Revolution in Belgium

This series has seven easy 5-minute installments. This first installment: A Revolution Centuries in the Making.

Introduction
It was an event of unusual interest to the powers of Europe when, in the very center of their ancient systems, a new and independent kingdom was founded. Its firm establishment, despite the conflict of opinion and feeling and the clash of European arms, is a fact of peculiar importance in modern history.

The little Kingdom of Belgium, the most densely populated country of Europe, comprises territory that has passed through many changes of political relation. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries it formed part of the Duchy of Burgundy; afterward it passed to the house of Hapsburg; then in 1713 to Austria as the Austrian Netherlands. It was annexed by conquest to France in 1794, and in 1815 was united with Holland in the Kingdom the Netherlands, under King William I. The dissolution of that union and the creation of the Kingdom of Belgium form the subject of the following account, which the author introduces with a valuable historical survey.

This selection is from an article in Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 16 by Thomas Colley Grattan published in 1905. For works benefiting from the latest research see the “More information” section at the bottom of these pages.

Thomas Colley Grattan (1792-1864) moved to Brussels and wrote his history of the Netherlands.

Time: 1830

The Belgian Revolution of 1830 has been generally considered as an event merely accessory to that of France of the same year. This arises from erroneous views of the nature of the facts involved, and extreme ignorance of the provocations that led to them. Fifteen years of bad government, resting on a vicious title, produced a mass of discontent, which only wanted an opportunity to ripen into revolt. Had it even not burst forth at the time it did, the causes of a revolution were still existing; and the explosion could not have been long delayed. Belgian independence was an inevitable necessity. The principle of independence once proclaimed and put into active execution, men were abundantly found of power sufficient to carry out the consummation of what seemed, to common observers an accident, but to deep thinkers a doom. It was thus that, while the distinctive nationalities of Europe appeared merging into a common fund — so to call it — of general ideas, and respectively sinking or rising to a common level, a new people sprang forth asserting their claims to constitute a state on a title of inherent right long disallowed and despised by European diplomacy.

Four centuries of submission to other powers, and the various characteristics insensibly borrowed from each, had given to the population of Belgium a piebald aspect, which led to a false estimate of its capacities. The Belgians themselves were discouraged with a belief of their own unfitness for independence. But if we consider their persevering pursuit of freedom for many ages, their vigorous struggles against each new foreign domination, and the unswerving firmness of their social organization, we must at once admit the justice of the claim, which they had the sagacity to put forward at the right time, and the courage to enforce by the right means.

After furnishing to France the “Mayors of the Palace,” who formed the stock of the second dynasty, the Belgian provinces were partitioned out among the successors of Charlemagne; and Charles the Bald joined Artois and Flanders to his other states. This division was the source of a long series of misfortunes to the country. For the German Empire and the French monarchy growing simultaneously into greatness, each took a position on this ground of their bloody and long-continued contests, beginning at Bouvines, to end at Waterloo.

Had the fiefs composing the Dutch and Belgian provinces all along derived from the Imperial Crown, these countries would have finally been formed into circles of the Empire; and, from the Germanic origin of the majority of their population, they would have gradually blended with the nationality of Germany, like the electorates in the neighborhood of the Rhine. But Flanders and Hainaut became from the first involved in the plan of French polity; and the ramifications of feudalism gave on each new succession, pretensions to the respective vassals of the Empire or of France, to the possession of the numerous territorial fractions into which the country was divided. Thus, it was that, under two opposing influences, the Low Countries long remained without cohesion in spite of all their natural tendency to coalesce.

While the principle of social activity in France was gradually concentrated in the monarchy, it became scattered over the whole surface of Belgium. In this country of communal privileges as well as of chivalric associations, the noble and the burgher grew side by side into power without any Third Estate rising up superior to, yet dependent on both, to establish and secure that political unity which is the perfection of social government. Immediately beyond the frontiers were two great rival suzerains; within them, princely houses and powerful corporations, but no royalty; that is to say, two hostile powers without the counterpoise required to form the “compound motion,” which, in politics as well as in mechanics, is necessary to the composition of forces.

The titles of Counts of Flanders, Hainaut, Luxemburg, Gelders, Bouillon, and Namur; and of Dukes of Brabant and Zealand, glitter through the annals of the Middle Ages. But their rank and fame have been sterile; and their possessions were gradually merged in the sovereignty of the house of Burgundy, which had not, any more than they, the power to become nationalized in its vast possessions acquired by a combination of inheritance, purchase, conquest, and spoliation. The warriors of Flanders, superior in wealth and refinement to almost all the other champions of Christianity, bore their ample share in the furious battles of the crusades — those impulses of fanaticism and means of civilization — but their native country reaped few of the political advantages which the influence of those events procured to other states, beyond the greater extension of burgher power resulting from the absence and death of so many of the nobles in the Paynim wars. Godfrey of Bouillon, Engelbert of Tournai, Robert of Flanders, Guy of Namur, have left the impress of their renown through the whole series of these fierce exploits; and many Flemish knights perished in the final struggle of chivalry, at Nicopolis — the last faint reflection of the glory of the crusades.

The burgher classes of Flanders and Brabant flourished meanwhile in increasing liberty and wealth. Their workshops supplied the commerce of the world. The Belgian cities raised armies, more numerous and better equipped than those of the contemporary kings. The citizens treated on equal terms with princes; and the reign of the Arteveldes preceded by a century the monarchy of the Medicis. But all this combination of courage, industry, and power failed to produce that national unity which required, in the then existing state of Europe, a sovereign dynasty as a center round which to revolve and gravitate.

The house of Burgundy, in the persons of its last two male representatives, might have realized this desideratum in the fifteenth century; and, by establishing their dominion from the English Channel and the North Sea to the borders of the Rhine and the Moselle, might have secured a balance of power in Eu rope which would have saved it from the conflicts between Spain and her revolted colonies a century later. But the selfish ambition of Philip the Good — as history has nicknamed him — and the lust of conquest in Charles the Rash (or “Bold,” as English writers generally mistranslate his sobriquet) blinded them to so vast a scheme of real greatness, and left Europe still in want of the basis of repose to be found in such an equilibrium. The facilities which not only favored, but seemed to demand, the realization of such a plan previous to the Reformation have been, no doubt, greatly weakened by its results. But nearly four centuries later, at the fall of Napoleon and the dismemberment of his Empire, another opportunity offered was lost.

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