Peeps at Many Lands: Belgium

by George W. T. Omond

The French Republicans, who beheaded their own King and his Queen (who was, by-the-by, a sister of Joseph II.), invaded Belgium, driving out the Austrians, and made it a part of France.

One thing the French did was very popular with the Belgians. It was this: there was a treaty, called the Treaty of Münster, made as long before as the year 1648, which declared that the Dutch were to have control of the Scheldt, and ever since then that splendid river, on which Antwerp stands, had been closed, so that the trade of Antwerp, the great Belgian seaport, had been entirely ruined. The French now declared the Scheldt a free river, to be used by all nations. This was tidings of great joy to the Belgians; but England would not allow the Treaty of Münster to be torn up in this way, and a war began between England and France, which lasted till the fall of Napoleon in 1814.

During all that war Belgium was ruled by the French. When Napoleon gave up his throne, and was sent to the Island of Elba, the Great Powers met to settle Europe, which he had turned upside down. One of the things they had to decide was what should be done with the Austrian Netherlands, and the plan they arranged seemed a very good one.

Austria did not want Belgium, and the plan was to make that country, the Principality of Liége, and Holland, into one state, and call it the "Kingdom of the Netherlands." It was to be ruled over by one of the Orange family, a descendant of William the Silent.

And there was something more. The William of Orange who was to be King of the Netherlands had a son, and the English arranged that this son should marry our Princess Charlotte, who was heir to the throne of England; and so all the coasts of the Netherlands opposite England, with Antwerp and the Scheldt, were to be in the hands of a friendly nation allied by marriage to the English Royal Family. The proposed marriage was publicly announced in March, 1814, but it never took place. The Princess Charlotte married a German, called Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg, and the young Prince of Orange married a Russian Grand Duchess.

The Kingdom of the Netherlands, however, was set up; and at the Battle of Waterloo, which was fought in June, 1815, after Napoleon escaped from Elba, a force of Netherlanders, some of them Dutch and some of them Belgians, fought under the Duke of Wellington, when he gained the great victory which brought peace to Europe.

And now it was supposed that the Belgians would settle quietly down, and form one people with the Dutch, who spoke a language so like their own Flemish, and who came of the same race. But not a bit of it. The Dutch were mostly Protestants, and almost all the Belgians were Catholics. There were disputes about questions of religion from the very first. Disagreements followed on one subject after another; and, to make a long story short, in fifteen years there was a revolution in the Belgian provinces of the new kingdom.

The Belgians proclaimed their wish to make a kingdom of their own, and once more the Great Powers met to consider what was to be done with them this time. The meeting was in London, where five very shrewd and wily gentlemen, from England, France, Russia, Austria, and Prussia, sat and talked to each other for week after week about what they should do with this broken kingdom, which was, as it were, thrown on their hands. They were far too polite to quarrel openly; but Russia, Prussia, and Austria would have liked to force the Belgians to keep to what had been arranged in 1814, while England and France were on the side of the Belgians. On one thing, and one thing only, they all agreed, and that was not to have another European war.

In the long run England and France managed to persuade the others that the best thing was to let the Belgians have their own way, and choose a King for themselves. They first set their affections on a son of Louis Philippe, the King of France, and asked him to be their King. But England would not hear of this, so his father told him to refuse. Then the Belgians were advised to choose that Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg who had married Princess Charlotte. She was now dead, and he had been living in England ever since. They took this advice, and in 1831 he accepted the offer they made him, and was crowned at Brussels as Leopold I., King of the Belgians.

Thereafter he married a daughter of Louis Philippe, and reigned till the year 1865, when he died, and was succeeded by his son, Leopold II., who is the present King. This is how the southern provinces of the Netherlands were made into the little, independent kingdom of Belgium.