Part 14 (1/2)
One of the reasons of Joseph II's failure to reform Belgian inst.i.tutions was that his monarchical power rested mainly on the n.o.bility, 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 citizens.h.i.+p, 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.
Ill.u.s.tration: 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 n.o.bles and of the clergy and to enforce the circulation of the revolutionary paper money (a.s.signats). 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 leaders.h.i.+p 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 rest.i.tution 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 Munster, 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 Munster 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 munic.i.p.alities 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 a.s.signats 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) subst.i.tuted 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 wors.h.i.+p 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 doc.u.ments, all public manifestations of Catholic wors.h.i.+p 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 pa.s.sive resistance to Republican propaganda and to the efforts made by their masters to induce them to take part in rationalistic wors.h.i.+p.
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 n.o.bles, who had fled the country, or by the high clergy, who were now powerless. The peasants were a.s.sembled 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 va.s.sal 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 censors.h.i.+p which stifled intellectual life, the Belgians benefited largely from the stern rule of the emperor, who re-established discipline and succeeded in subst.i.tuting 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 arrondiss.e.m.e.nts and munic.i.p.alities, each of these divisions possessing its own councils and its own courts: justices of the peace, courts of the first instance, courts of a.s.size with a jury, above which were installed Courts of Appeal and a Court of Ca.s.sation.
A ”general code of simple laws,” still known as the Code Napoleon, was subst.i.tuted, 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 s.h.i.+ps 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, establis.h.i.+ng 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 c.o.c.kerill, 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 wors.h.i.+p? In France, such wors.h.i.+p, 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 const.i.tute 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.