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.