THE OSTEND COMPANY
The Austrian régime is characterized by a return to more peaceful conditions, since, with the exception of the period of 1740 to 1748, the country was not directly affected by European conflicts. Under any rule, this period of peace must have been marked by an economic renaissance in a country disposing of such natural riches as the Southern provinces. The Austrian governors encouraged this movement, as the archdukes had encouraged it before, but, like them, they were unable to deliver the country from its economic bondage, as far as foreign trade was concerned. The maritime countries had made stringent conditions on the cession of the Southern Netherlands to the Austrian dynasty. The treaties stipulated that "the loyal subjects of his Imperial Majesty could neither buy nor sell without the consent of their neighbours." During the last years of the Spanish régime, a small group of Ostend merchants had chartered a ship, the Prince Eugène, and founded factories near Canton. This was the origin of the "General Company of the Indies to trade in Bengal and the extreme East," usually known as the "Ostend Company," founded in 1723. Within seven hours' time, the capital of 6,000,000 florins was subscribed, and soon eleven ships plied between Ostend and a series of factories established on the coast of Bengal and Southern China. This success was looked at askance by the maritime Powers, which, basing their claim on a clause in the treaty of Münster forbidding the Spanish to trade in the East Indies, made the suppression of the new company a condition to the acceptance of the Pragmatic Sanction. By this act, Charles VI endeavoured to ensure the succession of Maria Theresa to the Austrian throne. Once more, Belgium was sacrificed to dynastic interests, and on May 31, 1727, the concession of the Company of Ostend was suspended, to be finally suppressed in 1731. A similar attempt was made, later in the century, by the Company of Asia and Africa, whose seat was at Trieste, with a branch at Ostend. This company chose for its ventures the deserted group of islands surrounding Tristan d'Acunha, with the idea that such a modest enterprise could not possibly awake the jealousy of the Powers. But, in the same way, in 1785, Holland, England and France brought about the failure of the new company. Ostend had to be satisfied with the transit of Spanish wool towards the Empire and with the temporary activity brought to her port by the American War of Independence.
INDUSTRIAL PROGRESS
In spite of their apparent insignificance and of their total failure, these attempts to reopen communication with the outer world, notwithstanding the closing of the Scheldt, are symptomatic of a remarkable economic revival. The population had risen from two to three millions, during the first half of the eighteenth century, and Brussels, with 70,000 inhabitants, Ghent and Antwerp, with 50,000 each, had regained a certain part of their former prosperity. Native industry, strongly encouraged by protective measures, made a wonderful recovery. In the small towns and the country-side, the linen industry benefited largely from the invention of the fly shuttle, over two hundred thousand weavers and spinners being employed in 1765. Lace-making had made further progress, specially in Brussels, where fifteen thousand women followed this trade. In 1750 Tournai became an important centre for the china industry, its wares acquiring great renown. The extraction of coal in the deeper seams had been facilitated by the use of recently invented steam-pumps, and the woollen industry around Verviers was producing, in 1757, 70,000 pieces of material a year. Such progress largely compensated for the decadence of tapestry, which had been ruined by the rivalry of printed stuffs.
The Government intervened also actively in agricultural matters by encouraging small ownership, at the expense of great estates, and the breaking up of new ground. The land tax was more evenly distributed and the great work of draining the Moeres (flooded land between Furnes and Dunkirk), which had been begun by the archdukes, was successfully completed (1780). The peasants also benefited from the cultivation of potatoes, which were becoming more and more popular.
The only severe check to economic activity was caused by the War of the Austrian Succession, which opened at the accession of Maria Theresa (1740), and which opposed the forces of Austria, England and Holland against the coalition of Prussia, France, Spain and Poland. A British landing in Ostend prevented an early invasion of the Southern Netherlands by France during the first year of the struggle, but in 1744 French troops appeared in West Flanders, and Belgium became once more the "Cockpit of Europe."
The victory of Maurice de Saxe at Fontenoy against the allied armies commanded by the Duke of Cumberland placed the Southern Netherlands under French occupation. After a month's siege, Brussels was obliged to capitulate, and was soon followed by Antwerp and the principal towns of the country. The Marshal de Saxe treated the Belgian provinces as conquered territory, and the exactions of his intendant, Moreau de Seychelles, provoked some protests, which were abruptly silenced. After two years' operations, during which the allies sustained some reverses on land but obtained some victories at sea, peace was finally signed at Aix-la-Chapelle (1748). The Belgian provinces came again under Austrian rule, and Maestricht and Bergen-op-Zoom, which had been conquered by the French, were given back to Holland, together with the fortresses of the Barrier, which were again occupied by Dutch troops.
Dutch occupation had, from the beginning, been strongly resented by the Belgian people, who felt the humiliation of entertaining foreign garrisons in their own towns. Now that the Dutch had proved unable to defend the Barrier, its re-establishment was still less justified and was considered as a gratuitous insult. Nothing did more to deepen the gulf between the Southern and Northern Netherlands than the maintenance of the Barrier system, combined with the repeated actions taken by the Dutch to ruin the trade of Ostend and to enforce the free import of certain goods. The popularity enjoyed by Charles de Lorraine, the brother in-law of Maria Theresa, who governed the Belgian provinces from 1744 to 1780, was partly due to the resentment provoked by Dutch supremacy.
AUSTRIAN SUCCESSION
On the whole, the Austrian régime was not very different from the Spanish. The provinces were governed from Vienna, where the Council of the Low Countries invariably adopted the Government's decision. The States General were never summoned and no affair of importance was submitted to the Council of State in Brussels. Charles de Lorraine, however, showed a greater respect for local privileges than his predecessors and gained the sympathy of the nobles by his genial manners. He held court either in Brussels or in his castles of Mariemont and Tervueren, where French fashions were introduced and which recalled, on a modest scale, the glories of Versailles. Some members of the aristocracy, like Charles Joseph de Ligne, who was, besides, a remarkable writer, were in close relations with the French philosophers, but they were only a small minority and most of the Belgian nobles were decidedly hostile to the new ideas. Voltaire, who visited Brussels in 1738, did not appreciate this provincial atmosphere: "The Arts do not dwell in Brussels, neither do the Pleasures; a retired and quiet life is here the lot of nearly all, but this quiet life is so much like tedium that one may easily be mistaken for the other."
As a matter of fact, though the eighteenth century contrasted favourably with the seventeenth, in the Southern provinces, from the economic point of view, its intellectual life was extraordinarily poor. There is no name to mention among the Flemish writers. Indeed, one might even say that Flemish had practically ceased to be written and had become a mere dialect. The Prince de Ligne remained isolated in his castle of Belœil, designed by Lenôtre, and was merely a French intellectual in exile. A Royal Academy of Drawing had been founded, but the period hardly produced any painter worthy of note. An Imperial and Royal Academy of Science and Letters had been inaugurated in 1772, but the only members were scholars and antiquaries without any originality. Maria Theresa tried to react against this intellectual apathy. She substituted civil for ecclesiastical censorship, she commissioned Count de Nény, the famous jurist, to reform the University of Louvain. When the order of the Jesuits was suppressed by the pope in 1773, she founded fifteen new lay colleges, known as Collèges Thérésiens, and took a personal interest in the framing of the programme of studies and in the least detail of organization. She favoured the teaching of Flemish as well as French in the secondary schools and the two languages were placed on exactly the same footing. In the judicial domain she succeeded in abolishing torture as a means of inquiry. She also attempted to relieve pauperism by the foundation of orphanages and almshouses.
MARIA THERESA
In spite of the fact that neither Charles VI nor Maria Theresa ever visited Belgium, the people felt a genuine attachment to the monarchy. They lived with the memory of such severe trials that they were grateful for the scant attention they received. Besides, the Hapsburg dynasty remained one of their links with the past, and it is significant that, at a time when all eyes were turned towards the future, the Belgians, and especially the popular classes, were more and more thrown back on their own traditions. No doubt the economic restrictions to which they were subjected and the fact that they were practically isolated must have conduced to this state of mind, but the lack of political independence is mainly responsible for it. Unable to take their fate in their own hands, obliged to submit to the greatest calamities without being allowed to avoid or to prevent them, the Belgians clung to the last vestige of their past privileges as if their salvation could only be found among the ruins of their bygone glory.
POPULAR RESTLESSNESS
The only serious civil trouble which occurred under Spanish and Austrian rule was caused by trivial infringements by the Government of some of the old privileges of the corporations. For such reasons, riots broke out in Brussels (1619), Antwerp (1659) and Louvain (1684). The people did not rise against foreign domination or in order to obtain their share in the administration of the country, but because they thought, rightly or wrongly, that some mediæval custom, which they considered as their sacred privilege, had not been observed. During the last years of the Spanish régime, frequent riots broke out in Brussels because, after the accidental collapse of a tower containing old documents, the people had been able to read again the Grand Privilege of Mary of Burgundy, granted two centuries before. They had reprints made of it under the name Luyster van Brabant (Ornament of Brabant) and wanted to persuade Maximilian Emmanuel to apply the old charter. After long delays, the governor had finally to enforce severe regulations, known as "réglements additionnels." This incident was the origin of further trouble at the beginning of the Austrian régime, when Prince Eugène, being engaged in the war against the Turks, delegated the Marquis de Prié to represent him in the Low Countries. Unwilling to comply with the new regulations, the Brussels artisans refused to pay the taxes. They were led by a chair-maker, François Anneessens. Riots broke out in 1718 in Brussels and Malines, and Prié was obliged to let the local militia restore order. He had meanwhile sent for troops, and in October 1719 Brussels was militarily occupied. Anneessens was executed, and the bitterness provoked by this tyrannical measure obliged the Government to recall Prié a few years later (1724). These popular movements were only the first signs of the increasing restlessness of the people which caused the Brabançonne revolution of 1789. While the conservative and even reactionary character of these civil troubles must be made clear, in order to avoid any confusion between the Belgian and the French revolutions, it must at the same time be admitted that both movements started from the same desire for change and from the same confused feeling that, under a new régime, life would become more tolerable. The social conditions caused by the "ancien régime" were not nearly so oppressive in the Belgian provinces as in France, and, under the enlightened rule of Maria Theresa and Joseph II, some amelioration was certainly to be expected. But the people suffered from the artificial conditions under which they lived economically, and though they did not see clearly the cause of their trouble, they were inclined to seize upon any pretext to manifest their discontent. In spite of all appearances, one could suggest that the closing of the Scheldt may have had something to do with the overthrow of the Austrian régime.