The Revolution seemed complete when the provincial States throughout the Austrian Netherlands proclaimed their independence, and summoned a Congress of the United States of Belgium. But they needed men of sterner stuff than any who could be found in the Flanders and Brabant of that time; and the end was not long in coming. The extreme clericals, led by Van der Noot, were opposed by the followers of the advocate Vonck. Van der Noot had always relied on the hope of foreign intervention. Vonck wished the Belgians to work out their own salvation. Van der Noot and the Church party were obstinately conservative. Vonck and his party wished to see the expulsion of the Hapsburgs followed by measures of reform. The Vonckists had the worst of the quarrel, for the masses were against them, and showed their sentiments in a way which those who know Brussels will understand.[40] But the leaders of the other party lacked the ability to make head against the Austrian troops which marched into Brabant. The volunteer army of the Catholic Netherlands, deserted by its Prussian commander, General Schönfeldt, was disbanded; and so the Brabant Revolution came to naught.
Joseph II. died before the end, and in the midst of all his troubles. He had yielded much. The seminary at Louvain was closed, and the Joyeuse Entrée was restored. But these concessions came too late, and, on February 20, 1790, this Sovereign of good intentions passed away, while whispering in the ear of the Prince de Ligne, 'Your country has been my death.'
His brother Leopold reigned in his stead. The Austrians entered Brussels on December 2, 1790; and a week later the Ministers of Austria, Great Britain, Russia, and Holland signed the Convention of the Hague, which confirmed to the people of the Catholic Netherlands all the rights and privileges which they had enjoyed under the Empress Maria Theresa. But now the curtain was about to rise on a new scene in the history of Brabant and Flanders.
Footnotes
[38] 'On se mit à exhumer et à méditer les textes de nos anciens priviléges. Nobles, clergé, savants, femmes, gens du peuple, tout le monde parla joyeuse-entrée' (De Gerlache, i. 331).
[39] Wauters, ii. 321.
[40]'On donnait au Manneken'—the curious little statue in the Rue du Chêne—'un uniforme de volontaire, et chaque quartier de la Ville avait son arbre de la liberté chargé d'allégories patriotiques ou anti-Vonckistes' (Wauters, ii. 393).
CHAPTER XVI
THE JACOBINS OF BRUSSELS—VISIT OF NAPOLEON—THE HUNDRED DAYS
C''est la Belgique,' said Danton, 'qui comblera le déficit de la Révolution.' The Convention at Paris saw in the riches of the Austrian Netherlands a means of filling its treasury, and supporting the failing credit of France; and its emissaries knew how to work upon the people of Brabant and Flanders. 'Nous avons évangélisé partout,' was the report sent to Paris by one of them, 'in the streets, in the clubs, in the drinking-shops, in the theatres.... We have covered the walls with placards, and made the highways resound with our hymns of liberty. We have dallied with their fanaticism, and tried to stir up the lower ranks of the clergy against the higher, and so kill priestcraft by priestcraft.'