Part 16 (1/2)

Polignac, his incapable and imperious minister, the tool of the Jesuits, had, since 1829, impugned every national right, and, at length, ventured by the ordinances of the 25th July, 1830, to subvert the const.i.tution. During three days, from the 27th to the 30th of July, the greatest confusion reigned in Paris; the people rose in thousands; murderous conflicts took place in the streets between them and the royal troops, who were driven from every quarter, and the king was expelled. The chambers met, declared the elder branch of the house of Bourbon (Charles X., his son, the Dauphin, Duke d'Angouleme, and his grandson, the youthful Duke de Bordeaux, the son of the murdered Duke de Berri) to have forfeited the throne, but at the same time allowed them unopposed to seek an asylum in England, and elected Louis Philippe, Duke of Orleans, the son of the notorious Jacobin, the head of the younger line of the house of Bourbon and the grand-master of the society of Freemasons, king of the French. The rights of the chambers and of the people were also extended by an appendix to the charta signed by Louis XVIII.

The revolution of July was the signal for all discontented subjects throughout Europe to gain, either by force or by legal opposition, their lost or sighed-for rights. In October, the const.i.tutional party in Spain attempted to overturn the despotic rule of Ferdinand VII. In November, the prime minister of England, the renowned Duke of Wellington, was compelled by the people to yield his seat to Earl Grey, a man of more liberal principles, who commenced the great work of reform in the const.i.tution and administration of Great Britain.

During this month, a general insurrection took place in Poland: the grandduke, Constantine, was driven out of Warsaw, and Poland declared herself independent. A great part of Germany was also convulsed: and a part of the ill-raised fabric, erected by the statesmen of 1815, fell tottering to the ground.

[Footnote 1: Vide Binder's Prince Metternich.]

[Footnote 2: Official report of the Russian amba.s.sador, Count Pozzo di Borgo, from Paris, of the 14th of December, 1828.]

CCLXVII. The Belgian Revolution

A nation's self-forgetfulness is ever productive of national disgrace.

The Netherlands were torn from the empire and placed partly beneath the tyranny of Spain, partly beneath the aegis of France; the dominion of Austria, at a later period, merely served to rouse their provincial spirit, and, during their subsequent annexation to France, the French element decidedly gained the ascendency among the population. When, in 1815, these provinces fell under the rule of Holland, it was hoped that the German element would again rise. But Holland is not Germany.

Estranged provinces are alone to be regained by means of their incorporation with an empire imbued with one distinct national spirit; the subordination of one province to another but increases national antipathy and estrangement. Holland, by an ungrateful, inimical policy, unfortunately strove to separate herself from Germany.[1] And yet Holland owes her whole prosperity to Germany. There is her market; thence does she draw her immense wealth; the loss of that market for her colonial productions would prove her irredeemable ruin. Her sovereign, driven into distant exile, was restored to her by the arms of Germany and generously endowed with royalty. Holland, in return for all these benefits, deceitfully deprived Germany of the free navigation of the Rhine to the sea guaranteed to her by the federal act and a.s.sumed the right of fixing the price of all goods, whether imported to or exported from Germany. The whole of Germany was, in this unprecedented manner, rendered doubly tributary to the petty state of Holland.

Belgium, annexed to this secondary state instead of being incorporated with great and liberal Germany, necessarily remained a stranger to any influence calculated to excite her sympathy with the general interests of Germany. Cut off, as heretofore, from German influence, she retained, in opposition to the Dutch, a preponderance of the old Spanish and modern French element in her population. Priests and liberals, belonging to the French school, formed an opposition party against the king, who, on his side, rested his sole support upon the Dutch, whom he favored in every respect. Count Broglio, archbishop of Ghent, first began the contest by refusing to take the oath on the const.i.tution. Violence was resorted to and he fled the country. The impolicy of the government in affixing his name to the pillory merely served to increase the exasperation of the Catholics. Hence their acquiescence with the designs of the Jesuits, their opposition to the foundation of a philosophical academy, independent of the clergy, at Louvain. The fact of the population of Belgium being to that of Holland as three to two and the number of its representatives in the states-general being as four to seven, of few, if any, Belgians being allowed to enter the service of the state, the army, or the navy, still further added to the popular discontent. The gross manners of the minister, Van Maanen, also increased the evil. As early as January, 1830, eight liberal Belgian deputies were deprived of their offices, and De Potter, with some others, who had ventured to defend them by means of the press, were banished the kingdom under a charge of high treason.

The Dutch majority in the states-general, notwithstanding its devotion to the king, rejected the ten years' budget on the ground of its affording too long a respite to ministerial responsibility, and protested against the levy of Swiss troops. Slave-trade in the colonies was also abolished in 1818.

The position of the Netherlands, which, Luxemburg excepted, did not appertain to the German confederation, continually exposed her, on account of Belgium, to be attacked on the land side by France, on that of the sea by her ancient commercial foe, England, and had induced the king to form a close alliance with Russia. His son, William of Orange, married a sister of the emperor Alexander.

The colonies did not regain their former prosperity. The Dutch settlement at Batavia with difficulty defended itself against the rebellious natives of Sumatra and Java.

The revolution in Paris had an electric effect upon the irritated Belgians. On the 25th of August, 1830, Auber's opera, ”The Dumb Girl of Portici,” the revolt of Masaniello in Naples, was performed at the Brussels theatre and inflamed the pa.s.sions of the audience to such a degree, that, on quitting the theatre, they proceeded to the house of Libry, the servile newspaper editor, and entirely destroyed it: the palace of the minister, Van Maanen, shared the same fate. The citizens placed themselves under arms, and sent a deputation to The Hague to lay their grievances before the king. The entire population meanwhile rose in open insurrection, and the whole of the fortresses, Maestricht and the citadel of Antwerp alone excepted, fell into their hands.

William of Orange, the crown prince, ventured unattended among the insurgents at Brussels and proposed, as a medium of peace, the separation of Belgium from Holland in a legislative and administrative sense. The king also made an apparent concession to the wishes of the people by the dismissal of Van Maanen, but shortly afterward declared his intention not to yield, disavowed the step taken by his son, and allowed some Belgian deputies to be insulted at The Hague. A fanatical commotion instantly took place at Brussels; the moderate party in the civic guard was disarmed, and the populace made preparations for desperate resistance. On the 25th of September, Prince Frederick, second son to the king of Holland, entered Brussels with a large body of troops, but encountered barricades and a heavy fire in the Park, the Place Royal, and along the Boulevards. An immense crowd, chiefly composed of the people of Liege and of peasants dressed in the blue smock of the country, had a.s.sembled for the purpose of aiding in the defence of the city. The contest, accompanied by destruction of the dwelling-houses and by pillage, lasted five days. The Dutch were accused of practicing the most horrid cruelties upon the defenceless inhabitants and of thereby heightening the popular exasperation. At length, on the 27th of September, the prince was compelled to abandon the city. On the 5th of October, Belgium declared herself independent.

De Potter returned and placed himself at the head of the provisional government. The Prince of Orange recognized the absolute separation of Belgium from Holland in a proclamation published at Antwerp, but was, nevertheless, constrained to quit the country. Antwerp fell into the hands of the insurgents; the citadel, however, refused to surrender, and Cha.s.se, the Dutch commandant, caused the magnificent city to be bombarded, and the well-stored entrepot, the a.r.s.enal, and about sixty or seventy houses, to be set on fire, during the night of the 27th of October, 1830.[2] The cruelties perpetrated by the Dutch were bitterly retaliated upon them by the Belgian populace. On the 10th of November, however, a national Belgian congress met, in which the moderate party gained the upper hand, princ.i.p.ally owing to the influence of the clergy. De Potter's plan for the formation of a Belgian commonwealth fell to the ground. The congress decided in favor of the maintenance of the kingdom, drew up a new const.i.tution, and offered the crown to the Prince de Nemours, second son of the king of the French. It was, however, refused by Louis Philippe in the name of his son, in order to avoid war with the other great European powers. Surlet de Chokier, the leader of the liberal party, hereupon undertook the provisional government of the country, and negotiations were entered into with Prince Leopold of Coburg.

On the 4th of November, a congress, composed of the ministers of England, Russia, Austria, and Prussia, met at London for the purpose of settling the Belgian question without disturbing the peace of Europe, and it was decided that Prince Leopold of Coburg, the widower of the princess royal of England, a man entirely under British influence, and who had refused the throne of Greece, should accept that of Belgium. Eighteen articles favorable to Belgium were granted to him by the London congress. Scarcely, however, had he reached Brussels, on the 31st July, 1831, than the fetes given upon that occasion were disturbed by the unexpected invasion of Belgium by a numerous and powerful Dutch force. At Ha.s.selt, the Prince of Orange defeated the Belgians under General Daine, and, immediately advancing against Leopold, utterly routed him at Tirlemont, on the 12th August.

The threats of France and England, and the appearance of a French army in Belgium, saved Brussels and compelled the Dutch to withdraw. The eighteen articles in favor of Belgium were, on the other hand, replaced by twenty-four others, more favorable to the Dutch, which Leopold was compelled to accept. The king of Holland, however, refusing to accept these twenty-four articles, with which, notwithstanding the concessions therein contained, he was dissatisfied, the Belgian government took advantage of the undecided state of the question not to undertake, for the time being, half of the public debt of Holland, which, by the twenty-four articles, was laid upon Belgium.

Negotiations dragged on their weary length, and protocol after protocol followed in endless succession from London. In 1832, Leopold espoused Louisa, one of the daughters of the king of the French, and was not only finally recognized by the northern powers, but, by means of the intervention of England, being backed by a fleet, and by means of that of France, being backed by an army, compelled Holland to accept of terms of peace. The French troops under Gerard, una.s.sisted by the Belgians and watched by a Prussian army stationed on the Meuse, regularly besieged and took the citadel of Antwerp, on Christmas eve, 1832, gave it up to the Belgians as pertaining to their territory, and evacuated the country. King William, however, again rejecting the twenty-four articles, all the other points, the division of the public debt, the navigation of the Scheldt, and, more than all, the future destiny of the province of Luxemburg, which formed part of the confederated states of Germany, had been declared hereditary in the house of Na.s.sau-Orange, and which, by its geographical position and the character of its inhabitants, was more nearly connected with Belgium, remained for the present unsettled. In 1839, Holland was induced by a fresh demonstration on the part of the great powers to accept the twenty-four articles, against which Belgium in her turn protested on the ground of the procrastination on the part of Holland having rendered her earlier accession to these terms null and void.

Belgium was, however, also compelled to yield. By this fresh agreement it was settled that the western part of Luxemburg, which had in the interim fallen away from the German confederation, should be annexed to Belgium, and that Holland (and the German confederation) should receive the eastern part of Limburg in indemnity; and that Belgium, instead of taking upon herself one-half of the public debt of the Netherlands, should annually pay the sum of five million Dutch guldens toward defraying the interest of that debt.

The period of the independence of Belgium, brief as it was, was made use of, particularly under the Nothomb ministry, for the development of great industrial activity, and, more especially, for the creation of a system of railroads, until now without its parallel on the continent. Unfortunately but little was done in favor of the interests of Germany. The French language had already become so prevalent throughout Belgium that, in 1840, the provincial councillors of Ghent were constrained to pa.s.s a resolution to the effect that the offices dependent upon them should, at all events, solely be intrusted to persons acquainted with the Flemish dialect, and that their rescripts should be drawn up in that language.--Holland immensely increased her public debt in consequence of her extraordinary exertions. In 1841, the king, William I., voluntarily abdicated the throne and retired into private life, in the enjoyment of an enormous revenue, with a Catholic countess whom he had wedded. He was succeeded by his son, William II.

[Footnote 1: ”The Netherlands formed, nevertheless, but a weak bulwark to Germany. Internal disunion, superfluous fortresses, a weak army. On the one side, a witless, wealthy, haughty aristocracy, an influential and ignorant clergy; on the other, civic pride, capelocratic pettiness, Calvinistic _brusquerie_. The policy pursued by the king was inimical to Germany.”--_Stein's Letters._]

[Footnote 2: So bitter was the enmity existing between the Belgians and the Dutch that the Dutch lieutenant, Van Speyk, when driven by a storm before Antwerp, blew up his gunboat in the middle of the Scheldt rather than allow it to fall into the hands of the Belgians.]

CCLXVIII. The Swiss Revolution

The restoration of 1814 had replaced the ancient aristocracy more or less on their former footing throughout Switzerland. In this country the greatest tranquillity prevailed; the oppression of the aristocracy was felt, but not so heavily as to be insupportable. Many benefits, as, for instance, the draining of the swampy Linththal by Escher of Zurich, were, moreover, conferred upon the country. Mercenaries were also continually furnished to the king of France, to the pope, and, for some time, to the king of the Netherlands. France, nevertheless, imposed such heavy commercial duties that several of the cantons leagued together for the purpose of taking reprisals. This misunderstanding between Switzerland and France unfortunately did not teach wisdom to the states belonging to the German confederation, and the Rhine was also barricaded with custom-houses, those graves of commerce. The Jesuits settled at Freiburg in the Uechtland, where they founded a large seminary and whence they finally succeeded in expelling Peter Girard, a man of high merit, noted for the liberality of his views on education.[1]

The Paris revolution of July also gave rise to a democratic reaction throughout Switzerland. Berne, by a circular, published September 22, 1830, called upon the other Swiss governments to suppress the revolutionary spirit by force, and, by so doing, fired the train. The government of Zurich wisely opposed the circular and made a voluntary reform. In all the other cantons popular societies sprang up, and, either by violence or by threats, subverted the ancient governments.

New const.i.tutions were everywhere granted. The immense majority of the people was in favor of reform, and the aristocracy offered but faint resistance. Little towns or villages became the centre of the movements against the capitals. Fischer, an innkeeper from Merischwanden, seized the city of Aarau; the village of Burgdorf revolutionized the canton of Berne, the village of Murten the canton of Freiburg, the village of Weinfelden the canton of Constance; this example was followed by the peasantry of Solothurn and Vaud; the government of St. Gall imitated that of Zurich.