Holland Part 16

But it did not lose this occasion of recurring to the form of government of 1650. No new stadtholder was now appointed; the supreme authority being vested in the general a.s.sembly of the states, and the active direction of affairs confided to the grand pensionary. This departure from the form of government which had been on various occasions proved to be essential to the safety, although at all times hazardous to the independence, of the States, was not attended with any evil consequences. The factions and the anarchy which had before been the consequence of the course now adopted were prevented by the potent influence of national fear lest the enemy might triumph, and crush the hopes, the jealousies, and the enmities of all parties in one general ruin.

Thus the common danger awoke a common interest, and the splendid successes of her allies kept Holland steady in the career of patriotic energy which had its rise in the dread of her redoubtable foe.

The joy in France at William's death was proportionate to the grief it created in Holland; and the arrogant confidence of Louis seemed to know no bounds. "I will punish these audacious merchants,"

said he, with an air of disdain, when he read the manifesto of Holland; not foreseeing that those he affected to despise so much would, ere long, command in a great measure the destinies of his crown. Queen Anne entered upon the war with masculine intrepidity, and maintained it with heroic energy. Efforts were made by the English ministry and the states-general to mediate between the kings of Sweden and Poland. But Charles XII., enamored of glory, and bent on the one great object of his designs against Russia, would listen to nothing that might lead him from his immediate career of victory. Many other of the northern princes were withheld, by various motives, from entering into the contest with France, and its whole brunt devolved on the original members of the Grand Alliance. The generals who carried it on were Marlborough and Prince Eugene. The former, at its commencement an earl, and subsequently raised to the dignity of duke, was declared generalissimo of the Dutch and English forces. He was a man of most powerful genius, both as warrior and politician.

A pupil of the great Turenne, his exploits left those of his master in the shade. No commander ever possessed in a greater degree the faculty of forming vast designs, and of carrying them into effect with consummate skill; no one displayed more coolness and courage in action, saw with a keener eye the errors of the enemy, or knew better how to profit by success. He never laid siege to a town that he did not take, and never fought a battle that he did not gain.

Prince Eugene joined to the highest order of personal bravery a profound judgment for the grand movements of war, and a capacity for the most minute of the minor details on which their successful issue so often depends. United in the same cause, these two great generals pursued their course without the least misunderstanding.

At the close of each of those successive campaigns, in which they reaped such a full harvest of renown, they retired together to The Hague, to arrange, in the profoundest secrecy, the plans for the next year's operations, with one other person, who formed the great point of union between them, and completed a triumvirate without a parallel in the history of political affairs. This third was Heinsius, one of those great men produced by the republic whose names are tantamount to the most detailed eulogium for talent and patriotism. Every enterprise projected by the confederates was deliberately examined, rejected, or approved by these three a.s.sociates, whose strict union of purpose, disowning all petty rivalry, formed the centre of counsels and the source of circ.u.mstances finally so fatal to France.

Louis XIV., now sixty years of age, could no longer himself command his armies, or probably did not wish to risk the reputation he was conscious of having gained by the advice and services of Turenne, Conde, and Luxemburg. Louvois, too, was dead; and Colbert no longer managed his finances. A council of rash and ignorant ministers hung like a dead weight on the talent of the generals who succeeded the great men above mentioned. Favor and not merit too often decided promotion, and lavished command. Vendome, Villars, Boufflers, and Berwick were set aside, to make way for Villeroi, Tallard, and Marsin, men every way inferior.

The war began in 1702 in Italy, and Marlborough opened his first campaign in Brabant also in that year. For several succeeding years the confederates pursued a career of brilliant success, the details of which do not properly belong to this work. A mere chronology of celebrated battles would be of little interest, and the pages of English history abound in records of those deeds.

Blenheim, Ramillies, Oudenarde, and Malplaquet, are names that speak for themselves, and tell their own tale of glory. The utter humiliation of France was the result of events, in which the undying fame of England for inflexible perseverance and unbounded generosity was joined in the strictest union with that of Holland; and the impetuous valor of the worthy successor to the t.i.tle of Prince of Orange was, on many occasions, particularly at Malplaquet, supported by the devotion and gallantry of the Dutch contingent in the allied armies. The naval affairs of Holland offered nothing very remarkable. The states had always a fleet ready to support the English in their enterprises; but no eminent admiral arose to rival the renown of Rooke, Byng, Benbow, and others of their allies. The first of those admirals took Gibraltar, which has ever since remained in the possession of England. The great earl of Peterborough carried on the war with splendid success in Portugal and Spain, supported occasionally by the English fleet under Sir Cloudesley Shovel, and that of Holland under Admirals Allemonde and Wapenaer.

During the progress of the war, the haughty and longtime imperial Louis was reduced to a state of humiliation that excited a compa.s.sion so profound as to prevent its own open expression--the most galling of all sentiments to a proud mind. In the year 1709 he solicited peace on terms of most abject submission. The states-general, under the influence of the duke of Marlborough and Prince Eugene, rejected all his supplications, retorting unsparingly the insolent harshness with which he had formerly received similar proposals from them. France, roused to renewed exertions by the insulting treatment experienced by her humiliated but still haughty despot, made prodigious but vain efforts to repair her ruinous losses.

In the following year Louis renewed his attempts to obtain some tolerable conditions; offering to renounce his grandson, and to comply with all the former demands of the confederates. Even these overtures were rejected; Holland and England appearing satisfied with nothing short of--what was after all impracticable--the total destruction of the great power which Louis had so long proved to be incompatible with their welfare.

The war still went on; and the taking of Bouchain on the 30th of August, 1711, closed the almost unrivalled military career of Marlborough, by the success of one of his boldest and best conducted exploits. Party intrigue had accomplished what, in court parlance, is called the disgrace, but which, in the language of common sense, means only the dismissal of this great man. The new ministry, who hated the Dutch, now entered seriously into negotiations with France. The queen acceded to these views, and sent special envoys to communicate with the court of Versailles.

The states-general found it impossible to continue hostilities if England withdrew from the coalition; conferences were consequently opened at Utrecht in the month of January, 1712. England took the important station of arbiter in the great question there debated. The only essential conditions which she demanded individually were the renunciation of all claims to the crown of France by Philip V., and the demolition of the harbor of Dunkirk.

The first of these was the more readily acceded to, as the great battles of Almanza and Villaviciosa, gained by Philip's generals, the dukes of Berwick and Vendome, had steadily fixed him on the throne of Spain--a point still more firmly secured by the death of the emperor Joseph I., son of Leopold, and the elevation of his brother Charles, Philip's compet.i.tor for the crown of Spain, to the imperial dignity, by the t.i.tle of Charles VI.

The peace was not definitively signed until the 11th of April, 1713; and France obtained far better conditions than those which were refused her a few years previously. The Belgian provinces were given to the new emperor, and must henceforth be called the Austrian instead of the Spanish Netherlands. The gold and the blood of Holland had been profusely expended during this contest; it might seem for no positive results; but the exhaustion produced to every one of the other belligerents was a source of peace and prosperity to the republic. Its commerce was re-established; its financial resources recovered their level; and altogether we must fix on the epoch now before us as that of its utmost point of influence and greatness. France, on the contrary, was now reduced from its palmy state of almost European sovereignty to one of the deepest misery; and its monarch, in his old age, found little left of his former power but those records of poetry, painting, sculpture, and architecture which tell posterity of his magnificence, and the splendor of which throw his faults and his misfortunes into the shade.

The great object now to be accomplished by the United Provinces was the regulation of a distinct and guaranteed line of frontier between the republic and France. This object had become by degrees, ever since the peace of Munster, a fundamental maxim of their politics. The interposition of the Belgian provinces between the republic and France was of serious inconvenience to the former in this point of view. It was made the subject of a special article in "the grand alliance." In the year 1707 it was particularly discussed between England and the States, to the great discontent of the emperor, who was far from wis.h.i.+ng its definitive settlement. But it was now become an indispensable item in the total of important measures whose accomplishment was called for by the peace of Utrecht. Conferences were opened on this sole question at Antwerp in the year 1714; and, after protracted and difficult discussions, the treaty of the Barrier was concluded on the 15th of November, 1715.

This treaty was looked on with an evil eye in the Austrian Netherlands. The clamor was great and general; jealousy of the commercial prosperity of Holland being the real motive. Long negotiations took place on the subject of the treaty; and in December, 1718, the republic consented to modify some of the articles. The Pragmatic Sanction, published at Vienna in 1713 by Charles VI., regulated the succession to all the imperial hereditary possessions; and, among the rest, the provinces of the Netherlands. But this arrangement, though guaranteed by the chief powers of Europe, was, in the sequel, little respected, and but indifferently executed.

CHAPTER XXI

FROM THE PEACE OF UTRECHT TO THE INCORPORATION OF BELGIUM WITH THE FRENCH REPUBLIC

A.D. 1713--1795

During a period of thirty years following the treaty of Utrecht, the republic enjoyed the unaccustomed blessing of profound peace.

While the discontents of the Austrian Netherlands on the subject of the treaty of the Barrier were in debate, the quadruple alliance was formed between Holland, England, France and the emperor, for reciprocal aid against all enemies, foreign and domestic. It was in virtue of this treaty that the pretender to the English throne received orders to remove from France; and the states-general about the same time arrested the Swedish amba.s.sador, Baron Gortz, whose intrigues excited some suspicion. The death of Louis XIV.

had once more changed the political system of Europe; and the commencement of the eighteenth century was fertile in negotiations and alliances in which we have at present but little direct interest.

The rights of the republic were in all instances respected; and Holland did not cease to be considered as a power of the first distinction and consequence. The establishment of an East India Company at Ostend, by the emperor Charles VI., in 1722, was the princ.i.p.al cause of disquiet to the United Provinces, and the most likely to lead to a rupture. But, by the treaty of Hanover in 1726, the rights of Holland resulting from the treaty of Munster were guaranteed; and in consequence the emperor abolished the company of his creation, by the treaty of Seville in 1729, and that of Vienna in 1731.

The peace which now reigned in Europe allowed the United Provinces to direct their whole efforts toward the reform of those internal abuses resulting from feudality and fanaticism. Confiscations were reversed, and property secured throughout the republic.

It received into its protection the persecuted sectarians of France, Germany, and Hungary; and the tolerant wisdom which it exercised in these measures gives the best a.s.surance of its justice and prudence in one of a contrary nature, forming a solitary exception to them. This was the expulsion of the Jesuits, whose dangerous and destructive doctrines had been long a warrant for this salutary example to the Protestant states of Europe.

In the year 1732 the United Provinces were threatened with imminent peril, which accident alone prevented from becoming fatal to their very existence. It was perceived that the dikes, which had for ages preserved the coasts, were in many places crumbling to ruin, in spite of the enormous expenditure of money and labor devoted to their preservation. By chance it was discovered that the beams, piles and other timber works employed in the construction of the dikes were eaten through in all parts by a species of sea-worm hitherto unknown. The terror of the people was, as may be supposed, extreme. Every possible resource was applied which could remedy the evil; a hard frost providentially set in and destroyed the formidable reptiles; and the country was thus saved from a danger tenfold greater than that involved in a dozen wars.

The peace of Europe was once more disturbed in 1733. Poland, Germany, France, and Spain, were all embarked in the new war.

Holland and England stood aloof; and another family alliance of great consequence drew still closer than ever the bonds of union between them. The young Prince of Orange, who in 1728 had been elected stadtholder of Groningen and Guelders, in addition to that of Friesland which had been enjoyed by his father, had in the year 1734 married the princess Anne, daughter of George II. of England; and by thus adding to the consideration of the House of Na.s.sau, had opened a field for the recovery of all its old distinctions.

The death of the emperor Charles VI., in October, 1740, left his daughter, the archd.u.c.h.ess Maria Theresa, heiress of his throne and possessions. Young, beautiful, and endowed with qualities of the highest order, she was surrounded with enemies whose envy and ambition would have despoiled her of her splendid rights.

Frederick of Prussia, surnamed the Great, in honor of his abilities rather than his sense of justice, the electors of Bavaria and Saxony, and the kings of Spain and Sardinia, all pressed forward to the spoliation of an inheritance which seemed a fair play for all comers. But Maria Theresa, first joining her husband, Duke Francis of Lorraine, in her sovereignty, but without prejudice to it, under the t.i.tle of co-regent, took an att.i.tude truly heroic.

When everything seemed to threaten the dismemberment of her states, she threw herself upon the generous fidelity of her Hungarian subjects with a dignified resolution that has few examples. There was imperial grandeur even in her appeal to their compa.s.sion.

The results were electrical; and the whole tide of fortune was rapidly turned.

England and Holland were the first to come to the aid of the young and interesting empress. George II., at the head of his army, gained the victory of Dettingen, in support of her quarrel, in 1743; the states-general having contributed twenty thousand men and a large subsidy to her aid. Louis XV. resolved to throw his whole influence into the scale against these generous efforts in the princess's favor; and he invaded the Austrian Netherlands in the following year. Marshal Saxe commanded under him, and at first carried everything before him. Holland, having furnished twenty thousand troops and six s.h.i.+ps of war to George II. on the invasion of the young pretender, was little in a state to oppose any formidable resistance to the enemy that threatened her own frontiers. The republic, wholly attached for so long a period to pursuits of peace and commerce, had no longer good generals nor effective armies; nor could it even put a fleet of any importance to sea. Yet with all these disadvantages it would not yield to the threats nor the demands of France; resolved to risk a new war rather than succ.u.mb to an enemy it had once so completely humbled and given the law to.

Conferences were opened at Breda, but interrupted almost as soon as commenced. Hostilities were renewed. The memorable battle of Fontenoy was offered and gloriously fought by the allies; accepted and splendidly won by the French. Never did the English and Dutch troops act more n.o.bly in concert than on this remarkable occasion.

The valor of the French was not less conspicuous; and the success of the day was in a great measure decided by the Irish battalions, sent, by the lamentable politics of those and much later days, to swell the ranks and gain the battles of England's enemies.

Marshal Saxe followed up his advantage the following year, taking Brussels and many other towns. Almost the whole of the Austrian Netherlands being now in the power of Louis XV., and the United Provinces again exposed to invasion and threatened with danger, they had once more recourse to the old expedient of the elevation of the House of Orange, which in times of imminent peril seemed to present a never-failing palladium. Zealand was the first to give the impulsion; the other provinces soon followed the example; and William IV. was proclaimed stadtholder and captain-general, amid the almost unanimous rejoicings of all. These dignities were soon after declared hereditary both in the male and female line of succession of the House of Orange Na.s.sau.

The year 1748 saw the termination of the brilliant campaigns of Louis XV. during this b.l.o.o.d.y war of eight years' continuance.

The treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, definitively signed on the 18th of October, put an end to hostilities; Maria Theresa was established in her rights and power; and Europe saw a fair balance of the nations, which gave promise of security and peace. But the United Provinces, when scarcely recovering from struggles which had so checked their prosperity, were employed in new and universal grief and anxiety by the death of their young stadtholder, which happened at The Hague, October 13, 1751. He had long been kept out of the government, though by no means deficient in the talents suited to his station. His son, William V., aged but three years and a half, succeeded him, under the guardians.h.i.+p of his mother, Anne of England, daughter of George II., a princess represented to be of a proud and ambitious temper, who immediately a.s.sumed a high tone of authority in the state.

The war of seven years, which agitated the north of Europe, and deluged its plains with blood, was almost the only one in which the republic was able to preserve a strict neutrality throughout. But this happy state of tranquillity was not, as on former occasions, attended by that prodigious increase of commerce, and that acc.u.mulation of wealth, which had so often astonished the world.

Differing with England on the policy which led the latter to weaken and humiliate France, jealousies sprung up between the two countries, and Dutch commerce became the object of the most vexatious and injurious efforts on the part of England. Remonstrance was vain; resistance impossible; and the decline of the republic hurried rapidly on. The Hanseatic towns, the American colonies, the northern states of Europe, and France itself, all entered into the rivalry with Holland, in which, however, England carried off the most important prizes. Several private and petty encounters took place between the vessels of England and Holland, in consequence of the pretensions of the former to the right of search; and had the republic possessed the ability of former periods, and the talents of a Tromp or a De Ruyter, a new war would no doubt have been the result. But it was forced to submit; and a degrading but irritating tranquillity was the consequence for several years; the national feelings receiving a salve for home-decline by some extension of colonial settlements in the East, in which the island of Ceylon was included.

In the midst of this inglorious state of things, and the domestic abundance which was the only compensation for the gradual loss of national influence, the installation of William V., in 1766; his marriage with the princess of Prussia, niece of Frederick the Great, in 1768; and the birth of two sons, the eldest on the 24th of August, 1772; successively took place. Magnificent fetes celebrated these events; the satisfied citizens little imagining, amid their indolent rejoicings, the dismal futurity of revolution and distress which was silently but rapidly preparing for their country.

Maria Theresa, reduced to widowhood by the death of her husband, whom she had elevated to the imperial dignity by the t.i.tle of Francis I., continued for a while to rule singly her vast possessions; and had profited so little by the sufferings of her own early reign that she joined in the iniquitous dismemberment of Poland, which has left an indelible stain on her memory, and on that of Frederick of Prussia and Catherine of Russia. In her own dominions she was adored; and her name is to this day cherished in Belgium among the dearest recollections of the people.

The impulsion given to the political mind of Europe by the revolution in North America was soon felt in the Netherlands. The wish for reform was not merely confirmed to the people. A memorable instance was offered by Joseph II., son and successor of Maria Theresa, that sovereigns were not only susceptible of rational notions of change, but that the infection of radical extravagance could penetrate even to the imperial crown. Disgusted by the despotism exercised by the clergy of Belgium, Joseph commenced his reign by measures that at once roused a desperate spirit of hostility in the priesthood, and soon spread among the bigoted ma.s.s of the people, who were wholly subservient to their will. Miscalculating his own power, and undervaluing that of the priests, the emperor issued decrees and edicts with a sweeping violence that shocked every prejudice and roused every pa.s.sion perilous to the country.

Toleration to the Protestants, emanc.i.p.ation of the clergy from the papal yoke, reformation in the system of theological instruction, were among the wholesale measures of the emperor's enthusiasm, so imprudently attempted and so virulently opposed.

But ere the deep-sown seeds of bigotry ripened to revolt, or produced the fruit of active resistance in Belgium, Holland had to endure the mortification of another war with England. The republic resolved on a futile imitation of the northern powers, who had adopted the difficult and anomalous system of an armed neutrality, for the prevention of English domination on the seas.

The right of search, so proudly established by this power, was not likely to be wrenched from it by manifestoes or remonstrances; and Holland was not capable of a more effectual warfare. In the year 1781, St. Eustache, Surinam, Essequibo, and Demerara, were taken by British valor; and in the following year several of the Dutch colonies in the East, well fortified but ill defended, also fell into the hands of England. Almost the whole of those colonies, the remnants of prodigious power acquired by such incalculable instances of enterprise and courage, were one by one a.s.sailed and taken. But this did not suffice for the satisfaction of English objects in the prosecution of the war. It was also resolved to deprive Holland of the Baltic trade. A squadron of seven vessels, commanded by Sir Hyde Parker, was encountered on the Dogher Bank by a squadron of Dutch s.h.i.+ps of the same force under Admiral Zoutman. An action of four hours was maintained with all the ancient courage which made so many of the memorable sea-fights between Tromp, De Ruyter, Blake, and Monk drawn battles.

A storm separated the combatants, and saved the honor of each; for both had suffered alike, and victory had belonged to neither.

The peace of 1784 terminated this short, but, to Holland, fatal war; the two latter years of which had been, in the petty warfare of privateering, most disastrous to the commerce of the republic.

Negapatam, on the coast of Coromandel, and the free navigation of the Indian seas, were ceded to England, who occupied the other various colonies taken during the war.

Opinion was now rapidly opening out to that spirit of intense inquiry which arose in France, and threatened to sweep before it not only all that was corrupt, but everything that tended to corruption. It is in the very essence of all kinds of power to have that tendency, and, if not checked by salutary means, to reach that end. But the reformers of the last century, new in the desperate practice of revolutions, seeing its necessity, but ignorant of its nature, neither did nor could place bounds to the careering whirlwind that they raised. The well-meaning but intemperate changes essayed by Joseph II. in Belgium had a considerable share in the development of free principles, although they at first seemed only to excite the resistance of bigotry and strengthen the growth of superst.i.tion. Holland was always alive to those feelings of resistance, to established authority which characterize republican opinions; and the general discontent at the result of the war with England gave a good excuse to the pretended patriotism which only wanted change, while it professed reform.

The stadtholder saw clearly the storm which was gathering, and which menaced his power. Anxious for the present, and uncertain for the future, he listened to the suggestions of England, and resolved to secure and extend by foreign force the rights of which he risked the loss from domestic faction.

In the divisions which were now loudly proclaimed among the states in favor of or opposed to the House of Orange, the people, despising all new theories which they did not comprehend, took open part with the family so closely connected with every practical feeling of good which their country had yet known. The states of Holland soon proceeded to measures of violence. Resolved to limit the power of the stadtholder, they deprived him of the command of the garrison of The Hague, and of all the other troops of the province; and, shortly afterward, declared him removed from all his employments. The violent disputes and vehement discussions consequent upon this measure throughout the republic announced an inevitable commotion. The advance of a Prussian army toward the frontiers inflamed the pa.s.sions of one party and strengthened the confidence of the other. An incident which now happened brought about the crisis even sooner than was expected. The Princess of Orange left her palace at Loo to repair to The Hague; and travelling with great simplicity and slightly attended, she was arrested and detained by a military post on the frontiers of the province of Holland. The neighboring magistrates of the town of Woesden refused her permission to continue her journey, and forced her to return to Loo under such surveillance as was usual with a prisoner of state. The stadtholder and the English amba.s.sador loudly complained of this outrage. The complaint was answered by the immediate advance of the duke of Brunswick with twenty thousand Prussian soldiers. Some demonstrations of resistance were made by the astonished party whose outrageous conduct had provoked the measure; but in three weeks' time the whole of the republic was in perfect obedience to the authority of the stadtholder, who resumed all his functions of chief magistrate, with the additional influence which was sure to result from a vain and unjustifiable attempt to reduce his former power. We regret to be beyond the reach of Mr. Ellis's interesting but unpublished work, detailing the particulars of this revolution.

The former persual of a copy of it only leaves a recollection of its admirable style and the leading facts, but not of the details with sufficient accuracy to justify more than a general reference to the work itself.

By this time the discontent and agitation in Belgium had attained a most formidable height. The attempted reformation in religion and judicial abuses persisted in by the emperor were represented, by a party whose existence was compromised by reform, as nothing less than sacrilege and tyranny, and blindly rejected by a people still totally unfitted for rational enlightenment in points of faith, or practices of civilization. Remonstrances and strong complaints were soon succeeded by tumultuous a.s.semblages and open insurrection. A lawyer of Brussels, named Vander Noot, put himself at the head of the malcontents. The states-general of Brabant declared the new measures of the emperor to be in opposition to the const.i.tution and privileges of the country. The other Belgian provinces soon followed this example. The prince Albert of Saxe-Teschen, and the archd.u.c.h.ess Maria Theresa, his wife, were at this period joint governors-general of the Austrian Netherlands. At the burst of rebellion they attempted to temporize; but this only strengthened the revolutionary party, while the emperor wholly disapproved their measures and recalled them to Vienna.

Count Murray was now named governor-general; and it was evident that the future fate of the provinces was to depend on the issue of civil war. Count Trautmansdorff, the imperial minister at Brussels, and General D'Alton, who commanded the Austrian troops, took a high tone, and evinced a peremptory resolution. The soldiery and the citizens soon came into contact on many points; and blood was spilled at Brussels, Mechlin, and Antwerp.

The provincial states were convoked, for the purpose of voting the usual subsidies. Brabant, after some opposition, consented; but the states of Hainault unanimously refused the vote. The emperor saw, or supposed, that the necessity for decisive measures was now inevitable. The refractory states were dissolved, and arrests and imprisonments were multiplied in all quarters. Vander Noot, who had escaped to England, soon returned to the Netherlands, and established a committee at Breda, which conferred on him the imposing t.i.tle of agent plenipotentiary of the people of Brabant.

He hoped, under this authority, to interest the English, Prussian, and Dutch governments in favor of his views; but his proposals were coldly received: Protesiant states had little sympathy for a people whose resistance was excited, not by tyrannical efforts against freedom, but by broad measures of civil and religious reformation; the only fault of which was their attempted application to minds wholly incompetent to comprehend their value.

Left to themselves, the Belgians soon gave a display of that energetic valor which is natural to them, and which would be ent.i.tled to still greater admiration had it been evinced in a worthier cause. During the fermentation which led to a general rising in the provinces, on the impulse of fanatic zeal, the truly enlightened portion of the people conceived the project of raising, on the ruins of monkish superst.i.tion and aristocratical power, an edifice of const.i.tutional freedom. Vonck, also an advocate of Brussels, took the lead in this splendid design; and he and his friends proved themselves to have reached the level of that true enlightenment which distinguished the close of the eighteenth century. But the Vonckists, as they were called, formed but a small minority compared with the besotted ma.s.s; and, overwhelmed by fanaticism on the one hand, and despotism on the other, they were unable to act effectually for the public good. Vander Mersch, a soldier of fortune, and a man of considerable talents, who had raised himself from the ranks to the command of a regiment, and had been formed in the school of the seven years' war, was appointed to the command of the patriot forces. Joseph II. was declared to have forfeited his sovereignty in Brabant; and hostilities soon commenced by a regular advance of the insurgent army upon that province. Vander Mersch displayed consummate ability in this crisis, where so much depended upon the prudence of the military chief. He made no rash attempt, to which commanders are sometimes induced by reliance upon the enthusiasm of a newly revolted people. He, however, took the earliest safe opportunity of coming to blows with the enemy; and, having cleverly induced the Austrians to follow him into the very streets of the town of Turnhout, he there entered on a b.l.o.o.d.y contest, and finally defeated the imperialists with considerable loss. He next manoeuvred with great ability, and succeeded in making his way into the province of Flanders, took Ghent by a.s.sault, and soon reduced Bruges, Ypres, and Ostend. At the news of these successes, the governors-general quitted Brussels in all haste. The states of Flanders a.s.sembled, in junction with those of Brabant. Both provinces were freed from the presence of the Austrian troops. Vander Noot and the committee of Breda made an entrance into Brussels with all the pomp of royalty; and in the early part of the following year (1790) a treaty of union was signed by the seven revolted provinces, now formed into a confederation under the name of the United Belgian States.

All the hopes arising from these brilliant events were soon, however, to be blighted by the scorching heats of faction. Joseph II., whose temperament appears to have been too sensitive to support the shock of disappointment in plans which sprung from the purest motives, saw, in addition to this successful insurrection against his power, his beloved sister, the queen of France, menaced with the horrors of an inevitable revolution. His over-sanguine expectations of successfully rivalling the glory of Frederick and Catherine, and the ill success of his war against the Turks, all tended to break down his enthusiastic spirit, which only wanted the elastic resistance of fort.i.tude to have made him a great character. He for some time sunk into a profound melancholy; and expired on the 20th of January, 1791, accusing his Belgian subjects of having caused his premature death.

Leopold, the successor of his brother, displayed much sagacity and moderation in the measures which he adopted for the recovery of the revolted provinces; but their internal disunion was the best ally of the new emperor. The violent party which now ruled at Brussels had ungratefully forgotten the eminent services of Vander Mersch, and accused him of treachery, merely from his attachment to the n.o.ble views and principles of the widely-increasing party of the Vonckists. Induced by the hope of reconciling the opposing parties, he left his army in Namur, and imprudently ventured into the power of General Schoenfeld, who commanded the troops of the states. Vander Mersch was instantly arrested and thrown into prison, where he lingered for months, until set free by the overthrow of the faction he had raised to power; but he did not recover his liberty to witness the realization of his hopes for that of his country. The states-general, in their triumph over all that was truly patriotic, occupied themselves solely in contemptible labors to establish the monkish absurdities which Joseph had suppressed. The overtures of the new emperor were rejected with scorn; and, as might be expected from this combination of bigotry and rashness, the imperial troops under General Bender marched quietly to the conquest of the whole country; town after town opening their gates, while Vander Noot and his partisans betook themselves to rapid and disgraceful flight. On the 10th of December, 1791, the ministers of the emperor concluded a convention with those of England, Russia, and Holland (which powers guaranteed its execution), by which Leopold granted an amnesty for all past offences, and confirmed to all his recovered provinces their ancient const.i.tution and privileges; and, thus returning under the domination of Austria, Belgium saw its best chance for successfully following the n.o.ble example of the United Provinces paralyzed by the short-sighted bigotry which deprived the national courage of all moral force.

Leopold enjoyed but a short time the fruits of his well-measured indulgence: he died, almost suddenly, March 1, 1792; and was succeeded by his son Francis II., whose fate it was to see those provinces of Belgium, which had cost his ancestors so many struggles to maintain, wrested forever from the imperial power. Belgium presented at this period an aspect of paramount interest to the world; less owing to its intrinsic importance than to its becoming at once the point of contest between the contending powers, and the theatre of the terrible struggle between republican France and the monarchs she braved and battled with. The whole combinations of European policy were staked on the question of the French possession of this country.