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The Belgian Revolution (Belgische Revolutie, Révolution belge) was a national uprising which led to the independence of Belgium from the Dutch-dominated United Netherlands in 1830. It was part of a wave of revolutions across Europe in the same year.

The Low Countries, which had been divided since the 16th century, were formed into a single polity in 1815 as part of the political re-organisation of Europe after the Napoleonic Wars. The new state, known as the United Netherlands, was a constitutional monarchy under King William I but struggled to reconcile the economic, political and cultural differences between its northern and southern provinces. Resentment against the United Netherlands grew in the south among liberals and Catholics who believed that the government favoured northern interests and sought additional political representation. The two factions came together in 1828 to form a "Union of Oppositions" to demand reform.

On 25 August 1830, a political demonstration broke out in Brussels after a showing of the nationalistic opera La Muette de Portici. It soon escalated into rioting, leading the middle class to form militias to protect their property.


 * Diplomatic efforts with the Dutch

William I despatched a large military force to Brussels to re-establish order. It entered the city on 23 September, encountering a smaller but radicalised Belgian rebel force. After three days of fighting—known as the “September Days”—they were forced to withdraw from the city. The revolutionary’s victory led to mass defections from the Dutch army and small uprisings in provincial centres across Belgium.


 * Dutch forced out of Belgium by 21 October, except at Antwerp…

After the September Days, leading revolutionaries in Brussels had formed a revolutionary Provisional Government. On 4 October, it declared Belgium an independent state and began making arrangements to create a political system for the new state. An elected National Congress was created to draft a constitution and sat for the first time on 10 November. It ultimately settled on a liberal-inspired constitutional monarchy, choosing Leopold I as the first king.


 * Actual "revolutionary phase" of events spanned from 25 August to 17 November 1830. However, the new Belgian state was not established until 21 July 1831 and remained insecure for several years. It was only in 1839 that it received Dutch recognition.

Background
Modern-day Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg are located with a region historically known as the Low Countries. It was divided into a number of microstates until the 15th century when most of the region was unified into a single polity under Burgundian rule. In 1482, these "Seventeen Provinces" passed to Habsburg rule and through them to the Spanish Empire. However, the seven northern provinces seceded from Spanish rule in the Dutch Revolt (1568–1648). Collectively they formed the independent Dutch Republic, while the remaining ten provinces of the "Southern Netherlands", roughly equivalent to modern Belgium, remained under Spanish rule throughout the Counter-Reformation.

The Southern Netherlands passed to the Austrian Habsburgs in 1714 following the War of Spanish Succession. Although ruled as part of an foreign empire, the provinces retained significant autonomy and civic identities. A collective identity as Belgians began to emerge in the Southern Netherlands during this period derived from the Latin geographic term Belgica which had sometimes been used to refer to the whole of the Low Countries. Austrian administration ultimately collapsed when the Southern Netherlands rose up in the Brabant Revolution (1789-90). Although briefly restored after its collapse, Austrian rule was definitively ended by the French Revolutionary Wars in 1794. The Southern Netherlands was annexed by France. After its own collapse in 1795, the Dutch Republic became a French "sister republic" as the Batavian Republic.

Among the Great Powers, it was anticipated that the Southern Netherlands would become part of a re-established Dutch state after ultimate victory over the French in the Napoleonic Wars. This was agreed in secret in June 1814 as the "Eight Articles" and was subsequently enforced by the Congress of Vienna in 1815. The United Kingdom of the Netherlands, or United Netherlands, thus created was seen as a buffer state between the larger powers with ambitions with a regional presence, notably the restored French monarchy, Prussia, and the United Kingdom.

Dutch rule
The United Netherlands formed at the Congress of Vienna in 1815 was a constitutional monarchy ruled by King William I from the House of Orange-Nassau. In both parts of the new state, news of the creation of the single unified polity produced "neither much outspoken negative reaction, nor much real enthusiasm". It was governed on the principle of enlightened absolutism under a "humanist" and classicism-inspired nationalism popular among Dutch intellectuals at the time. This was at odds with the popular emerging ideals of romanticism and liberalism and meant there was never mass support for the new regime. Acutely conscious of the linguistic, religious, and historical diversity of the new state, the regime intervened little in sensitive areas in the Southern Netherlands. It consciously avoided imposing the use of Dutch language or the Protestant ideals of the majority Dutch Reformed Church on its partly French-speaking and majority Catholic subjects in the South.

To encourage national cohesion, King William I led an ambitious programme of economic interventionism in the South to encourage the emerging Industrial Revolution there. Unprecedented amounts of capital were channeled into new infrastructure works, notably through the Netherlands General Company for the Promotion of National Industry founded in 1822. As a result, industrial growth expanded rapidly. A network of canals were built linking major cities. Metal foundries were established near Liège and coal production in the region doubled between 1819 and 1829. Ghent and Verviers emerged as centres of a new textile industry while Antwerp emerged as a thriving trading port facilitating commerce with the Dutch colonial empire. The rapid economic growth in the Southern Netherlands had no equivalent in the Northern Netherlands which experienced relative economic stagnation in the early 19th century. This encouraged further divergence between Northern and Southern interests and inspired retrenchment among Northern elites who feared a challenge to their continued ascendence within the Dutch state.

Dissent and the Union of Oppositions
It was widely believed in the South that the constitutional regime in the United Netherlands favoured the Northern provinces. This was particularly true of representation within the States-General which allocated a disproportionate number of seats to Northern territories relative to their population and wealth in a policy derided by its critics as "Dutch arithmetic". At the same time, taxes levied in the Southern Netherlands funded half of the state's public spending while it only received 20 percent of this in exchange. It was also forced to fund a disproportionate proportion of the state’s debts, 95 percent of which had been incurred by the North. The resulting high taxes were widely resented, as was the way they were implemented which hit the petty bourgeois and middle classes most.

Elite opposition to the Dutch regime emerged during the 1820s among two sympathetic groups. Liberal freethinkers and Catholics had traditionally despised one another but increasingly united around shared demands for personal liberties and constitutional reforms. By 1828, an informal political alliance had been concluded, known as the Union of Oppositions, which crystallized dissent in the South. The Union increasingly channeled economic disquiet into political grievances, petition-writing and demands for reform. These were refused by William I.

Economic crisis and the July Revolution
The winter of 1829 was particularly harsh, and an economic depression began early in 1830. Soon, many companies were forced to ask for government assistance and unemployment surged. By September 1830, some 30 percent of the population of the Southern Netherlands were relying on poor relief. The rising price of food, combined with the economic downturn, hit workers and artisans particularly badly and contributed to the creation of large dissatisfied groups in the Southern Netherlands' major towns and cities.

Belgian opposition was encouraged by the success of the July Revolution (26–29 July 1830) in France. In just three days the revolution successfully deposed the autocratic King Charles X and installed the more liberal Louis Philippe as a new monarch, with minimal loss of life.

The "Night of the Opera", 25–26 August 1830
August 1830 was significant for the Dutch authorities as it marked both the 59th birthday of William I and the 15th anniversary of his rule in the Southern Netherlands. Accordingly, three days of official celebrations were planned in Brussels over 23–25 August. The final day of festivities was to be marked by a performance of the opera La Muette de Portici (lit. 'The Mute Girl of Portici') by Daniel Auber at the Théâtre de la Monnaie. A popular contemporary work, La Muette was set during the 1647–48 Neapolitan uprising against Spanish rule and was filled with romantic nationalist symbolism. It had been performed in Brussels without incident in 1829 but banned shortly after the July Revolution. A large audience had gathered for the performance of 25 August, with a crowd also forming outside the theatre.

The culmination of the Opera's Second Act was a duet entitled "Amour sacré de la Patrie" (lit. 'Sacred Love of the Fatherland') which was imbued with patriotic symbolism:

During the duet, members of the crowd began shouting revolutionary slogans. They then left the theatre to join the crowd already outside. The mob headed to the nearby house of the Minister of Justice and the offices of La Nationale, a pro-Dutch newspaper, where they began a kind of charivari. This soon escalated into a full riot and the crowd was joined by large numbers of discontented workers and artisans from the city. Symbols of the government were attacked as well as houses belonging to wealthy families. The uprising took the Dutch administration in Brussels by surprise. The few soldiers in Brussels were unable to stop the rioting and most were deployed to defend the Palace of the Prince of Orange in the east of the city. The disorder continued throughout the night of 25–26 August.

The riots in Brussels on 25–26 August had immediate effects around Belgium. Riots broke out in its suburbs and in Liège where workers smashed factories perceived to have deprived artisans of employment. In Brussels, the journalist Édouard Ducpétiaux and lawyer Alexandre Gendebien flew the flag adopted by the short-lived 1790 United Belgian States from the City Hall on the morning of 26 August. Sown by a local woman Marie Abts, it is considered the first Belgian flag and symbolised an attempt by middle-class liberals to give a coherent nationalist meaning to the unrest.

Failure of Belgian-Dutch conciliation, August–September 1830
In the Northern Netherlands, Dutch officials struggled to understand its causes. From the Dutch perspective, the historian E.H. Kossmann wrote:

"It was not easy to determine the meaning of the disturbances taking place in August and September 1830 in some of the Southern provinces. [...] They were made possible by the violent action of the proletariat, directed by the bourgeoisie, who had been the initial target of their anger, against the government. A small group of liberal journalists and advocates tried to take the lead but they were pursuing an ideal of liberty of which they were as yet unable or unwilling to define the terms. Some of the clergy backed the rebels. No objective observer could decide whether the revolt was aimed at the Greater Netherlands state, Protestantism, the constitution or the system of government, the government itself or the dynasty. But neither the Dutch ministers nor Dutch public opinion hesitated for a moment before giving their opinion: it was an attack by Belgium on Holland."

In order to defend their property from theft or destruction, the middle class in Brussels decided to revive the city's historic militia, known as the Civil Guard (Garde civile), with the tacit permission of the city's Dutch governor. By 27 August, it had recruited around 1,000 armed men. It soon restored order, becoming a major political actor in the region in its own right. Emmanuel van der Linden d'Hooghvorst, a local Catholic aristocrat, became its commander.

In the days after the riots, a number of liberal Belgian lawyers and journalists emerged as self-proclaimed spokesmen for the rebels. They appealed to William to consider a list of Belgian grievances. William agreed to hold an extraordinary session of the States-General on 13 September but also sent an army to Belgium under his sons Frederick and William II. Dutch public opinion opposed major reforms, leading Belgians to advocate the administrative separation of the kingdom. William II appeared to agree to this when he arrived in Brussels on 3 September, but William I refused to endorse it before the States-General met. This rejection led to Belgian revolutionaries withdrawing their early moderate offers and, by the time the States-General had endorsed administrative separation on 29 September, Belgium was already in open revolt.


 * Van Maanen sacked by Dutch king on 3 September 1830



The "September Days" in Brussels, 23–26 September 1830


At the start of September, William agreed to receive a delegation of Belgian rebels to discuss their grievances and a delegation left for the Hague soon after. The fact that so many liberal revolutionaries had left Brussels with the delegation meant that the radicals were able to expand their influence in the city. This aggravated the emerging split between the moderates, who want to keep their actions within the law, and the radicals. On 18 September, as negotiations continued in the Hague, the King received a petition from the some wealthy inhabitants of Brussels calling for him to send a military force to Brussels to help restore order.


 * Role of the (inactive?) Commission de sûreté publique in Brussels and the disarming of the Bourgeois Guard by more radical revolutionaries on 19–20 September.

On 23 September, a Dutch army under Prince Frederick and Jean Victor de Constant Rebecque entered Brussels, beginning the fighting known as the September Days (Journées de septembre). The Dutch were confident that they would be able to restore order in the city easily and believed that the insurgents' resolve was weakening. They also had a significant numerical advantage, with 14,000 men and 26 cannon against just 3,000 Belgian rebels. Orangists in Brussels prepared to welcome the Dutch troops into the city. The rebel garrison, which included contingents from towns and cities across the Southern Netherlands, began erecting barricades at key intersections.

Frederick intended to attack the city at four separate points: at the Flanders and Laeken gates in the lower city and at the Leuven and Schaerbeek gates in the upper city. The attack on the Schaerbeek gate was intended to be the largest (4,700 troops) and would advance along the rue Royale to take the Palace of the Prince of Orange (today the Academy Palace), a neoclassical residence recently built as the Prince's official seat in the city.



The attack soon ran into difficulties. At the Flanders and Laeken gates, the Dutch cavalry came under heavy gunfire from surrounding houses and were forced to withdraw. The advance from the Leuven gate was more successful but was halted by a barricade near the Palace of the States-General (the modern-day Palace of the Nation). The column from the Schaerbeek gate also achieved some initial success until it encountered the rebels commanded by Juan Van Halen at a barricade on the Place Royale near the Hôtel Bellevue on the Coudenberg Hill. In the ensuing fighting, de Constant Rebecque was wounded and his troops retreated to the shelter of the nearby Park of Brussels. Pinned down, the Dutch made several small attempts to advance across the Place Royale barricade but took heavy casualties and failed to make further progress. The failure of the attack was a major embarrassment. News of the defeat spread across Belgium, leading to renewed unrest among sympathetic groups in provincial towns and mass desertions of Belgian soldiers from the Dutch army.

Hoping to use the military success to their political advantage, Rogier, Van der Linden d'Hooghvorst, and André Jolly came together to form the "Administrative Commission" (Commission administrative) at the City Hall in Brussels on 24 September. Van Halen was appointed as the commander of revolutionary forces. This embryonic body would form the basis of the Provisional Government, created on 26 September 1830.

Dutch withdrawal, 14 September–27 October 1830


Revolutionary unrest spread around Belgium, Luxembourg, and parts of the Netherlands during the September Days and its aftermath. The first province to be fully captured by the revolutionaries was West Flanders. Small local uprisings took place in Tournai, Charleroi, Philippeville, Mariembourg, and Namur which successfully forced out their demoralized garrisons. In Liège, the last Dutch stronghold in Wallonia, the garrison was besieged in the citadel until hunger forced it to withdraw on 6 October. In other towns, mutinous soldiers turned towns over to local revolutionaries while loyalist elements withdrew towards the Dutch frontier to the north-east.

By mid-October, following the declaration of indepedence, the only strongholds remaining under Dutch control in the Southern Netherlands were Maastricht and Antwerp. Of these, Antwerp was the most important target as an vital commercial centre and trading port. It had a large garrison of troops, some of whom had recently withdrawn from Brussels and Dendemonde. On 27 October, revolutionaries attacked and captured the Borgerhout gate on the north-east side of the city. Believing he would not be able to hold out, its commander General David Hendrik Chassé negotiated a peaceful withdrawal of his forces from within the city to the Antwerp Citadel in the south. However, further fighting broke out during the withdrawal and Chassé ordered Dutch warships in the Schedt to fire on the city. The bombardment which followed destroyed a substantial part of the historic city around the Church of Saint Andrew and former Abbey of Saint Michael.


 * Revolutionary leader and aristocrat Frédéric de Merode mortally wounded in the fighting at Berchem on 24 October 1830


 * Influence of bombardment on public opinion
 * Armistice on 16 October?
 * Major General Nicolas Joseph Daine and the occupation of Limburg

https://books.openedition.org/pulg/1221?lang=en

Move to independence, 26 September–4 October 1830



 * Jean Stengers argued that what united the revolutionaries was a sense of "Belgian patriotism", especially in Brussels and Liège but also in the countryside and in Flanders. Desire to re-unify with France was peripheral and restricted to the cities of Mons, Verviers and Liège; Orangism was much stronger and was particularly powerful in Ghent and Antwerp, as well as sections of Brussels and Liege.
 * Orangists particularly feared the economic consequences of independence, as well as the ascedency of the Catholic Church in an independent Belgium. Zolberg describes it as "a defensive strategy of established elites against the political and social aspects of the national revolution which threatened their position".


 * Dutch overreaction in August/September 1830 turns the revolutionaries "limited demands" into a desire for outright independence.
 * Declaration of independence on 4 October 1830

On 6 October, a commission was appointed to draft a new national constitution. On 10 October, elections for a 200-member National Congress was called as a constituent assembly which began seating on 10 November. Its members were drawn from the lower bourgeoisie and many were young. On 22 November, the Congress agreed that Belgium would be a parliamentary monarchy, hoping to preserve the Liberal-Catholic union of 1828. They decided that direct elections would be held, based on a fairly wide property franchise. There would be one voter for every 96 people in Belgium, compared to France where the ratio was 1:160 which made Belgium "the most democratically governed state in Europe".


 * Economic insecurity after independence encourages Reunionist and Orangist movements.
 * Armistice signed on 17 November 1830, though Dutch refuse to accept Belgian independence and keep their army mobilised.

International reaction

 * Dutch appeal to Great Powers for help on 2 October
 * Reigning climate of liberalism makes the idea of a liberal, pro-market Belgium acceptable.

On 20 December 1830 the London Conference of 1830 brought together the five Great Powers: Austria, Britain, France, Prussia, and Russia. They were divided over whether to support the Belgian or Dutch cause but all wanted to prevent the Belgian Revolution from leading to war. The French monarchy, under the new monarch Louis-Philippe I, supported Belgian independence. The other powers, however, believed that preserving the United Netherlands would be the best way of preventing French encroachment in Belgium. However, none of the European powers were able to send troops to aid the Dutch, partly because of unrest within their own borders. Russia, which supported the Dutch, was occupied with the November Uprising in Poland.


 * Treaty of the Eighteen Articles
 * Talleyrand partition plan for Belgium
 * November uprising in the Polish provinces of the Russian Empire (29 November 1830) sparked by news of intention to deploy Polish soldiers to Belgium in support of the Dutch Army.
 * Perpetual neutrality

Constitution and monarchy

 * Constitution of 1831 is "a compromise between the landowners and the clergy on the one side and the liberal middle class on the other".
 * Poor were written out of political action by the property franchise for voting.
 * Liberal freedoms were safeguarded by the constitution.
 * Creation of a less radical constitutional monarchy over a democratic republic.

"The 1831 constitution was [...] a compromise between the landowners and clergy on the one hand and the liberal middle class on the other. The conservative forces were willing to adapt to the inevitable changes in society but this willingness was aimed at retaining the organic link with the past and preventing radical change. The liberal middle class, in spite of their desire for systematic, radical reform with a view to its expansion, showed restraint, a typical reaction of early liberalism."


 * The result was a "carefully balanced compromise" that mixed some radical liberal aspects with a firmly conservative ethos. Establishment of freedoms of education, religion, association, and the press but also an extremely limited franchise.
 * "King of the Belgians" rather than "King of Belgium" as symbol of popular monarchy

Failure of Orangism and Rattachism

 * Political instability of post-independence Belgium.
 * Frustration of radicals and republicans who find national politics more restricted and conservative than anticipated and the lower middle class effectively excluded from politics by property franchises. Although only a minority, some republicans even planned a coup d'état in June 1831 against swearing in of Leopold I.
 * Blockade of Scheldt and decline of Antwerp
 * Orangism (Belgium) - most prominent among élites in Ghent, Liège, etc who considered Belgium to be an effectively "utopian" construction which could not be made economically viable. Others were inspired by belief in anticlericalism associated primarily with the Dutch regime. Attempted coups d'état within the Army. Support of English industrialist John Cockerill
 * Rattachism
 * Economic depression, especially in Flanders exacerbated in the "Hungry 40s"
 * Gradual separation of Liberal and Catholic factions in Belgium, consolidated by the creation of the Liberal Party in 1846
 * Jan van Speyk, Dutch naval officer, who blew up himself and his crew when his gunboat was blown into the harbour in Antwerp in February 1831 and boarded by Belgian troops.

Ten Days' Campaign and the capture of Antwerp



 * Defection of General Van der Smissen and the Antwerp garrison to the Dutch
 * Dutch refuse to sign Treaty of Twenty-Four Articles despite its very favourable terms. It provided for mandatory neutrality for Belgium as well as an unfavourable division of national debt and the maintenance of Dutch control of the Scheldt estuary. Unpopular in Belgium, but Dutch still refuse to sign.

The Dutch continued to resist Belgian independence for much of Leopold I's early reign. On 2 August 1831, days after Leopold's coronation, the Dutch launched an invasion across the border known as the Ten Days' Campaign. In a number of pitched battles, the 50,000-strong Dutch force rapidly pushed the 24,000-strong Belgian army back as far as Leuven. Faced with a military disaster, the Belgian government appealed to the French for support. Louis-Philippe agreed and sent for the French army of General Étienne Gérard was sent towards Hainaut. The Belgian army, taking refuge in Brussels, was only prevented from surrender by the arrival of French troops. Faced with an much larger French army, and without international support, the Dutch agreed to a cease-fire while they withdrew from Belgium. Antwerp remained occupied. Despite the visible weakness of the Belgian army and the near collapse of the Belgian state, the defeat Ten Days' Campaign did not lead to a resurgence of Orangist or demands for French annexation.

In October 1832, the British and French demanded that all Dutch forces leave Belgian territory, threatening to blockade the French coast and evict all Dutch troops from the country by force. The Dutch, however, refused to withdraw their garrison from the Citadel at Antwerp and a French army under Gérard was again sent in Belgium. The siege of Antwerp by French forces resulted in its capture after a heavy artillery bombardment on 23 December in which the citadel itself was almost totally destroyed.

Dutch recognition of Belgian independence

 * Treaty of London finally agreed in 1839.
 * Belgian constitutional order remained relatively strong, even as Liberals and Catholics split into antagonistic political factions. Belgium is one of the few European states not to experience serious unrest during the Revolutions of 1848
 * Economic crisis in Belgium (and Flanders especially) in the 1840s, the closure of the Schedt and loss of export markets in the Dutch Empire.
 * Frontier agreed at the Treaty of Maastricht (1843)

Symbolism and commemoration

 * 400 revolutionaries killed during the September Days were buried in a crypt at the Place des Martyrs, Brussels.
 * "La Brabançonne", written by an actor at the Monnaie Louis-Alexandre Dechet, known as "Jenneval", in August 1830. Jenneval was of French origin, but participated in the revolution and was killed in fighting with the Dutch at Lier on 18 October 1830. The text was set to music by François van Campenhout and first performed in September 1830. It was re-written in 1860 under the government of Charles Rogier to remove its inflammatory anti-Dutch lyrics.
 * Belgian National Day was historically celebrated annually on 27 September in commemoration of the September Days but was re-scheduled to 21 July in 1880 to re-enforce its association with the monarchy which has remained in place since.
 * Major commemoration of the 75th anniversary of the revolution in 1905 when the government spent 3 million francs on celebrations across the country, including major celebrations in provincial towns featuring huge displays of flags and other patriotic symbols as well as attractions, such as pigeon racing competitions popular in the working classes, to encourage mass participation.

Role in linguistic conflict

 * Belgians spoke a variety of languages at the time of the revolution. However, they did not consider geographical regions to be defined by the predominent language.
 * The term Wallonia had not been coined. The term Flanders either referred historically to the historical lands of the County of Flanders or the region of East and West Flanders and certainly did not refer to all Dutch-speaking regions. The terms only subsequently acquired meaning.


 * By the 1880s, Belgian socialists began to "appropriate" the 27 September date as part of the idea of a "stolen revolution" and tied this to demands for the long-term campaign for universal male suffrage. As the historian Maarten Van Ginderachter summarises, their view was that "the workers had spilled their blood in September 1830 to fight Dutch despotism, but they had been excluded from the Belgian state." However, such commemorations began to falter in the early 20th century as the 21 July became increasingly normalised.