The French Revolution 1789-1795

by Bertha Meriton Gardiner

BELGIUM

E. Weller.

Question of annexation of Belgium.

The wish to spread revolutionary principles operated strongly upon the policy pursued by the Convention in relation to its conquests. The annexation of conquered territories involved carrying out in them the changes already effected in France. For smaller territories the maintenance of political independence was in reality impracticable amidst the clash of the great powers. Hence it came to pass that the Convention rapidly gravitated towards a policy of forced annexation, which they attempted to conceal by accepting the vote of their own partisans as the expression of the popular will. Other motives also existed. The ambition was roused of extending the French frontier to the Alps and the Rhine. In case of annexations, the financial difficulties of the government would be decreased. Church property in the newly-acquired territory would become national property, and the possession of new securities would raise the value of the assignats. In Savoy and in Nice, as also in Liége and the small states near the Rhine, much discontent prevailed, and no small part of the population desired union with France. But in the Austrian Netherlands the case was different. The clergy and feudal aristocracy possessed much influence; the forms of constitutional government existed, and there was a powerful party which sought to maintain political independence of France while discarding connection with Austria. The Convention accordingly decreed the union of Nice and Savoy with France, but hesitated to annex the Austrian Netherlands. Its hesitation was not due merely to the fact that only a minority of the population desired union. Further consequences had to be taken into consideration. The attempt to unite Belgium was certain to involve France in hostilities with a fresh and formidable enemy. For centuries it had been a cardinal point of English foreign policy that Belgium was to be in possession of a power capable of resisting French aggression, and the extension of the war was deprecated by all deputies who cared for the restoration of internal order and settled government. A war with England would seriously increase the expenses of government, which were already only met by fresh issues of assignats, whilst the rapid rise of prices which had ensued inflicted suffering on the working-classes, and placed means at the command of the Commune of exciting discontent against the Convention. An alternative plan of creating an independent Belgian republic was desired by Dumouriez and by some members of the Convention. Yet it was unlikely that this plan would succeed in averting war with England. English statesmen were as averse to the establishment of a Belgian republic as to the annexation of the country to France. In fact, the Convention could only maintain peace by abandoning the principles on which it was acting, and by giving a pledge that Belgium should be restored to Austria. There was, moreover, an immediate ground of quarrel. After the French armies were in occupation of Belgium, the Convention had proclaimed the free navigation of the Scheldt, which by an European arrangement, agreeable to England and Holland, but ruinous to the trade of Antwerp, was closed to commerce. This measure gave great offence to England as increasing French influence, and was regarded in itself as sufficient ground for a declaration of war. Though in accordance with the new principles of the rights of nations not recognised by cabinets, but which were no more than the principles of justice itself, the liberation of the Scheldt was in the teeth of treaties to which both England and France had been parties. The decree of November 19 (p. 131), which the French government refused to withdraw, was regarded as a direct incitation to subjects to revolt. The passing of a new decree (December 15), ordering French generals to proclaim wherever they went the sovereignty of the people, the suppression of the existing authorities, and the abolition of feudal rights and privileges, was a second clear intimation to Europe that France was intent on spreading revolutionary principles beyond her own borders.

A portion of the Convention desired, at whatever hazard, to carry out an immediate annexation of Belgium, and afterwards to invade Holland, in accordance with a plan proposed by Dumouriez. Holland was at peace with France, but there was no doubt whatever that in case of war between England and France, the stadt-holder, who was maintained in his seat by English and Prussian influence, would join the coalition. The majority, however, led by the Girondists, hesitated to adopt this course. Although their minds were inflated with the desire of rousing revolutionary movements in other countries, including England itself, they sought, from a sense of internal peril which every day grew stronger, to circumscribe the field of war, and both to maintain peace with England and to withdraw Prussia from the coalition. To attain their ends the ministers were prepared to abandon the project of invading Holland, to suffer the King and his family to quit France, and to defer the final settlement of Belgium till the making of peace. But neither the disposition of the King of Prussia nor of the English people rendered it possible for any understanding to be arrived at on these terms.

Austria and Prussia unwilling to make peace.

The allied princes had not entered into the war out of pure chivalry, and did not intend to withdraw from it until they had obtained what in diplomatic language they called an indemnity—in other words, territorial acquisitions, either at the cost of France or of some neutral state. Shortly before hostilities broke out Catherine II. proposed to Frederick William a second partition of Poland. The King, though bound by two treaties to maintain the integrity of Poland, entered into the agreement. It was, therefore, to Poland that he looked for his indemnity, and his assistance in the war against France was the price he paid for the Emperor’s consent to his making acquisitions in the east. Francis, on his side, looked for conquests in France, and also had in his mind the revival of Joseph’s project of making over Belgium to the Elector of Bavaria in exchange for that country. A study of the map of Europe shows clearly what would have been the advantage of the exchange to Austria in consolidating her dominions and giving her increased predominance within the Empire.

England and the revolution.

While the personal feeling of Frederick William involved his subjects in a war for which they had no enthusiasm, public opinion in England compelled the Government to take a hostile attitude. William Pitt, supported by the King, the country gentlemen, and the commercial middle classes, had fought his way to power in 1783 in a sharp struggle in which the Whig aristocracy was overthrown. As the head of the Tory party he professed a toryism very different from the past toryism of Harley and of St. John, which had battled against dissenters and the mercantile class, and from the future toryism of Eldon, which was to battle against improvement. In one sense he was the Turgot of England. He was pre-eminently a peace minister, and he had taken the lead, sometimes far in advance of the public opinion of his day, in advocating projects of financial and economical reform. Those projects he had viewed from the point of view of the highest statesmanship. He had sought to bind England and Ireland together by a commercial union, which he was unable to carry into effect. He had sought to bind England and France together by a commercial treaty which had increased the communications between the two countries. It was not his fault that even a Parliament in which he counted so many supporters had rejected a scheme of Parliamentary reform, which would have gone far to bind class to class in England itself. Yet, even in his failures, his efforts after good had made his government inapproachably strong. The fallen Whig aristocracy, indeed, was very different from the effete privileged orders of France. It counted amongst its members and its followers high-spirited and large-minded politicians, such as Fox and Burke. Its traditions were those of men brought up to combat for their ideas in the open light of publicity, and to support their cause by argument before their fellows. Yet there was something in it of the faults which had made the continental nobilities unpopular. It was narrow and exclusive, and was apt to regard office and emolument as the special perquisite of its own members. Against such an aristocracy Pitt stood as the champion of so much of equality as the conditions of English society admitted of. Representing, as he did, the King and the middle classes, he advocated a rational government, founded on the best political science of the day. It was impossible that if war broke out with France he should continue his work of internal reform. Events happening in France were but superficially comprehended in England. At first some of the Whigs, following Fox, extended sympathy to a revolutionary movement which put forward as its object the establishment of constitutional government. As soon as disorder and violence showed themselves in France a large section of the Whigs, including most of the great landowners, joined the Tories in viewing the movement with distrust, though the latter had confidence in Pitt, who sought to maintain friendship between the two governments. Neither party had any clear perception of the fact that the revolution was produced by social as well as political causes, and that its real aim was to complete the destruction of the old feudal order long since in slow process of decay. The special causes of discontent operating in France were left unnoted. The comparative excellence of government in England made Englishmen callous to the past misgovernment of France. The fact was patent that the revolution declared war on established institutions, and exhibited propagandist tendencies. Public opinion, therefore, soon set strongly against it. Already, in 1790, Burke, breaking loose from Fox, published his ‘Reflections on the French Revolution,’ in which his eloquent declamations against men who were destroying continuity between the past and the present, helped to ripen the distrust that already existed in the minds of his countrymen into fear and hatred. After the fall of the throne and the September massacres, intense alarm prevailed lest the spread of democratic principles should produce similar convulsions in England. In reality there was no danger. The middle classes were not jealous of the upper; the people were not starving. Societies established for the promotion of French principles obtained but a few hundred supporters, a strong proof of the unmoved disposition of the people at large. The panic, however, if unfounded, was genuine. To secure themselves against danger the governing classes desired to suppress the revolution by force of arms, and loudly demanded the reclosing of the Scheldt and the evacuation of Belgium as the price of peace.