CHAPTER XI
BELGIUM UNDER FRENCH DOMINATION
(1792-1814)
The French revolutionary clubs had exerted a powerful influence on Vonck. The effect of their teachings had also been felt in the independent principality of Liège and had provoked a rising of the people against the bishop-prince. But the revolt of Liège, which occurred at the same time as the revolt in Belgium against Joseph II (1789), was quickly suppressed.
When France itself fell a victim to the revolutionary leaders, the great Revolution broke loose. The French soon found themselves confronted by a European coalition and were forced into war. Since Austria was inimical to the Revolution, the French troops invaded the Belgian possessions of the Hapsburgs in 1792 under the leadership of General Dumouriez. They found not a few sympathizers in the country. The partisans of Van der Noot looked to the French to deliver them from the Austrian yoke; the partisans of Vonck had always been agents of the French revolutionary leaders, and desired the annexation of their country to France. After the victory of Jemappes (1792), the French entered Belgium, loudly proclaiming that they came as liberators of the people and desired only the destruction of Austrian tyranny. Although the excesses of their troops seemed to contradict this statement, the people believed them. Then came the second and final defeat of the Austrians at the battle of Fleurus (1794). Both Belgium and the principality of Liège were occupied by the victors.
A period of terrible excesses followed. The French National Convention entirely abolished all the ancient institutions; a provisional administration was established, and “clubs” with political aims were introduced into all the cities. Taxes, requisitions, systematic pillage, outrages on religious convictions rained upon the unhappy inhabitants. General elections were forced upon the Belgians and manipulated by the “Sans-culottes” and political agents so as to give the impression of a referendum, through which the people should express their desire to be annexed to France. This plan encountered general hostility throughout the country. Thereupon the National Convention, by a law voted and applied on October 1, 1795, simply annexed Belgium and the principality of Liège. As Austria was too weak to defend her possessions, it formally ceded the Austrian Netherlands to France and recognized the annexation by the Treaty of Campo Formio (1797).
The French now treated the conquered territory with great harshness. The followers of the Catholic religion were severely persecuted, the churches were closed, the priests were sentenced to death or deported to French Guiana and to the islands of Ré and Oléron, the Catholic worship was suppressed and replaced by that of the “Goddess of Reason.” For the first time in Belgian history military conscription was forced upon the inhabitants, and the youth of the country was compelled to shed its blood on foreign battlefields for a régime it abhorred.
This naturally stirred up bitter resentment; and, even as they had risen against Joseph II, so a part at least of the Belgians rose against the French. This revolt is known as the War of the Peasants (1798-99), because it was mainly the people of the countryside in Flanders, Campine, and Luxemburg who fought in defense of their hearths and their religion. They fought heroically with old weapons, scythes, pikes, and guns of old pattern, under the leadership of a few nobles and burgesses. There is a close resemblance between their struggle and that of the French peasants in the Vendée. But what could they accomplish against the well-equipped armies of the Republic? The egotism of the educated classes, which gave them no support at all, and their lack of training and experience, soon brought their valiant resistance to an inglorious end. One after another their bands were exterminated, and those who did not fall on the battlefield died against a wall by the bullets of a firing squad.
Their gallantry did not save the country. Belgium remained fifteen years longer under French domination. The Concordat concluded in 1801 between Pope Pius VII and Napoleon Bonaparte brought the religious persecution to an end, and the Catholic worship was restored. When Bonaparte had become Emperor Napoleon I, the glory which surrounded his name made a profound impression on the Belgians, and the great Emperor became very popular among them. Antwerp attracted all his attention; and it is due to him that the Scheldt, after a century and a half of being closed, was again opened to trade and was freed from the tyrannous control of the Dutch. As military conscription still prevailed, the Belgians filled the ranks of the imperial army, and their blood was shed for the fame and the power of Napoleon all over Europe. The conqueror left on the country, however, the impress of his spirit of organization in the famous _Code Napoléon_, that monument of civil law that still forms the basis of Belgian jurisprudence. The spell of his name appeared from the fact that after the defeat of his armies at Leipzig in 1813 there was no revolt against him in Belgium as there was in Holland.
The fall of Napoleon ended the French domination of the Belgians (1814). However, the diplomats who rearranged the map of Europe, while the once mighty Emperor was sent to St. Helena, had determined that the country was not to be restored to its former political status.
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