C''est la Belgique,' said Danton, 'qui comblera le dÉficit de la RÉvolution.' The Convention at Paris saw in the riches of the Austrian Netherlands a means of filling its treasury, and supporting the failing credit of France; and its emissaries knew how to work upon the people of Brabant and Flanders. 'Nous avons ÉvangÉlisÉ partout,' was the report sent to Paris by one of them, 'in the streets, in the clubs, in the drinking-shops, in the theatres.... We have covered the walls with placards, and made the highways resound with our hymns of liberty. We have dallied with their fanaticism, and tried to stir up the lower ranks of the clergy against the higher, and so kill priestcraft by priestcraft.'

Meantime the army of the Republic had been at work, and on the field of Fleurus Jourdan com pleted the conquest which Dumouriez had begun at Jemappes.

Dumouriez, who understood the character of the people he was dealing with, was all for conciliation. He did not wish to bring the Jacobins of Paris to Brussels, and raise up men like Chabot and Marat. He proclaimed that the French came as friends and brothers, and promised to secure the independence of the country. Above all things, he wanted to conciliate the Church. But most of the Revolutionists sneered at the Catholicism of the Austrian Netherlands. 'What a pity,' said Camille Desmoulins, 'that the priests spoil the Belgians so much. One cannot but wonder at the way in which these people, while wishing to preserve their liberty, try also to preserve the cowls of their monks;' and Marat, who had no patience with the moderation of Dumouriez, declared that nothing would come of the war 'till a true sans-culotte commands our army.' So after Fleurus the Austrian Netherlands were made part of France.

The moderate democrats of Brabant had been swamped in the early days of the French Revolution by the extreme men who corresponded with the Jacobins at Paris; and some strange scenes had taken place in the venerable Grande Place of Brussels. A Tree of Liberty was set up there, round which men, women, and children danced the carmagnole; and a mob went up to the Place Royale chanting the 'Ça ira' and roaring out the 'Marseillaise,' fastened ropes to the statue of Charles of Lorraine and pulled it down. And it must have been a curious sight when Dumouriez gave receptions of an evening, and artisans rubbed shoulders with men like the Duc d'Ursel and the Duc d'Arenberg, who at first, like others of the noblesse, mingled with the red-caps and joined the Jacobin clubs, which seem to have been quite the fashion.

Ridiculous things were done at the meetings of the Jacobin clubs. The advocate Charles burns his diploma, and says he wants no title but sans-culotte, and then goes on to propose that the names of all the squares and streets of Brussels be changed. There should, he told his friends, be Places d'AthÈnes, de Rome, de France, and Rues de Jean-Jacques Rousseau, de Brutus, de Voltaire, de l'Opinion, de la Philosophie, du Divorce.

One wiseacre demands that the ancient constitution of Brabant be burned on the following Sunday during the ceremony of 'The Benediction of the Flag of the sans-culottes.' 'Let the bust of Van der Noot be also burned,' he added; on which another statesman rises, and exclaims: 'Je demande, moi, qu'on promÈne le Manneken de Van der Noot avec celui de la Pinaud, sa bonne amie.' Clearly the sans-culotte of Brussels was a mere tinsel imitation of the genuine article at Paris. At Paris all was tragedy; Brussels amused itself with a burlesque. But as time went on, and it dawned upon these would-be Jacobins and sans-culottes that the Revolution meant fighting in the armies of France, and that everything in Church and State was to be turned upside-down, they began to lose their tempers, and long before October, 1795, when the formal incorporation with France took place, they were quite tired of masquerading as Jacobins.

Five years later they were as weary of the Directory as they had been of the Convention; but when, in 1803, Napoleon came to Brussels, he was well received. There was, however, a good deal of sham enthusiasm on that occasion, and his most successful visit was in 1811, when he brought the Empress Marie Louise with him. Brussels then showed that, in spite of the Brabant Revolution, the House of Austria had a strong hold on the affections of the citizens. 'VoilÀ Marie Louise d'Autriche!' was heard in the streets. The town gave fÊtes in her honour; and one evening, when the Empress was at the Monnaie, and had brought with her a bouquet of tulips from Harlem, which fell over the edge of her box, gentlemen ran from all parts of the theatre and picked up the fragments, which they made into button-holes. 'L'ImpÉratrice parut charmÉe de cette galanterie Bruxelloise,' says the local account of this incident.

Napoleon was at Laeken with Marie Louise when the campaign in Russia was resolved on. The story goes that on receiving the news that the Tsar refused to carry out the Continental System, he began at once to whistle the air of 'Marlborough s'en va-t-en guerre,' and ran out into the grounds of the palace in such a rage that he nearly knocked the Empress down. It was at Laeken that the fatal declaration of war was signed.

As soon as the Allies entered the Netherlands after the French reverses of 1812 and 1813, they were made welcome. Between four and five o'clock on the evening of February 1, 1814, the French rearguard left Brussels; and about an hour later the first Cossacks, a party of half a dozen, rode in by the Porte de Louvain, passed quickly through the city, and went on after the French army. These scouts were followed by a large force of cavalry and infantry. The Prussian infantry found billets, and the Cossacks lay down and slept beside their horses on the snow in the Rue des Fripiers,[41] the townsfolk standing near, and wondering at their strange dress and language. Soon the town was full of soldiers, some of whom remained there, while others pressed on to France.

The news that Paris had capitulated reached Brussels on March 3. The bells were rung, cannon were fired, and the houses were illuminated. Then, one after another, the towns which still held out surrendered. Carnot alone, who was in command of Antwerp, gave no sign of yielding; but in the middle of April, while the last arrangements were being made for the departure of Napoleon to Elba, he pulled down the tricolor, and the great stronghold on the Scheldt fell, with the rest of Belgium, into the hands of the Allies.

It was almost a fixed rule of international politics in Europe, when some great war was finished and some treaty of peace was on the boards, that people should ask each other what was to be done next with the Catholic Netherlands. The rich inheritance of the House of Burgundy was passed from hand to hand by Austrians, Spaniards, and Frenchmen, without any statesman ever considering what might be the wishes of the inhabitants; and now, in 1814, the Great Powers, at first in secret, resolved to set up a new State, consisting of Holland and Belgium united, and call it the Kingdom of the Netherlands, with William of Orange-Nassau on the throne. He came to Brussels in July, 1814, not yet as King, for the Congress of Vienna was to settle the map of Europe and parcel out the spoils, but as Governor on behalf of the Allies; and at the end of the year his son, the Prince Royal, took command of the allied army in Belgium.

They had a gay time in Brussels during that winter of 1814-15, as everyone knows. But on March 1 the Great Man landed in France; and a fortnight later the Orange flag was hoisted in Brussels, and the new King announced that he had not intended to assume the royal authority till the work of the Congress at Vienna was finished, and all their decisions could be executed together, but that the recent event in France had made him resolve to wait no longer.

On April 5 the Duke of Wellington came post-haste from Vienna, and went to live in a house next door to the HÔtel de France, at the corner of the Rue de la Montagne du Pare and the Rue Royale.

And now during these wonderful Hundred Days, about which so much has been written, the eyes of all Europe were fixed on Paris and Brussels. But there were some good folk living at Ghent, who considered themselves as the most important people in the world, as well they might, considering what pains were being taken, and what oceans of blood were to be shed, in order to make it safe for them to depart from East Flanders and go back again to France, whence they had lately fled in a great hurry.

Louis XVIII. was lying on a sofa at the Tuileries, suffering excruciating agonies from the gout, when a despatch was brought to him with the news that Napoleon had been in France for the last five days, and was at that moment on the road to Paris. Instantly preparations were made for flight, with as much secrecy as they had been made for that terrible trip in the Berline on which another Bourbon had set out so many years before. Everything was kept quiet, and no one whom it was possible to hoodwink was trusted. On the night fixed for the departure one of the Ministers was at the palace. The King gave him no hint; but as he was leaving the captain of the guard whispered: 'We're off in an hour; the relays are ordered; meet us at Lille.' They started, and had a most uncomfortable journey. It was pouring rain. The roads were deep in mud. The royal portmanteau was stolen with all the royal wardrobe. The royal gout was most painful; and at Lille the garrison was sullen. There were tricolor badges on all sides. Eagles were pulled out of knapsacks, and the fleur-de-lis was nowhere to be seen. This was evidently no place to stay at long; and so the King crossed the frontier and made for Ghent, where he had been offered a home in the splendid mansion of the Comte d'Hane-Steenhuyse.[42] He remained there comfortably until after the Battle of Waterloo.

People who came to Brussels in the first week of June were surprised to find how peaceful the town was, and how gay. Everyone has read the narratives of what went on, and the story has been told over and over again, and nowhere better than in Vanity Fair, which is history in disguise in the chapters where Amelia invades the Low Countries. On June 14 Napoleon, having crossed the frontier, was at Charleroi, on the road to Brussels, and all Brussels was talking about the dance which the Duke and Duchess of Richmond were giving next day at their house in the Rue de la Blanchisserie, in the ballroom with the paper of 'a trellis pattern with roses.'[43]

It was a strange night in Brussels, that night of June 15, 1815. By eight o'clock the Duke has given orders for the troops to march at daybreak, for he knows that Napoleon has crossed the frontier. Then he goes to the ball to wait for another despatch. At eleven o'clock, when the dancing is in full swing, the message reaches him. He hastens the march by two hours, and the bugles begin to sound all over the town. 'One could hear,' says General Brialmont, 'in the ballroom the rolling of cannon and the steady tramp of the regiments marching towards the forest of Soignies.' The Duke is in bed and asleep by two o'clock; but many of his officers dance on till it is time to rush off to their regiments

It would be useless to repeat the story of the next three days. It has been told a hundred times. The clear, refreshing dawn; the soldiers gathering from their billets; the partings; the regiments marching off, the Black Watch and the 92nd Highlanders with the bagpipes playing before them, through the park and the Place Royale, and passing away up the Rue de Namur and along the road beyond, to where the soft light of early morning is beginning to shine among the glades of Soignies; the sound of heavy firing on the 16th; the silence on the 17th, with the news that Blucher has lost the day at Ligny, and that Wellington is falling back from Quatre Bras; the carts and material of the army moving slowly up the Rue de Namur all day long; the awful suspense of the 18th, when no one can rest.

'We walked about nearly all the morning,' says Lady de Ros, 'being unable to sit still, hearing the firing, and not knowing what was happening.' About three o'clock the observant Mr. Creevy went for a stroll beyond the ramparts. 'I walked about two miles out of the town,' he writes, 'towards the army, and a most curious, busy scene it was, with every kind of thing upon the road, the Sunday population of Brussels being all out in the suburbs of the Porte Namur, sitting about tables drinking beer and making merry, as if races or other sports were going on, instead of the great pitched battle which was then fighting.' It was an hour or so after this that the Cumberland Hussars came galloping through the Porte de Namur, down the street and across the Place Royale, shouting that the French were coming, and raised such a panic. It was not till late at night that the truth was known.

And at Ghent? They had got on there very well on the whole. The gout was troublesome, but Louis XVIII. had the enormous appetite of the Bourbons, and ate a great deal. The Comte d'Hane gave a big dinner one day, at which the King managed to consume a hundred oysters for dessert. Some of the courtiers used to go to a tavern in the suburbs and eat a small white fish, a dainty much esteemed at Ghent, which was caught in the river there. Chateaubriand, who was one of this Court in exile, was at a dinner where they sat at table from one o'clock till eight. 'They began,' he says, 'with sweets and finished with cutlets. The French alone know how to dine with method. They played whist, and went to the theatre. Catalani sang for them at concerts, and also in private to please the King. When the royal gout allowed it, the King went to Mass at the Church of St. Bavon. But during the last three days His Majesty was very nervous, and kept his carriage secretly ready for another flight.

BRUSSELS
Rue de Namur.

On the 18th, Chateaubriand was taking a walk outside the town near the Brussels gate, when a courier from Alost rode up with a despatch from the Duc de Berri. 'Bonaparte,' it said, 'entered Brussels yesterday, 17 June, after a bloody battle. The battle was to begin again to-day. The Allies are said to have been completely defeated, and the order for retreat given.' All Ghent was in dismay. The Comte d'Artois arrived and confirmed the bad news. Many Belgians who had been in the French army immediately started to take service once more under Napoleon. Preparations were made for starting at once; but at one o'clock next morning a despatch came with the news of the victory. On June 22 the King left Ghent, to mount once more the throne which had been retained for him at such a cost.

The scene of the great battle is wonderfully little changed since then. The level of the ground at the centre of the ridge occupied by the Allies has been lowered by the removal of earth to make the Mound of the Belgian Lion; the tree under which the Duke of Wellington and his staff stood at intervals during the day is gone long since; a tramway runs past the farm of La Haye Sainte towards Quatre Bras and Charleroi; and a number of houses have been built on the road between Waterloo and Mont St. Jean. But the general aspect of the fields on which the fight took place remains the same. Down to the right, looking from Mont St. Jean, the chÂteau of Hougoumont, half destroyed by shot and fire, still remains as it was left after the battle, with its orchard walls and tall, dark trees. The farmhouse of La Haye Sainte, that scene of carnage, is still where it was, at the side of the road which leads down the incline, and then up from the narrow valley to La Belle Alliance, near which is now the monument of the Wounded Eagle, a memorial to the last combatants of the army which fought and lost with such matchless valour. Every yard of the ground is sacred. There is, in all the world, no spot where a Briton and a Frenchman can meet with more profound emotions of mutual respect than on the slopes near Mont St. Jean.

WATERLOO
The farm of La Belle Alliance and the mound surmounted by the Belgian lion.