Rends-nous l'audace et la fierté?'
The audience rose and rushed out into the Place de la Monnaie, inflamed by the songs they had just heard, and shouting, 'Liberty! liberty!' Then the mob gathered and rioting began. The old flag of Brabant was hoisted on the Hôtel de Ville, and the town was in an uproar for the next two days.
Orders were sent from The Hague to put down the 'rising' by force, and Dutch troops under the command of Prince Frederick, the King's second son, marched on Brussels. For nearly a month threats, promises, negotiations were tried. But the insurgents refused to yield. Paid agitators went about among the people; men of high standing took the lead in organizing the revolt; barricades were erected; volunteers came in from all parts; the Bishops pulled the strings behind the scenes, and the country clergymen instigated their parishioners to rebellion; the whole of Flanders and Brabant was soon up in arms, and on September 23 the Dutch advanced to attack Brussels.
Three days of desperate fighting in the streets followed. The Dutch held the park in force, but could not penetrate into the Place Royale, which was defended by a strong barricade. Every house in the Rue Royale was full of insurgents, who fired from the windows on the Dutch. In other parts of the city there was the same stubborn resistance. For three days the struggle continued. At sunset the firing ceased, and the working men in their blouses sat drinking and boasting of their exploits in the cafés, while their leaders met at the Hôtel de Ville and took counsel for the morrow, and the Dutch bivouacked in the park and on the boulevards. Each morning at dawn the tocsin sounded from Ste. Gudule, and the people rushed to the barricades.
At daybreak on September 27 all was quiet when a small party of the insurgents stole into the park, and went forward under cover of the trees. They found it empty. The night had been very dark, and in the small hours the Dutch had left in silence, and were now marching away from Brussels.
It was a day of brilliant sunshine, and while the bourdon was sounding from the towers of Ste. Gudule, and horsemen were riding out into the country with the news, the populace flocked to the Palace. The men of the blouse, their hands and faces black with gunpowder, merchants, priests, lawyers, well-dressed ladies and ragged harridans, boys and girls, young and old, went in, pushing, laughing, singing. They did little damage, but hacked and cut the portraits of the King—the poor King who had meant so well by his kingdom. The Queen's private rooms were examined, and her wardrobes opened. One lad found a rich dress, 'a magnificent robe of ceremony—white velvet embroidered with gold.' He pulled it out, put it on, and over it a mantle of orange colour. With a hat 'a là Marie Stuart' on his head, he sallied out. The mob, crying, 'The Queen is prisoner!' surrounded him with shouts of laughter, and then tore off the finery and trailed it in the dust. A marble bust of the King was brought out. They put a crown of Dutch cheese upon it, and carried it about with cries of 'Down with the first and last King of the Netherlands!' Many lives had been lost during the fighting; but this was Brussels. It was all very different from Paris and the downfall of Louis and Marie Antoinette.
The chief work of the Congress of Vienna was undone; and King William instructed Baron Falck, his Ambassador at the Court of St. James's, to ask for intervention on his behalf. The British Government replied that troops could not be sent; that the Five Great Powers were to meet in London; and that the policy of Great Britain would be to prevent the troubles in the Netherlands leading to a breach of the peace in Europe.
How the plenipotentiaries of Great Britain, France, Russia, Austria, and Prussia met in conclave on the weary question of the Low Countries; how this Conference of London recognized the independence of the Catholic Netherlands, defined their boundaries, and made them neutral; how at the same time a National Congress at Brussels declared that the House of Nassau had forfeited the throne, chose as the first King of independent Belgium Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg, and framed, under the influence of Lamennais and his disciples, a Constitution whose democratic principles breathe the spirit of the Joyeuse Entrée of Brabant, are events which form a part of the general history of modern Europe.
Footnotes
[44] The question of tariffs was one bond of union. At a political dinner on July 9, 1829, when the toast of the union of Catholics and Liberals was given, one of several maxims on the walls was: 'Notre industrie, agricole et manufacturière, a besoin d'un système de protection sagement pondéré; sans cette protection, le travail étranger viendrait prendre bientôt sur notre marchéla place du travail national' (C. Rodenbach: Épisodes de la Révolution dans les Flandres, p. 82).