Revolutions - 6.08b- The Belgian Revolution

Episode Date: May 8, 2017

In 1830, the Belgians said we don't want to be a part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands anymore.

Hello and welcome to revolutions. Episode 6.8B, the Belgian Revolution. So we wrapped up last week with a brief discussion of how the rest of Europe reacted to the July revolution in France. As we saw, the other great powers, Britain, Austria, Austria, and Russia, were none too happy about the abrupt regime change in Paris, but by September of 1830, everyone had gotten over it and extended recognition. ignition to Louis-Philippe the first king of the French. But just as the courts of Europe were like, okay, we put this thing to bed and it's time to move on, an even bigger threat to the peace and good order forged at the Congress of Vienna erupted on the far side of France's northeastern border. When the southern provinces of the Kingdom of the Netherlands found out about the July Revolution,

they did not respond with annoyed resignation, but rather jubilant ambition. Just about two weeks after the coronation of Louis-Philippe, those southern provinces, staged a revolution of their own, one that would end in the creation of a brand new blob on the map of Europe, the kingdom of Belgium. So to set this all up with some broad historical strokes, we here at the Revolution's podcast were first introduced to what will become Belgium in episode 3.22 war. Once known as the Spanish Netherlands, this territory had become the Austrian Netherlands in 1715, and then become a front line in the early years of the French Revolutionary Wars. In fact, the course of the early French Revolutionary Wars was

simply the French moving into and out of the Austrian Netherlands. But once the Leveon Mass got rolling by 1794, the French drove the Allies out of the low countries entirely. While the Dutch United Provinces were rebranded as the Batavian Republic, the first of France's sister republics, the former Austrian Netherlands were afforded a higher honor, direct annexation into France. The region then stayed a part of France all the way through until the fall of Napoleon, when they once again found themselves on the front lines in the war between France and the allies, because there's nothing Europe likes doing more than beating the crap out of each other in Belgium. And in case you didn't know, Waterloo, sits right smack dab in the middle of what will become,

by the end of today's episode, the Kingdom of Belgium. Now, as Napoleon's empire collapsed, the question of what to do with the former Spanish-Netherland slash former Austrian Netherlands slash former northeastern departments of France was a pretty big deal at the Congress of Vienna. None of the Allies were interested in letting France hang on to it, but the Austrians sure didn't want it back, and you couldn't just give it to the Prussians. So a consensus formed around the idea of folding it

into an independent buffer state that would be called the Kingdom of the Netherlands. This basically was just taking the old United Provinces and mashing them together with the old Austrian Netherlands. Now, to rule this new thing called the Kingdom of the Netherlands, both the British and the Russians sponsored the Dutch Prince William of Orange. And everyone said, okay, that sounds great, let's do it, next item of business. And thus did Prince William of Orange become King William I of the Netherlands. Now, when he had been born, William was on track to become the next stat holder of the United Provinces. But at the age of 25, he had been forced out of the Netherlands when the Batavian Revolt erupted in early 1795.

He had then spent the next seven years fighting alongside the British until the peace of Amiens came along in 1802. During that year of peace, William went to Paris and actually became friends with First Consul Bonaparte, but when the war started back up and Emperor Napoleon started pushing East in 1805 and 1806, William joined the Allied cause. He fought through the Napoleonic Wars and in 1813 met and befriended Tsar Alexander, who then supported William's claim to the new peace. Kingdom of the Netherlands at the Congress of Vienna. After Waterloo, King William I took full sovereign possession of his new kingdom,

but he found himself faced with a demographic mess. The New Kingdom of the Netherlands was a mashed-together hodgepodge of languages and religions. The northern part of the kingdom was staunchly Protestant and spoke Dutch. Their politics and economics were heavily oriented towards trade, banking, and commerce. Now, it would be nice and easy if we could say that the southern provinces were all staunchly Catholic and spoke French and oriented towards traditional agriculture, but though that is partly true, it's not quite that easy. Inside the territories of what would become Belgium, yes, there was a population of Walloons who were indeed French-speaking Catholics, but they only made up about 40% of the total population. The other 60% were Dutch-speaking Flemish. Okay, so they oriented towards their northern neighbors, right?

Well, linguistically, yes, but most of the Flemish were Catholic, not Protestant, so that left a huge gulf between them and their neighbors to the north. Now, there were also Dutch-speaking Protestants in the southern provinces, and that population would complicate things still further, as with the fact that within the Catholic population, there was a divide between traditional conservative Catholics and a new breed of reform-minded liberal Catholics, both on the French and Dutch side of the linguistic line.

It's really quite a convoluted mess, and it would take deft leadership to navigate all these groups successfully. But though King William was a fairly enlightened guy, he was not going to provide said deft leadership. After a lifetime fighting against France, he naturally favored his Dutch subjects over his French subjects. And also, being strongly Dutch-reformed church, William naturally favored his Protestant subjects over his Catholic subjects.

He was also an advocate of modern industrial revolution style manufacturing and free trade over traditional styles of agriculture and protective tariffs. Now, I don't think it would be fair to call William a tyrant who actively set out to oppress, the French-speaking Catholic population of the southern provinces. It's just that he did not follow Louis XIII's warning to not be the king of two peoples. William was the king of Dutch-speaking Protestants. They are who he listened to, favored, and supported. The French-speaking Catholic population of the South, not unreasonably, felt ignored.

So the southern provinces were treated to an early indication of how William planned to rule in July of 1815, just about a month after Waterloo. The Kingdom of the Netherlands would be a good constitutional monarchy, with the standard representative assemblies divided into an upper house and a lower house and various civil liberties guaranteed. But very much like the charter of government than being rolled out over in France, the Constitution concentrated power in the hands of the king and his ministers. The members of the upper house would all be appointed by the king, and the lower house only had a few limited opportunities to actually participate in government. mostly power concentrated in the executive branch, the king and his ministers, who would rule the whole country from the capital in Amsterdam. To give this constitution the veneer of popular sovereignty, though, it was presented for approval in public referendums, with ratifying assemblies convening in both the north and the south. And the northern provinces approved it overwhelmingly, but in the assembly of the southern provinces, well, they rejected it, 796 to 527. Undeterred by this little hiccup, King William responded by declaring that all abstentions

and non-votes would be counted as a yes, and thus the Constitution was accepted. So that is how it was going to be in William's Kingdom of the Netherlands. During the next 15 years, the king made it pretty plain to the people of the South that they were there to be ruled by Amsterdam, not participate in government. For one thing, though they made up fully 60% of the total population of the kingdom, the southern provinces were only allotted 50% of the seats in the lower house. On top of that, while the Constitution laid down the principle of religious equality and freedom of worship, in practice, if you were Catholic, you were not going to get very far in politics. No Catholic would be invited into the ministry or hold high rank in the army, and that was where all the real power lay.

Then there were Williams' economic programs. The king wanted to modernize the economy of his new kingdom by embracing industrial manufacturing and especially by tapping into the kingdom's coal deposits, all of which were in the South. So over the next decade and a half, the South saw rapid industrialization, which you might think, well, hey, economic development, that's a good thing, right? Well, not really if you lived there. Traditional ways of life in the South were thrown over in favor of large-scale manufacturing and mining, and that caused a huge amount of unhappy disruption and dislocation.

And all of that might have been okay if the profits of these new enterprises benefited the southern communities, but all the profits headed north. Almost all the owners, directors, agents, managers, bankers, traders who profited from the southern industrialization were all northern Dutch Protestants. Now, it really wasn't William's intention, but his policies took the form of the North, putting the South to work, and then keeping the profits for themselves. Adding to all of this was William's effort to extend and entrench the Dutch language as deep as possible in his kingdom. Now, he never went so far as to try to force all the really French parts of the kingdom

to learn Dutch, but in any area where Dutch was the majority language, William pursued a policy of making it the sole language of law, administration, and justice. Which, you might ask, what's wrong with that? While the elites in those regions by now uniformly spoke French, and even if they were a numerical minority, they wielded quite a bit of influence locally, and they were not happy with William's attempt to eradicate French from the public sphere. Then on top of all that,

no Catholic was happy, whether they spoke Dutch or French, that William was also trying to push aside Catholic education in favor of Protestant education, both in primary schools and the universities. These last initiatives were not entirely successful, nor pursued with single-minded vigor, but all of it combined to convince most people in the South, especially the French-speaking Catholics, that King William was not their king. It was as if William ruled the South like an overlord who had conquered them, rather than a leader who balanced the interests of all his subjects equally.

William was, in short, the king of two peoples. So discontentment in the southern provinces slowly built into the late 1820s, and it manifested along two parallel tracks. One track stretched way back deep into the traditional roots of the country and found expression through Catholic opposition to the modernizing Protestants that were wrecking havoc with the old ways of doing things and preventing any Catholic from ever having a say in anything. The other track, though, came from a new kind of modern liberalism that was then emerging all over Europe.

The liberals were less concerned about protecting the privileges of the church or clinging to old ways of life, but they were deeply offended by the disenfranchisement of southern interests that all profits from the southern economy were heading up to Amsterdam and that the principle of religious liberty and equality was running into the face of the these brazenly anti-Catholic policies. There was plenty of overlap between these groups that were liberal-oriented Catholics and Catholic-oriented liberals, and those guys spent a great deal of time and effort trying to bend these two tracks into a serviceable alliance that could confront the North with

the United Southern Opposition. The thing that finally bound them together was the shared principle of equal representation in the national government and greater power for local governments. Only in the wildest dreams of a few radicals was outright secession even considered as a realistic objective. And even among those in the French Catholic South, where secessionist tendencies ran hotter, many actually sought re-annexation back into France. So even in early 1830, very few members of the Southern opposition saw secession and independence as their end goal. But as so often happens with these things, events. swiftly took on a life of their own. And the partial trigger for everything was the July

revolution in France, which had just taken the world by surprise. As we've discussed, those in power were not at all thrilled by the shocking news from Paris, but those who were in the middle of being denied power in their own country thrilled at this example of the people rising up and overthrowing an oppressive monarch. Both liberals and Catholics in the southern provinces of the Kingdom of the Netherlands have their imaginations fired by the possibilities the July Revolution opened up. But no less than in France, the Belgian Revolution of 1830 began spontaneously and took almost everyone by surprise. There wasn't even some heinous trigger for it like the Four Ordinances. It was just 15 years of slowly boiling discontentment, finally blowing the lid off the joint.

So the famous date for the beginning of the Belgian Revolution is August the 24th. 1530, what has since become known as the Knight of the Opera. In honor of King William's birthday, the city of Brussels hosted a number of events, among which was a performance of the popular opera, the Mute Girl of Portecee. The Mute Girl of Portecee was among the most successful grand romantic opera of the era. A huge sets, lavish design. It was epic and scope. Of particular relevance, though, the Mute Girl of Portecee was set during Messon.

Yellow's famous revolt that temporarily established the Republic of Naples in 1647. Ironically, the opera had been banned by the Dutch authorities in the wake of the July Revolution for fear that it would stir up revolutionary passions at home, but with the performance for the King's birthday long in the works, the authorities decided to make an exception. And as it turns out, they were not just being weirdly paranoid about the effects of a grand opera. According to the traditional story, though these things are always painted with a romantic brush, the fourth act of the opera ended with a stirring nationalistic and patriotic song called the Sacred Love of the Father.

The audience was driven into such a frenzy that they stormed out of the theater and into the streets shouting patriotic slogans and generally running amok. Now, this was not mere spontaneous rapture over a night at the opera. the demonstration had been planned in advance by opposition leaders looking to pressure King William into making political concessions. But the demonstrations of the night of the opera led to clashes with the local authorities that then spilled over into the communities of the unhappy industrial workers who had their own pile of grievances to vent over. Pretty soon, these guys were smashing up machines and shops in Brussels, and the city was in the throes of a full revolt. Demonstrators and activists then seize control of key government offices. And just like that, Brussels was in the hands of rebels. To deal with this crisis, King William ordered his son, Prince William, who had long taken

a lead in the South, to deal with the crisis. Prince William was told by the men who had seized control of Brussels that the only way to keep the Kingdom of the Netherlands united was to decree administrative separation between north and south. The prince took these terms to his father, but King William rejected them outright. Demands for de facto self-government were out of the question, so King William decided that a couple of swift punches to the face would bring this nascent revolt to its knees. At the end of September 1830, Prince William returned to Brussels, but this time he was at the head of an 8,000-man army. Now, King William was not wrong to believe that this would be an overwhelming show

of force, and that it would probably break the opposition, because so far as I can tell, at that moment, the Belgian rebels were only able to scramble together about 2,000 militiamen to defend Brussels. But we wouldn't be here talking about this if the Belgian Revolution was crushed as quickly as it began. On September the 23rd, Prince William's Army arrived at Brussels and breached the northern gate. Entering the city, the army discovered the same piles of barricades that had caused so much havoc for the French army in Paris. Then, as the army cleared these barricades, they were harassed by street fighters

who attacked from rooftops and windows and darted in and out of buildings. The army managed to push its way all the way to the Park de Brussels in the center of town, but there found itself exposed and opened to sniper fire from the buildings surrounding the park.

While all this fighting was going on, Belgian patriots, if I may take leave to call them that, were establishing a thing called the administrative commission in the Brussels City Hall on September the 24th. Over the next few bloody days of fighting, street clashes continued and it became clear that the great show of Dutch force was not exactly cowing Brussels into submission. So Prince William ordered his forces out of the city on September the 26th. Now this was a great victory for the southern opposition for sure. But to be fair, it was a strategic retreat and a conscious decision was made to not. force a violent conclusion to the affair. King William had concluded that the uprising would

likely burn itself out and that a touch of enlightened benevolence might actually do the trick. And so he magnanimously extended a general amnesty to anyone who had taken part in the fighting, accepting only the principal leaders and any foreigners caught under arms. The Dutch army then withdrew, and King William waited for his people to come to their senses. But they did not come to their senses. After the Dutch forces retreated on September the 26th, the Administrative Commission rebranded themselves the Provisional Government. And then on September the 28th, this provisional government appointed a small central committee to act as a combined executive and legislative body to direct all future affairs. With their demands for regional autonomy within the Kingdom of the Netherlands rejected, these more radical southern opposition leaders moved on to the next logical step. On October 4, 1830, the Central Committee issued a Declaration of Independence.

With this Declaration of Independence issued, the Central Committee then called for elections to a National Congress and ordered that Congress to convene as quickly as possible. Over the next few weeks, about 30,000 electors voted 200 representatives to this National Congress, who convened in Brussels in the first week of November 1830. and setting the stage for the future course of Belgian politics, this Congress was, of course, heavy on French-speaking Catholics, but also kind of represented the demographic mess that was the Dutch speakers and the French speakers, the Protestants, the Catholics, the liberals, and the conservatives, all of them were there. Some favored independence, some wanted to reconcile with King William, and others sought re-annexation back into France. When the National Congress

convened, the self-declared and self-appointed Central Committee relinquish, its sovereignty to this body, but the Congress then used their own self-declared and self-appointed sovereign authority to give power right back to the Central Committee. So the committee continued to take the lead in day-to-day administration of what was now a full-blown struggle for independence, while the National Congress set to work on the task of drawing up a new constitution for whatever this thing was that they had just declared the independence of. Okay, so pulling the lens back a bit, having just navigated France's July revolution, The other European great powers now faced another dangerous threat to the complicated peace that had been forged at the Congress of Vienna.

And given that the revolt in Belgium seemed so very French and was coming so hot on the heels of the installation of the July monarchy, that it was very hard for the rest of Europe to believe that this new crew of liberal French nationalists running France were not the secret hand guiding events in Belgium. the end goal of which would of course be to re-annex the whole territory. Now, the other European powers may have reluctantly accepted Louis Philippe, but nobody wanted France to extend her borders. Not the British, not the Prussians, not the Austrians, not the Russians. But whatever the other European powers believed, the new July monarchy was just a few weeks old and still trying to get a handle on the aftermath of its own revolution,

and they were as caught off guard as anybody by events in Belgium. It's not like they were happy to have this full-blown international crisis to wade through. So though their own legitimacy was only recently established, though, they did feel like they had to forcefully confront the matter. If the other powers intervened on behalf of King William, enemy forces would once again be poised on the French frontier. Who knows? Maybe they would use it as a staging point for a third bourbon restoration. So into these treacherous waters stepped, Talleyrand, For the last major act of his diplomatic career, certainly the most experienced and eminent and knowledgeable of all the men surrounding Louis Philippe in the early days of the July monarchy, Talley Rand was convinced from the moment the Belgians went into revolt that the French needed to convince the British of the wisdom of mutual non-intervention by all the powers of Europe. To effect his proposal, Talleyran convinced Louis Philippe to appoint him ambassador to Great Britain in mid-September 1830.

marking this as the sixth different regime Talleyrand officially served over his long and wily career. That would be the ASEAN regime Bourbons, the constitutional monarchy of 1791, Bonaparte's consulate, Napoleon's empire, the restored bourbons, and now, finally, the July monarchy. So Talleyrand's basic pitch to the British was simple. You don't want France to extend her borders all the way to Antwerp, but if you sanction intervention, the Belgians will run to the French. for help, the French will help them, and the likeliest result will be re-annexation into France. But if everyone agrees to just stay out of it, we might be able to hammer out a more agreeable diplomatic solution to the crisis. Securing British approval for this basic principle of non-intervention, the five major powers then came together in London at the end of December 1830 for what would

be dubbed the London Conference. While the British and French came to support non-intervention. Austria, Prussia, and Russia were less willing to go along with this latest affront to the international order. The Russian ambassador said the Tsar was ready to commit 60,000 troops, and the Prussians said they would not tolerate another revolutionary government on their western border. But this was all mostly tough talk. As it turned out, the Russians were at that very moment getting bogged down by the November uprising in Poland, because remember, Poland is always the key to everything. The Prussians, meanwhile, had no interest in provoking a new war with France, and I'd like to imagine the Austrian ambassador showing up just to make sure that nobody tried to

make the region the Austrian Netherlands again. Above all, though, the five major power shared the goal of preserving the peace and the balance of power. So to the angry shock of King William, the men who gathered at the London Conference agreed that mutual non-intervention was the best solution. Talleyrand then presented his grand partition plan to the other powers, where France would absorb French Catholic Wallonia, the eastern chunk would go to the Prussians, and a new free state of Antwerp, under the military auspices of the British, would exist in between. But this was too much for the other powers, and instead they settled on a plan to allow this thing called the Kingdom of Belgium to take root and be recognized. And that would hopefully be that. Though there was still one, pretty big question left hanging out there. Who would be the king of the Belgians? This was a question

that did not just vex the rest of Europe. It also vexed the Belgians. On February the 7th, 1831, the National Congress finished its work and promulgated a new constitution, a constitution that laid out a constitutional monarchy that was

built along the same lines as the revised charter of the July monarchy, which was itself heavily indebted to the British Constitution. So freedom of the press and religion, association, education, all the other liberal civil liberties were in there, built into a confederal government, with the king as chief executive and head of state, but not all-powerful ruler. And though amended and revised over the years, the Constitution of 1831 is the Constitution of modern Belgium. But when the Constitution was promulgated, the Belgian still did not have a king. Now, small list

had been drawn up with a lot of momentum actually rallying to the second son of King Louis Philippe. Louis Philippe would have been happy to have his son sitting on the new Belgian throne, but it would have been a diplomatic disaster have they gone through with it. None of the other European powers would have tolerated such a close French Union. In fact, any French candidate likely would have cost an uproar. So, after crossing a few more names off the list, everyone arrived at Leopold, who was Duke of a very small German principality. Leopold had been born in 1790, and so he was still just a teenager when Consul Bonaparte became Emperor Napoleon and then steamrolled east over Leopold's little principality.

Leopold had been briefly folded into Napoleon's imperial court and even offered a position on the Emperor's military staff, but Leopold declined and instead headed far east and joined the Russian service in the fight against Napoleon. But though he was a capable young officer, the Napoleonic wars were over before he was 25 years old. Now, the thing that recommended Leopold above all the other random princes of Europe was that in May of 1816, he married Princess Charlotte, the only daughter of King George IV. Now, unfortunately, Charlotte then died due to complications of childbirth in 1817. but despite the death of his wife, Leopold continued to live in London, where he was a popular member of high society. Offering Leopold the crown was a surefire way to secure ongoing British

support for the Kingdom of Belgium. And given Leopold to various connections to all the other royal houses of Europe, he really did seem like a perfect fit for the job. So on April the 22nd, 1831, a delegation approached him in London and offered him the job. Leopold Hemdenhaud a bit, but after receiving assurances from the other major powers that he would be supported, he agreed. On June 4, 1831, the National Congress formally approved Leopold's appointment to the monarchy, and on July the 21st, 1831, Leopold was sworn in, and in keeping with the new spirit of liberal, popular constitutional monarchism, Leopold would not be the king of Belgium, he would be the king of the Belgians. So you are now asking, I am sure,

sure, what did King William I think about all of this? What did he think about everyone conspiring to steal more than half his kingdom? Well, he did not like it. He did not like it one little bit. He did not accept the Belgian Declaration of Independence. He did not accept whatever the London conference had decided, and he did not accept this new Belgian constitution. And rather than accept any of it, he instead massed 50,000 troops on the border with what he still considered to be his southern provinces. The king said it was merely to defend against possible encroachment, but really he was just waiting for a suitable provocation. And when Leopold was sworn in on July the 21st, 1831, King William said, that's it, that's the one. Once again,

putting the operation in the hands of his son, Prince William, the Dutch army crossed the frontier on August 2, 1831, beginning what is called the 10 days campaign. The 10 Days campaign was marked by a uniform run of success for the invading Dutch army. The newly crowned Leopold only had about 25,000 troops to command, and those were a mix of militia and regular army, and they were split into two main bodies. Not to put too fine a point on it, but when the Dutch crossed the border, they fanned out and streamed south without difficulty. Scirmishing gave way to pitched battles, but everywhere the outnumbered and overmatched Belgian forces retreated. One of their armies was decisively beaten on August 8th, while the other was decisively beaten on August the 12th. There was really at that point nothing to stop the Dutch army from conquering

this alleged kingdom of Belgium, except that there was. As soon as it was clear, his own forces would not be enough. Leopold sent urgent requests for help to London and Paris. Now, despite supporting Leopold and Belgian independence, the British were even more committed to the principle of non-intervention. and they declined to send forces. But the French did not hesitate. On August the 12th, the same day the Dutch won what appeared to be a decisive victory, the French army crossed the frontier and stopped the 10 days campaign from lasting any longer than 10 days. Not wanting to get into a full-blown war with France and under heavy British pressure to withdraw to preserve the international peace, the Dutch army retreated as soon as they heard the French army had entered the country. It was a good try, but it had come to nothing. The kingdom of Belgium yet lived. But that was not quite the end of it. When the Dutch retreated, they refused to give up the citadel of Antwerp,

and for the next 15 months, a Dutch army occupied the fortress and occasionally bombarded the city. With all negotiations going nowhere, the French army was once again invited into the kingdom of Belgium in November of 1832, and they surrounded Antwerp. A 24-day siege finally brought the Dutch general to his knees, and on December the 23rd, 1832, he surrendered and evacuated Antwerp. But despite the rest of the world recognizing the kingdom of Belgium, William continued to hew a one Netherlands line

and refused to recognize Belgium as anything but a collection of provinces in revolt. It was, in fact, not until 1839 that King William was finally persuaded, to accept reality. After being ceded some territory back, a concession that proved very controversial in Belgium, William signed the Treaty of London, where he recognized the Kingdom of Belgium, a territory that conform to the boundaries of the old Austrian Netherlands as they had stood in 1790. This treaty was then signed by all the other powers of Europe, and most important for the Belgians and for the course of world history, the 1839 Treaty of London guaranteed Belgian neutrality. It was, in fact, this very treaty that the Germans would dismiss as a

mere scrap of paper in 1914, a scrap of paper that no one would actually risk another mass European war to defend. But that is all another 75 years down the line. For our purposes here, the Treaty of London represents the end, end, end of the Belgian Revolution. The Kingdom of Belgium is now officially a thing. The same thing that it still is today, a messy hodgepodge of languages, religions, and political beliefs. But as we will see when we get to the Great Year of Revolution that is 1848, the ruling families of both Belgium and the Netherlands, would be able to ride out the Great Year of Revolution by getting out ahead of events and offering reforms before events overtook them. The descendants of Leopold and William both continued to reign in their respective countries.

So that marks the end of the Belgian Revolution. Next week, though, we will go back in time once again to that all-important Congress of Vienna that set up the international framework under which all of these events are unfolding and against which the revolutions of 1848 will be waged. An international system forged by the great conservative Austrian foreign minister, Clement von Metternich. And yes, I will bow to my German fans and not call him Metternich. Thank you.