428 Chapter XVIII
traitor of 1793.^4 An age that saw one French general become king of Sweden
might have seen another end up as a prince of Belgium.
Dumouriez defeated the Austrians at Jemappes on November 6, and entered
Brussels soon thereafter, with the Belgian legions riding at his side, amid the
cheers of those who came out to welcome him. At this moment the French had no
plan of annexation. Brissot, Condorcet, Lebrun, Robespierre, and Dumouriez
himself, in both public and private statements, expressed a preference for an inde-
pendent republic. Dumouriez had already matured a private policy of his own. He
hoped, after the war and revolution were over, to retire as a kind of stadtholder or
protector of a Belgian republic, which should serve as a barrier between France and
the German states, and be guaranteed by international treaties (as in fact happened
in the 1830’s) in the status of a neutral country which foreign armies might not
invade or cross.
As the French occupied Belgium, Dumouriez therefore tried to make himself
agreeable both to the Statists and to the Democrats. It was his idea that the Bel-
gians should create a government and an army of their own, to carry through the
liberation from Austria. The Paris authorities shared this idea at first. Within a few
days of Jemappes, local elections were held throughout Belgium, conducted largely
by returning exiles, that is by the most advanced and indeed vengeful of the Bel-
gian Democrats expelled by the Statists in 1790. The electoral assemblies received
guidance from political clubs, which now sprang up everywhere, called, like the
French Jacobins, the Friends of Liberty and Equality. At Namur the members
were mainly the larger merchants called négociants. At Bruges a lively club devel-
oped out of the old literary society. At Louvain, a Catholic center, the members
were mainly French soldiers. There were large clubs at Ghent and Liège. The one
at Brussels began in November with five hundred members—lawyers, doctors,
business men, and Belgian military officers—but its numbers fell off very rapidly.
The clubs and assemblies together chose “provisional representatives” whose duty
was to work locally with the French military authorities.
As the Democrats thus began to dominate the new political organization rising
in Belgium, Dumouriez tried to hold them in check, knowing that an exclusively
Democratic victory would antagonize the Statists, and counting on support from
both parties to further his own plans. The Belgian Democrats, to win mass sup-
port, made public promises to abolish manorial dues and tithes, and shift the tax
burden from ordinary consumers’ goods on to the incomes of the well- to- do.
Meanwhile some of Dumouriez’ own subordinate generals, to supply their troops,
began confiscations and direct requisitions on their own authority upon the inhab-
itants. To all these developments. Dumouriez objected.
It was his plan, in structural matters, to wait for the assembling of a Belgian
Convention, which should not represent the Three Estates as such, but be chosen
by universal suffrage in which men of all parties could cast a vote. Such a Conven-
tion would have, as in France, the power to write a constitution, to decide upon
forms of government and reforms, and to raise a Belgian army. Meanwhile, in the
supply of his troops, he tried to shield the Belgians from the direct impact of
4 Ibid., 34.