432 Chapter XVIII
ruling bodies, and the church, should be confiscated. Against this property, assig-
nats should be issued, to be used as money.
The decree stupefied all concerned. For Dumouriez, it meant the ruin of his
plans. He rushed to Paris to obtain its repeal, but only aroused further suspicion
of his motives. For the Statists, it killed such slight tendencies to reach an under-
standing with the Democrats as may have existed. Even now, at the end of De-
cember, there was some bare possibility of a Belgian republic. The French had too
low an opinion of the Belgians to be altogether eager to live with them in the
same body politic, and might still have settled for a program in which, while
making use of Belgian resources during the war, they obtained a theoretically
independent but not unfriendly buffer republic on their borders. Probably a mu-
tual toleration of Statists and Democrats was impossible anyway. Miss Tassier has
observed that there could be no viable Belgian state until one of the two parties
was defeated, and that the break- up of the Statists during the twenty years of
French rule after 1794 was prerequisite to the independent Belgium of 1830.^10 In
any event, the Statists at the end of 1792 were intransigent. Elections for the
Belgian Convention took place in Brussels on December 29. It was in such a
Convention that any hope for a Belgian republic would have to rest. The Statist
party, led by gildmasters and priests (although only 3,000 voted in a population
of 80,000), completely swamped the Brussels section assemblies, which voted
overwhelmingly to uphold the Joyous Entry of 1355, the Three Estates, and the
Apostolic and Roman Catholic Religion.^11
The Democrats also were dismayed by the December decree. Among the Dutch
Patriots, including those with Dumouriez and those in Holland, it became an
overriding concern, from that day forward, that when revolution came in the
United Provinces the terms of the decree of December 15 must be avoided. The
Belgian Democrats were forced into painful decisions. Some drew back. Others,
already too far committed, or determined to advance their principles at any cost,
were obliged to follow French policy wherever it might lead.
It must be understood that the Belgian Democrats, though relatively not nu-
merous, genuinely shared in the revolutionary spirit of the age, and were distrib-
uted through most parts of the country. Under French auspices, they agitated in
their clubs and municipal assemblies. They had become more radical and more
anti- clerical than in 1789. At quaint little Bruges they smashed up noble emblems,
and demanded the abolition of servants’ livery. “It is unfortunate enough,” they
said, “that a servant should have to wait on a fool or a crazy woman, without being
excluded from society, the theater and public balls by these humiliating outward
signs.”^12 They fumed against privilege, declaring that the only source of true nobil-
ity was virtue. A certain Dr. Defrenne demanded that the Cardinal Archbishop of
Malines give up his title of Eminence, as “contrary to Christian humility.” A cer-
tain Verplancke (as if reviving the Protestantism stamped out two centuries be-
fore) announced that “priests were made for the people, not the people for the
10 Her final conclusion, 328.
11 On this critical question of whether the intransigence of the Statists was the final obstacle to a
Belgian republic, contrast Tassier, 168–72 with Verhaegen, I, 124.
12 Ta s sier, 218 –19.