The departments of Forêts, Sambre et Meuse, Ourthe, and Meuse Inférieure were in the same condition as the rest of Belgium during the closing years of the eighteenth century and down to the fall of Napoleon. After that they formed part of the 'Kingdom of the Netherlands,' under the House of Orange-Nassau, and were called the provinces of Luxembourg, Namur, Liége, and Limbourg.
When the Kingdom of the Netherlands, the chief constructive work accomplished by the Congress of Vienna, fell to pieces in 1830, the Liégeois went with the rest of Belgium in the revolution against William I. As soon as they heard of the insurrection at Brussels, the townsmen of Liége met, as of old, in the market-place, put on the national colours, and helped themselves to weapons from the armourers' shops. A company of 300 volunteers, with two pieces of cannon, marched across Brabant into Brussels, and took a prominent part in the street fighting, which ended in the retreat of the Dutch troops, and the triumph of the revolution which led to the separation of the Catholic Netherlands from Holland, and the election of Leopold I. as King of Belgium.
PONT DE JAMBES ET CITADELLE, NAMUR
Long ago, in the days of Prince Maximilian of Bavaria, a fortress was built on the only bridge which at that time crossed the Meuse at Liége. This fortress, armed with cannon which could sweep both sides of the river, left only one narrow waterway, nicknamed 'The Dardanelles,' by which boats could pass up and down the stream. It has long since disappeared, and the present Pont des Arches now occupies the sight of the old bridge. The irregular outline of the houses on the bank of the Meuse, with their fronts of grey, white, and red, the church towers appearing over the roofs of the town behind, and the ridge of the citadel rising high in the background, are best seen from the Pont des Arches, from which the modern Rue Leopold leads straight into the very heart of Liége, to the place on which the Cathedral of St. Lambert stood. It is just a century since the last stones of the old church were carted away; and now the Place St. Lambert, like the Place Verte, which opens on it from the west, and the market-place, which is a few yards to the east, has a bright look of business and prosperity, with its shops and cafés.
The Episcopal Palace, now the Palais de Justice, the erection of which took thirty years during the commencement of the sixteenth century, has undergone many alterations since the days of Érard de la Marck. Two hundred years after it was finished a fire destroyed the original front, which had to be rebuilt, and the rest of the vast structure was restored in the nineteenth century. The primitive façade has been replaced by one moulded on severely classic lines; but the inner squares, with their picturesque cloisters, are strangely rich in types of every style, a medley of Gothic, Renaissance, Moorish, as if symbolic of the vicissitudes undergone by the Bishop-Princes who inhabited this immense building. Most of the grotesque carvings, the demons in stone, and the fantastic figures which surround these courts, were conceived by the luxuriant imagination of Francis Borset, a sculptor of Liége.
Close to the Episcopal Palace is the market-place, where so many of the scenes described in these pages took place, and where now stands the modern Perron, designed by Delcour at the end of the seventeenth century to replace the old column, at the foot of which the laws of the Principality, peace, or war used to be proclaimed. There is nothing about it to recall the history of the stormy times when Charles the Bold carried it off into Flanders; but the tradition of the ancient Perron still survives.
At Brussels, Ghent, Bruges, Louvain, the Hôtels de Ville retain their aspect of the Middle Ages, when they were the centres of that passionate civic life which throbs through all the history of the Netherlands. But the Hôtel de Ville of Liége is modern, of the eighteenth century. It would make a commodious private mansion, but has nothing in common with the architectural gems which adorn the great cities of Flanders and Brabant.
This lack of architectural distinction is characteristic of modern Liége. The hammers of the French Revolution, in destroying the Cathedral of St. Lambert, completed what the fires of Charles the Bold began, and of the really old Liége almost nothing remains. But the fiery spirit which once led to so many wars and revolutions now finds an outlet in useful work. The industrious character of the Walloons is perhaps most highly developed in other Walloon parts of Belgium—among the carpet factories of Tournai, the iron-works of Charleroi, the flax-works of Courtrai, and in the coal-mines of the Borinage, which blacken the landscape for miles round Mons. But the people of Liége have always been famous for their skill in working steel and iron. In the old days they forged the weapons of war which they used so often; and at the present time there are in the town many flourishing companies who turn out large quantities of guns, engines, and machinery, while up the Meuse there are coal-mines, furnaces, and factories, where the Walloons toil as laboriously as in Hainaut.