430 Chapter XVIII
Antwerp, and suppression of long- distance commerce in Belgium, were considered
by the Dutch and the English to be essential to their own commercial superiority.
The British and Dutch would always oppose the opening of the Scheldt. To the
prelates, nobles, and gildmasters of the Statist party it made no difference. It was
the enterprising and modern- minded among the Belgian business interests that
wanted Antwerp opened to the world. These men included many who tended to
sympathize with the Democrats and the French. Lebrun opened the Scheldt in
order to hold them to the side of France. He did it also to embarrass the Belgian
exiles in England, who if they accepted the opening of the Scheldt would embroil
themselves with the British government, and if they rejected it might be exposed
to the Belgians as British tools.
By English historians, the opening of the Scheldt is generally attributed to
French ambitions, and given as a main cause driving England into the war. By
French historians it is given as a sign either of French Revolutionary crusading or
of French economic expansionism. Lebrun, however, who was a former Belgian
revolutionary himself, seems to have been actuated mainly by the need of favoring
revolution in Belgium.^6 It is a case in which the international revolution reacted
violently upon the French Revolution proper, for with the opening of the Scheldt,
in November 1792, both the Dutch and British governments began to think war
with France unavoidable. It was only a matter of timing, wrote Van de Spiegel on
December 1.
Dumouriez’ original plans soon proved unworkable. The Democrats strained at
the leash. The Statists were unreconciled. The clergy, though some made the at-
tempt, produced no adequate loan. Dumouriez had no money, and was unable
even to begin to raise a Belgian army. Disorder reigned in the French army, where
many of the patriot soldiers either deserted, taking their equipment with them, or
simply lost their blankets, shoes, or firearms. To save time, and get supplies, Du-
mouriez made some very disadvantageous bargains with get- rich- quick operators
and speculators, both French and Belgian. He met with increasing objection in
Paris to his direct dealings with Belgian contractors. There was fear in Paris that,
by such close arrangements between Dumouriez and the Belgians, the command-
ing general would become altogether too independent. Meanwhile the French sol-
diers in Belgium were going unsupplied. And the wealth of Belgium was going
untapped, because Dumouriez, thinking of a future peaceable principality for him-
self, hoped to mollify the monks and abbots, the tithe- owners and the manor-
owners, who were sworn enemies of the French Revolution.
Since he could not get the Belgians to do anything effective in liberating them-
selves, through providing a Belgian administration, funds, or army, Dumouriez
found himself increasingly in the position of using his French soldiers to create a
Belgian republic for himself. It was this that the French Convention objected to.
And it is against this background that the famous decree of the Convention of
December 15, the so- called second Propaganda Decree, must be understood.
“The more successful a general is,” said Cambon in the Convention as early as
November 22, “and the more he has a hold on public opinion, the more important
6 On the opening of the Scheldt see Tassier, 117–18; Colenbrander, 194–95, 198, 238.