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 municipalities 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 assignats 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) substituted 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 worship 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 Nèthes, Meuse Inférieure, Dyle, Ourthe, Jemappes, Sambre et Meuse and Forêts.

The régime of the Directoire was equally hateful to the Belgians, who derived scant benefit from their annexation. The Flemish language was proscribed from official documents, all public manifestations of Catholic worship were forbidden, and the estates of religious communities confiscated. After the coup d'état 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 Liége.

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 Brabançonne revolution, divided among themselves, they had merely shown a passive resistance to Republican propaganda and to the efforts made by their masters to induce them to take part in rationalistic worship. 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 nobles, who had fled the country, or by the high clergy, who were now powerless. The peasants were assembled 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 vassal 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 régime.

In spite of the aversion caused by incessant conscription levies and by the strict censorship which stifled intellectual life, the Belgians benefited largely from the stern rule of the emperor, who re-established discipline and succeeded in substituting 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 arrondissements and municipalities, each of these divisions possessing its own councils and its own courts: justices of the peace, courts of the first instance, courts of assize with a jury, above which were installed Courts of Appeal and a Court of Cassation. A "general code of simple laws," still known as the Code Napoleon, was substituted, 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 ships 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, establishing 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 Liévin 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 Cockerill, 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.