Revolutionary Europe, 1789-1815

by H. Morse Stephens

The Belgian Revolution. Oct. 1789-Jan. 1790.

The tidings of the events of 5th and 6th October showed both the French émigrés and the continental monarchs that they were wrong in their estimate of the Revolution. That the French royal family should be triumphantly brought to Paris and be practically imprisoned in the Tuileries under the eyes of the Parisian populace was a startling proof of the power of the people. It proportionately encouraged the supporters of all the popular movements on the French borders. Of these, the most important was that which had already made so much progress two years before in Belgium. The first result of the removal of the King of France to Paris was the Belgian Revolution of 1789, which filled almost as large a place in the eyes of contemporaries as the French Revolution itself. Encouraged by the Triple Alliance, and more especially by Frederick William II. of Prussia, the Belgian exiles of both wings, the supporters of Van der Noot, the advocate of the ancient Constitution, and of Vonck, the radical, had formed a patriotic army at Breda. The news of the events of 5th and 6th October determined them to act. On 23d October the army under Van der Mersch crossed the border, and on 24th October Van der Noot issued a manifesto declaring the Emperor Joseph deprived of his sovereignty over the Duchy of Brabant for having violated its fundamental charter.

Formation of the Belgian Republic, 10th Jan. 1790.

The march of the patriotic army was both rapid and successful. Bruges and Ostend opened their gates to the exiles; the fort of St. Pierre at Ghent was stormed; and the Estates of Flanders at once assembled, published a declaration of independence, and called on the other provinces to join in the movement. In Brabant the excitement was at its height. Trautmannsdorf in vain promised to restore the ‘Joyeuse Entrée,’ to abolish the Imperial Seminary at Brussels, and to declare a general amnesty. The patriots would not trust him, and Van der Mersch advanced into the Duchy and occupied Tirlemont. The people of Brussels then rose in insurrection. From 7th to 12th December was a period of long-continued riot and street fighting. Many of the Austrian soldiers deserted to the popular side, and those who remained true to their colours were shot at from windows and refused to charge. The advance of Van der Mersch set the seal upon d’Alton’s discomfiture. He made a capitulation on 12th December, and marched out of Brussels, leaving his guns, military stores, and military chest containing 3,000,000 florins behind. He retreated to Luxembourg, the only province which remained faithful to the House of Austria, and his example was followed by the imperial garrisons of Malines, Antwerp, and Louvain, which were abandoned to the patriots. D’Alton himself died at Trèves, it is said by taking poison, on being summoned to Vienna to be tried by a court-martial, and was succeeded in command of the Austrian troops in Luxembourg by General Bender. On 18th December the patriot committee entered Brussels, headed by Van der Noot, who was hailed by the people as the Belgian Franklin. On 7th January 1790 representatives from all the provinces of the former Austrian Netherlands met at Brussels under the presidency of Cardinal Frankenberg, Archbishop of Malines, and on 10th January they passed a federal constitution for the ‘United Belgian States,’ resembling that of Holland, under which each province was to preserve its internal independence, and only foreign affairs and national defence were left to the central government. Van der Noot was chosen Minister of State, and he at once asked for the official recognition of the new Belgian Constitution by the Triple Alliance, whose ministers at the Hague, Lord Auckland, Count Keller, and Van der Spiegel had, he asserted, promised to guarantee the independence of the new United States of Belgium. Frederick William II. of Prussia endeavoured to carry out this promise. He authorised one of his officers, General Schönfeld, to organise the Belgian army, and ordered General Schlieffen at Liége to enter into communication with the new government. But England and Holland, though approving the insurrection of Belgium as affording a powerful counterpoise to the Emperor’s policy in the East, were in no hurry to guarantee the new Republic, and Van der Noot then determined, under the influence of the radicals or Vonckists, to solicit the help of France, and announced the new Belgian Constitution in a significant manner both to Louis XVI. and to the President of the National Assembly.

Death of the Emperor Joseph. 20th Feb. 1790.

The news of the declaration of the independence of the Belgian provinces, and of the revolution which had led to it, proved to be the death-blow of the Emperor Joseph. To the Prince de Ligne, a native of Belgium, he said, just before his death, ‘Your country has killed me; the taking of Ghent is my agony; the evacuation of Brussels is my death. What a disgrace this is for me! I die; I must be made of wood, if I did not. Go to the Netherlands; make them return to their allegiance. If you do not succeed in the attempt, remain there. Do not sacrifice your fortune for me; you have children.’ The dying Emperor in his despair made concessions in every direction. He humbled his pride to entreat the Pope to use his influence with the Belgian clergy. He gave in to the Hungarian magnates, who demanded the repeal of his great reforms with threats of insurrection; and on 28th January 1790 he issued his ‘Revocatio Ordinationum quæ sensu communi legibus adversari videbantur,’ by which he revoked all his reforms in Hungary, except the edict of toleration and the decrees against serfdom; and on 18th February he ordered the Crown of St. Stephen to be sent back to Pesth. He assented to the suspension of his reforming edicts in Bohemia, and even in the Tyrol, where an insurrection was on the point of breaking out. Then, feeling his life a failure, he prepared for death. He confessed and received the ordinances of the Church; the last words he was heard to say were: ‘I believe I have done my duty as a man and a prince,’ and on the morning of 20th February he died. The words he wished to be written on his grave were: ‘Here rests a prince, whose intentions were pure; but who had the misfortune to see all his plans miscarry;’ but the people of Vienna, with a deeper sense of the merits of the great ruler who had lived in their midst, placed on his statue the inscription, ‘Josepho secundo, arduis nato, magnis perfuncto, majoribus præcepto, qui saluti publicæ vixit non diu, sed totus.’ The failure of the career of Joseph, the noblest sovereign of the eighteenth century,—one of the noblest sovereigns of any century,—was a proof of the fallacy of the eighteenth century conception of benevolent despotism. He had tried to accomplish in his dominions the very measures of reform which the Constituent Assembly had undertaken in France. The abolition of the relics of feudalism, the creation of a spirit of nationality, based upon the existence of uniform laws, the nationalisation of the Church and of education, the removal of all caste privileges, whether in the payment of taxes or in eligibility for public employment, and the maintenance of good internal administration, the primary aims and the great achievements of the Revolution in France, were also the objects of Joseph’s reforms. But everything was to be done for the people, nothing by the people, and it is doubtful whether, if Joseph had been in the place of Louis XVI., the French people would have relished the advantages he might have conferred. The spirit of locality was perhaps not so strong in France as in the hereditary dominions of the House of Austria. Dauphiné and Burgundy did not differ from Brittany and Normandy as much as Bohemia and Hungary, Belgium and the Milanese differed from each other. Yet the abolition of local distinctions might have been resented in France, as it was in the dominions of Joseph, if it had been accomplished by the monarch, instead of being the work of elected representatives. It is indeed remarkable that, allowing for the want of exactness in the parallel, owing to the difference of local conditions, the very reforms, which rallied all France to the side of the Revolution, should have led to the disastrous termination of the Emperor Joseph’s reign, and it is difficult to avoid coming to the conclusion that the whole subject illustrates the grand distinction between the eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries, the distinction between alterations in the political, social, or economical conditions of a state made by a monarch for his people, and by a people for itself.

Louis XVI., indeed, showed himself a very different type of monarch from Joseph. He wished for the good of his people as ardently as his brother-in-law, but he had during the early years of his reign been satisfied with wishing for reforms, instead of energetically initiating them. When the success of the Revolution was assured by the policy of the deputies of the Tiers État, by the capture of the Bastille and by his own establishment at Paris, he never thought of setting himself at the head of the party of reform. He did not openly ally himself with the Tiers État, to vanquish the opposition of the nobles, as Gustavus III. of Sweden had done; he did not dream of outbidding the National Assembly for popularity by lavish promises, as other monarchs before and since have done; and he did not even try to share the credit of the representatives of the people by exhibiting an ardent zeal for reform. The horror he felt for civil war was not recognised; his partial yielding to the Court party of reaction in July and October, though at so late a date and so half-heartedly as to nullify any chance of its success, was imputed to him as a crime; and the difficulty presented by the fact that his dearest relatives, his Queen, Marie Antoinette, and his sister, Madame Elizabeth, were against all reform, was never fully appreciated. In consequence, the King’s real wishes to please his people and avoid bloodshed were looked on as simulated by the members of the National Assembly, and not only Louis himself, but the very principle of the French monarchy, were regarded as hostile to representative institutions. Louis XVI. was as weak as Joseph II. was energetic, but he was equally well-intentioned; and it was a distinct misfortune, both for himself and for France, that the value of the passive inertness, which he generally opposed to the reactionary schemes of his family and of the partisans of the ancien régime, was not adequately recognised.

The New French Constitution. 1789–1791.

This attitude towards the King had an important effect upon the constitution which the Constituent Assembly was engaged in framing during the year 1790. Only the main points in the growth of this Constitution, which occupied the greater part of the time of the Assembly from 1789 to 1791, can here be touched upon. But one striking feature must first be observed, that it was drawn up and applied piecemeal, not as an organic whole, like the later French constitutions of the revolutionary period. The first important principle was decreed upon 12th November 1789, when it was resolved that all the old local divisions of France, which perpetuated the memory of the gradual growth of the French provinces into France, should be abolished, and that the country should be divided into eighty departments of nearly equal size. It was naturally some months before the new division was effected, and still longer before the further division of each department into districts, and each district into cantons was finished. No wiser step for converting France from a congeries of provinces into a nation could have been devised. On the basis of the new divisions a new local government was established. Each department and district was to be administered by elected authorities, elaborately chosen by a system of double election. Next to the local government, the judicial system was reorganised. The Parlements were all abolished, and local courts, consisting of elected judges of departmental and district tribunals, and elected justices of the peace, were substituted. A uniform system of law was projected, and juries were sanctioned in criminal but not in civil cases. In these sweeping reforms one natural blemish is perceptible: from having no elected officials the other extreme was adopted of having all officials elected.

The Civil Constitution of the Clergy.