpose
he founded, amongst other institutions, the Collège Philosophique at
Louvain, where the young priests were to receive a thorough education
in accordance with the spirit of the time--a scheme which the Church
resisted as it had resisted the Séminaire Générale of Joseph II., and
with equal success.
In a variety of ways the King alienated the people as well as the
priests. Though the States-General met alternately at The Hague and at
Brussels, all the great departments of the executive were in Holland.
They would, indeed, have been safest there in the event of a war;
but it was made a grievance that some of them were not at Brussels,
Antwerp, or Ghent. Most of the officials were Dutch, which was said
to prove a wish for Hollander supremacy, though the Dutch were a
minority of the population of the United Kingdom. The press attacked
the Government, and was severely punished under a system of decrees
emanating from the personal authority of the King. The use of Dutch as
the official language was enforced against the wishes of the majority.
Dutch methods of taxation were extended to Belgium, and trouble was
caused by the fact that Holland was for Free Trade and Belgium for
Protection. And of course the southern provinces were Catholic and
the northern Protestant, which more than anything else kept them on
bad terms. At last the impression became universal that the King's
policy was to sacrifice the interests of the Belgian provinces to
those of Holland; and the result was that the two great parties, or
schools of thought, which had always bitterly opposed each other, the
Catholics and the Liberals, united to oppose the Government.[44] This
was in 1829. Next year the Paris revolt of July, which drove out
Charles X., and put Louis Philippe on the throne of France, taught the
Belgians how easy it might be to get rid of a ruler with whom they
were discontented; and when the news from Paris came to Brussels, the
streets and cafés were full of men reading the papers, and saying to
each other, 'That's the way to revolt! Long live the barricades! Long
live the people!'
The days passed on in Brussels, with the restlessness of the population
increasing. The King's birthday was August 24, and preparations had
been made for celebrating it with unusual brilliancy. The park was to
be illuminated, and there were to be fireworks at the Porte de Namur.
But the people of Brussels, in that summer of 1830, were not to be
pacified by fêtes. Placards were found posted on the walls with the
ominous words: 'Le 23, Feu d'artifice; le 24, Illuminations; le 25,
Révolution.' Warnings, too, reached the Procureur du Roi that mischief
was brewing; and the festivities were abandoned, the reason being given
that bad weather was expected!
On the evening of the 25th Auber's 'Muette de Portici' was to be played
at the Monnaie. This opera had been more than once forbidden lest it
should cause disturbances; but now permission had been granted to
perform it, and the theatre was full. Every song of revolt was cheered,
and the climax came with the words of the duet in Act 4:
'Amour sacré de la Patrié,
Rends-nous l'audace et la fierté?'
The audience rose and rushed out into the Place de la Monnaie, inflamed
by the songs they had just heard, and shouting, 'Liberty! liberty!'
Then the mob gathered and rioting began. The old flag of Brabant was
hoisted on the Hôtel de Ville, and the town was in an uproar for the
next two days.
Orders were sent from The Hague to put down the 'rising' by force,
and Dutch troops under the command of Prince Frederick, the King's
second son, marched on Brussels. For nearly a month threats, promises,
negotiations were tried. But the insurgents refused to yield. Paid
agitators went about among the people; men of high standing took the
lead in organizing the revolt; barricades were erected; volunteers
came in from all parts; the Bishops pulled the strings behind the
scenes, and the country clergymen instigated their parishioners to
rebellion; the whole of Flanders and Brabant was soon up in arms, and
on September 23 the Dutch advanced to attack Brussels.
Three days of desperate fighting in the streets followed. The Dutch
held the park in force, but could not penetrate into the Place Royale,
which was defended by a strong barricade. Every house in the Rue Royale
was full of insurgents, who fired from the windows on the Dutch. In
other parts of the city there was the same stubborn resistance. For
three days the struggle continued. At sunset the firing ceased, and
the working men in their blouses sat drinking and boasting of their
exploits in the cafés, while their leaders met at the Hôtel de Ville
and took counsel for the morrow, and the Dutch bivouacked in the park
and on the boulevards. Each morning at dawn the tocsin sounded from
Ste. Gudule, and the people rushed to the barricades.
At daybreak on September 27 all was quiet when a small party of the
insurgents stole into the park, and went forward under cover of the
trees. They found it empty. The night had been very dark, and in the
small hours the Dutch had left in silence, and were now marching away
from Brussels.
It was a day of brilliant sunshine, and while the bourdon was sounding
from the towers of Ste. Gudule, and horsemen were riding out into the
country with the news, the populace flocked to the Palace. The men of
the blouse, their hands and faces black with gunpowder, merchants,
priests, lawyers, well-dressed ladies and ragged harridans, boys and
girls, young and old, went in, pushing, laughing, singing. They did
little damage, but hacked and cut the portraits of the King--the poor
King who had meant so well by his kingdom. The Queen's private rooms
were examined, and her wardrobes opened. One lad found a rich dress, 'a
magnificent robe of ceremony--white velvet embroidered with gold.' He
pulled it out, put it on, and over it a mantle of orange colour. With a
hat '_a là_ Marie Stuart' on his head, he sallied out. The mob, crying,
'The Queen is prisoner!' surrounded him with shouts of laughter, and
then tore off the finery and trailed it in the dust. A marble bust of
the King was brought out. They put a crown of Dutch cheese upon it,
and carried it about with cries of 'Down with the first and last King
of the Netherlands!' Many lives had been lost during the fighting;
but this was Brussels. It was all very different from Paris and the
downfall of Louis and Marie Antoinette.
The chief work of the Congress of Vienna was undone; and King William
instructed Baron Falck, his Ambassador at the Court of St. James's, to
ask for intervention on his behalf. The British Government replied that
troops could not be sent; that the Five Great Powers were to meet in
London; and that the policy of Great Britain would be to prevent the
troubles in the Netherlands leading to a breach of the peace in Europe.
How the plenipotentiaries of Great Britain, France, Russia, Austria,
and Prussia met in conclave on the weary question of the Low Countries;
how this Conference of London recognized the independence of the
Catholic Netherlands, defined their boundaries, and made them neutral;
how at the same time a National Congress at Brussels declared that the
House of Nassau had forfeited the throne, chose as the first King of
independent Belgium Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg, and framed, under
the influence of Lamennais and his disciples, a Constitution whose
democratic principles breathe the spirit of the Joyeuse Entrée of
Brabant, are events which form a part of the general history of modern
Europe.
FOOTNOTES.
[Footnote 44: The question of tariffs was one bond of union. At a
political dinner on July 9, 1829, when the toast of the union of
Catholics and Liberals was given, one of several maxims on the walls
was: 'Notre industrie, agricole et manufacturière, a besoin d'un
système de protection sagement pondéré; sans cette protection, le
travail étranger viendrait prendre bientôt sur notre marchéla place du
travail national' (C. Rodenbach: _Épisodes de la Révolution dans les
Flandres_, p. 82).]