One day, soon after the Battle of Waterloo, the Tsar Alexander was at La Belle Alliance with William, King of the Netherlands, and his son the Prince of Orange. He asked for a glass of wine, and drank to 'la belle alliance, not only of nations, but of families.'

The marriage of the Grand Duchess Anna Paulowna to the Prince of Orange had just been settled; and all the Courts of Europe believed that the troublesome question of the Low Countries was at last finally solved by the union of Holland and Belgium under the dynasty of Nassau, now to be allied by marriage with one of the Great Powers which had placed it on the throne of the new Kingdom.

The English Government had arranged that the Prince of Orange, heir to the Kingdom of the Netherlands, should marry the Princess Charlotte, heiress to the throne of England; and their engagement had been announced to the States-General at The Hague in March, 1814. But this plan had fallen through from the causes with which everyone is familiar—the objections of the Princess Charlotte, who did not wish to leave England, and liked the Prince less the more she saw of him; her fancy for the impecunious Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg, whom she afterwards married; and the intrigues of the Grand Duchess of Oldenburgh to break off the match, in order to bring about a marriage between her sister, the Grand Duchess Anna Paulowna and the Prince of Orange.

The Prince was accordingly married to the Grand Duchess. His character—careless, pleasure-loving, and extravagant—made him very popular in Brussels, and he spent as much as possible of his time in his palace there, or at the chÂteau of Tervueren. He preferred the Belgians to his countrymen the Dutch, whose grave ways did not suit him. Soon after his marriage he sent a secret message to the Duke of Wellington, under whom he had served in the Peninsular War and during the Hundred Days, asking for the Duke's influence to obtain leave to fix his Court at Brussels. Wellington refused to interfere in a domestic question, and, in reply to the Prince's suggestion that his presence in Brussels might help to check discontent amongst the Belgians, said that he doubted the statements as to Belgian disaffection, as many persons, and even nations, were interested in breaking the union of Holland and Belgium.

The King and Queen of the Netherlands had the greatest difficulty in persuading the Prince to visit them in Holland. The Communal Council of Brussels waited on them at The Hague with an address of congratulation on their accession. 'I don't know,' said the Queen, 'what you do to keep my son at Brussels; but he is so fond of you that we hardly ever see him here.' It would have been better for the stability of his throne if the King had spent more of his own time in Brussels, for signs of that discontent about which the Prince had written to Wellington soon began to appear, and he might, perhaps, have taken warning before it was too late, if he had known the truth.

Like Joseph II., William came to the throne full of good intentions; like him, he alienated the clergy at the outset; and, like him, he tried to give the Catholic Netherlands a liberal Constitution on his own terms. His aim was to make them free and happy, but 'Alone I did it' must be written over all. His character was a combination of sage ideas and Dutch obstinacy; and one great root of bitterness between him and the clergy was that never-ending question of education, over which parties are fighting in Belgium at the present day. It was not that he wished to make the southern provinces Protestant. But he was bent on raising the intellectual standard of the country; and for this purpose he founded, amongst other institutions, the CollÈge Philosophique at Louvain, where the young priests were to receive a thorough education in accordance with the spirit of the time—a scheme which the Church resisted as it had resisted the SÉminaire GÉnÉrale of Joseph II., and with equal success.

In a variety of ways the King alienated the people as well as the priests. Though the States-General met alternately at The Hague and at Brussels, all the great departments of the executive were in Holland. They would, indeed, have been safest there in the event of a war; but it was made a grievance that some of them were not at Brussels, Antwerp, or Ghent. Most of the officials were Dutch, which was said to prove a wish for Hollander supremacy, though the Dutch were a minority of the population of the United Kingdom. The press attacked the Government, and was severely punished under a system of decrees emanating from the personal authority of the King. The use of Dutch as the official language was enforced against the wishes of the majority. Dutch methods of taxation were extended to Belgium, and trouble was caused by the fact that Holland was for Free Trade and Belgium for Protection. And of course the southern provinces were Catholic and the northern Protestant, which more than anything else kept them on bad terms. At last the impression became universal that the King's policy was to sacrifice the interests of the Belgian provinces to those of Holland; and the result was that the two great parties, or schools of thought, which had always bitterly opposed each other, the Catholics and the Liberals, united to oppose the Government.[44] This was in 1829. Next year the Paris revolt of July, which drove out Charles X., and put Louis Philippe on the throne of France, taught the Belgians how easy it might be to get rid of a ruler with whom they were discontented; and when the news from Paris came to Brussels, the streets and cafÉs were full of men reading the papers, and saying to each other, 'That's the way to revolt! Long live the barricades! Long live the people!'

The days passed on in Brussels, with the restlessness of the population increasing. The King's birthday was August 24, and preparations had been made for celebrating it with unusual brilliancy. The park was to be illuminated, and there were to be fireworks at the Porte de Namur. But the people of Brussels, in that summer of 1830, were not to be pacified by fÊtes. Placards were found posted on the walls with the ominous words: 'Le 23, Feu d'artifice; le 24, Illuminations; le 25, RÉvolution.' Warnings, too, reached the Procureur du Roi that mischief was brewing; and the festivities were abandoned, the reason being given that bad weather was expected!

On the evening of the 25th Auber's 'Muette de Portici' was to be played at the Monnaie. This opera had been more than once forbidden lest it should cause disturbances; but now permission had been granted to perform it, and the theatre was full. Every song of revolt was cheered, and the climax came with the words of the duet in Act 4:

The audience rose and rushed out into the Place de la Monnaie, inflamed by the songs they had just heard, and shouting, 'Liberty! liberty!' Then the mob gathered and rioting began. The old flag of Brabant was hoisted on the HÔtel de Ville, and the town was in an uproar for the next two days.

Orders were sent from The Hague to put down the 'rising' by force, and Dutch troops under the command of Prince Frederick, the King's second son, marched on Brussels. For nearly a month threats, promises, negotiations were tried. But the insurgents refused to yield. Paid agitators went about among the people; men of high standing took the lead in organizing the revolt; barricades were erected; volunteers came in from all parts; the Bishops pulled the strings behind the scenes, and the country clergymen instigated their parishioners to rebellion; the whole of Flanders and Brabant was soon up in arms, and on September 23 the Dutch advanced to attack Brussels.

Three days of desperate fighting in the streets followed. The Dutch held the park in force, but could not penetrate into the Place Royale, which was defended by a strong barricade. Every house in the Rue Royale was full of insurgents, who fired from the windows on the Dutch. In other parts of the city there was the same stubborn resistance. For three days the struggle continued. At sunset the firing ceased, and the working men in their blouses sat drinking and boasting of their exploits in the cafÉs, while their leaders met at the HÔtel de Ville and took counsel for the morrow, and the Dutch bivouacked in the park and on the boulevards. Each morning at dawn the tocsin sounded from Ste. Gudule, and the people rushed to the barricades.

At daybreak on September 27 all was quiet when a small party of the insurgents stole into the park, and went forward under cover of the trees. They found it empty. The night had been very dark, and in the small hours the Dutch had left in silence, and were now marching away from Brussels.

It was a day of brilliant sunshine, and while the bourdon was sounding from the towers of Ste. Gudule, and horsemen were riding out into the country with the news, the populace flocked to the Palace. The men of the blouse, their hands and faces black with gunpowder, merchants, priests, lawyers, well-dressed ladies and ragged harridans, boys and girls, young and old, went in, pushing, laughing, singing. They did little damage, but hacked and cut the portraits of the King—the poor King who had meant so well by his kingdom. The Queen's private rooms were examined, and her wardrobes opened. One lad found a rich dress, 'a magnificent robe of ceremony—white velvet embroidered with gold.' He pulled it out, put it on, and over it a mantle of orange colour. With a hat 'a lÀ Marie Stuart' on his head, he sallied out. The mob, crying, 'The Queen is prisoner!' surrounded him with shouts of laughter, and then tore off the finery and trailed it in the dust. A marble bust of the King was brought out. They put a crown of Dutch cheese upon it, and carried it about with cries of 'Down with the first and last King of the Netherlands!' Many lives had been lost during the fighting; but this was Brussels. It was all very different from Paris and the downfall of Louis and Marie Antoinette.

The chief work of the Congress of Vienna was undone; and King William instructed Baron Falck, his Ambassador at the Court of St. James's, to ask for intervention on his behalf. The British Government replied that troops could not be sent; that the Five Great Powers were to meet in London; and that the policy of Great Britain would be to prevent the troubles in the Netherlands leading to a breach of the peace in Europe.

How the plenipotentiaries of Great Britain, France, Russia, Austria, and Prussia met in conclave on the weary question of the Low Countries; how this Conference of London recognized the independence of the Catholic Netherlands, defined their boundaries, and made them neutral; how at the same time a National Congress at Brussels declared that the House of Nassau had forfeited the throne, chose as the first King of independent Belgium Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg, and framed, under the influence of Lamennais and his disciples, a Constitution whose democratic principles breathe the spirit of the Joyeuse EntrÉe of Brabant, are events which form a part of the general history of modern Europe.