A short history of Belgium

by Léon van der Essen

Joseph II, who was greatly interested in the restoration of the prosperity of the country, even attempted to secure the complete opening of the Scheldt, still closed by the Dutch. After diplomatic negotiations, begun in 1784, had failed, owing to the energetic opposition of the United Provinces, once more supported by France, the Emperor tried to settle the question in a practical but simple manner. He ordered a vessel to leave Antwerp and follow the course of the river down to the sea, and another vessel to start from Ostend and follow the course of the river up to Antwerp. The Dutch, he hoped, would not fire upon the vessels, and the Scheldt would be opened to shipping by this stratagem. But the Dutch did fire, and forced the Belgian vessels to withdraw. Any further move on the part of the Emperor would mean war, and for this Joseph II was not prepared. The Scheldt remained closed.

What was the policy of the Austrian Hapsburgs toward the institutions of the country? It was essentially Austrian, and tended toward absolutism, influenced nevertheless by the teachings of the French philosophical school. It aimed at the diminution of the liberty of the clergy and the recognition of the state as superior to the church; at strengthening the sovereign power, overriding the national institutions and the ancient and well-established privileges; at conferring political initiative on the Austrian governor-general of Belgium; at depriving the Belgian nobility of any participation in political affairs; at recruiting public officers from among the jurists only; at avoiding any brutal attack upon the national institutions, but at undermining them in a secret manner. It cannot be denied, however, that the Austrian government did its best to restore the material welfare of the country; and the manufacturing and agricultural interests were fostered by two Austrian ministers, both of Italian nationality, Antoniotto di Botta Adorno, under Maria Theresa, and Count Giovanni Giacomo di Belgiojoso, during the reign of Joseph II.

This Emperor had a sincere desire to promote the material welfare of the Belgian people, and it is a historical fact that at the beginning of his reign he visited Belgium incognito, accompanied by one of his ministers, in order to examine into everything himself and to take such measures as he might find to be necessary. Unfortunately he was somewhat of an idealist, imbued with the theories of the French philosophy of the eighteenth century and the teachings of “Febronianism.”

France was at this time the center of an intellectual and moral current, which exerted a powerful influence on the courts and the higher classes of all Europe. The social, philosophical, economical, and governmental doctrines of the Encyclopaedists and the Physiocrats attacked the basis of the existing society. They proposed the creation of an entirely new social and political order, breaking with tradition, and conceived of as independent of any Christian idea. On the other hand, the doctrines of the superiority of the state over the church were already promulgated, since Van Espen, a Belgian jurist of the seventeenth century, had supported them. They were codified in 1763 by Febronius, the suffragan bishop of Treves, who developed them to the extreme limit. He proposed breaking up the Catholic church into national churches, under the supervision of the state. His book had an immense success at the German courts, even those of the ecclesiastical principalities.

Joseph II had been converted to the ideas of the French Encyclopaedists and Physiocrats as well as to the teachings of Febronianism. An absolutist by conviction, an enemy of the liberties of the church, despising all things of the past, and lacking in the adroitness which characterized Maria Theresa’s government, he sought to put in force without delay the new concept of human society that he had conceived. He tried to force upon Belgium a whole series of reforms, by means of sovereign decrees, between the years 1781 and 1787. The fundamental ideas at the basis of these reforms may be summarized as follows: the secularization of political society; the incorporation of the Catholic church in Belgium as a part of the national Austrian church; and the recognition of the sovereign power as absolute and unlimited.

The political secularization of Belgium was attempted by the Edicts of Tolerance, issued in 1781-82. The ecclesiastical jurisdiction was suppressed; non-Catholics were put upon nearly the same level as Catholics, and public worship was permitted to them under certain restrictions. Subject to a dispensation from the sovereign, they were admitted to public offices and could become burgesses and members of craft-guilds. In 1784 another edict fixed new rules for marriages, and prevented the ecclesiastical judge from dealing with the canonical impediments declared by canon law.

As for the subordination of the church to the state, the religious orders were no longer allowed to show obedience to their foreign superiors; the jurisdiction of the Nuncio of Cologne over Belgium was abolished; the Belgian bishops were forbidden to correspond with Rome on the matter of dispensations for marriages; a large number of convents were declared to be useless and were suppressed, their properties being placed under the administration of the state; parishes were delimited by the government; all the confraternities of a religious nature were suppressed and replaced by a single one, which the Emperor-Philosopher called the “Brotherhood of Love for Fellow-Creatures.” All the seminaries for the education of priests were closed, and in 1786 a General Seminary was established at Louvain and in Luxemburg, at which theology was to be taught, subject to the control of the state. A very drastic measure was the suppression of any subsidy to the society of the Bollandists, the Belgian Jesuits who were responsible for the criticism and the publication of the Lives of the Saints, and who were known all over Europe for their scientific methods and their superior culture.

In 1787 came the upheaval of the political institutions. The three “collateral councils”—the Council of State, the Privy Council, and the Council of Finances—were abolished. The Secretary of State, the provincial states, the provincial councils of justice, the seigniorial or manorial justice, the jurisdiction of the échevinage, the ecclesiastical tribunals, the special tribunal of the University of Louvain which had jurisdiction over offenses committed by students, and all other courts of justice except the military tribunals, were at one stroke suppressed. Joseph II, by a simple act of his sovereign will, wiped out the old institutions and introduced the Austrian autocracy.

But the Belgians, who had always fought against the enemies of their institutions and privileges, did not submit peacefully to this brutal attack upon their liberties. Of course, many of the reforms of the Emperor were not open to criticism, and his motives cannot be said to have been wholly wrong. His efforts, however, were too general in their nature, and were attended with too far-reaching results. At first there was only passive resistance. The bishops had begun by protesting against the religious reforms. The general edicts of 1787 called forth a storm of revolt among all classes of the people. Declarations, petitions, manifestos poured in upon the Emperor’s court. The edicts of 1787 were thereupon partly suspended. But the religious reforms were not abated. The establishment of the General Seminary and the order for the closing of the diocesan seminaries were not rescinded, and force was resorted to against the Archbishop of Malines, Frankenberg, and the University of Louvain in carrying them out. This shocked the Belgian people, who at heart were Catholic, and the harsh measures of the Austrian General D’Alton made the situation still more critical. Two parties came into existence: that of the nationalists, called “Patriots,” and that of the Austrian sympathizers, called by the people “Figs.” In 1788, owing to the resistance of the states of Brabant and Hainaut, the arrest of their members and the abolition of the privileges of Brabant, among them the famous “Joyeuse Entrée,” were ordered. General D’Alton became more and more dictatorial and cruel. The result was a serious revolution, known in history as the Brabantine Revolution (1789).

The revolt was the consequence of two elements among the people, which though at heart directly opposed to each other were temporarily united against the foreign tyranny. Each movement had its own leader, Van der Noot and Vonck, and both were lawyers of Brabant. Van der Noot proposed to deliver Belgium by the assistance of foreign powers, especially Prussia—the enemy of Austria—and Holland. Vonck, on the other hand, placed his confidence in the Belgians alone, and told the people that the great powers would betray them. Both were forced to flee the country in order to escape the anger of General D’Alton. Both established committees for revolutionary propaganda, Van der Noot in Holland, where he established connections in Prussia; Vonck in the territory of the principality of Liège. Later both committees succeeded in agreeing upon a common plan of action. Like William the Silent in the sixteenth century, Van der Noot issued a manifesto proclaiming the deposition of Joseph II as sovereign of the Austrian Netherlands. A national army, recruited on foreign soil, invaded Belgium. The Austrians were defeated and compelled to evacuate the country, except Luxemburg, where they made a stand. The victors then proclaimed a republic, known in history under the official title of the “République des États Belgiques unis” (Republic of the United States of Belgium). In each province the body of the states—delegates of the clergy, the nobility, and the people—were given the exercise of sovereignty, and the traditional institutions of the Burgundian times were restored. In 1790 the provinces held a general meeting at Brussels, where the federal pact between them and the central power was established by the so-called Act of Union.