Liberation and Annexation 433
priests,” and that the people should “feed but not fatten them.”^13 Everywhere there
were demands for the confiscation of church property, and contrasts were drawn
between the opulence of monks and abbots and the poverty of Jesus and the first
apostles.
Men who had publicly taken such positions had no hope except in the French.
But the Belgian Democrats could not govern the country, nor even exercise much
influence within it. They were too few, or too lacking in standing, or too much
merely intellectual radicals or enthusiasts. Some began to see no safety for them-
selves, or hope for realization of their ideas, except by incorporation into the
French Republic. And the governing group in Paris came to feel—no doubt rightly
enough at this moment, with the trial of Louis XVI going on, and his death im-
minent—that an independent Belgium would be dominated by the enemies of
France and of the Revolution.
Requests for annexation came in from Liège. The Democrats were stronger in
Liège than almost anywhere in the Austrian provinces, since the city of Liège was
of some economic importance, and so had a considerable population of business
men and industrial workmen. The territory of the bishopric comprised about a
fifth of present- day Belgium. The inhabitants, having thrown off the temporal
power of the bishop, had little sense of forming a state of their own, and no feeling
of political kinship to their neighbors in the Austrian provinces. They could con-
sider union with France without violating a national consciousness which they did
not have. The aristocratic and Statist Triumph in the election of December 29 at
Brussels made many Liègeois very cool toward the idea of joining a Belgian repub-
lic. At Spa, Stavelot, the city of Liège, and elsewhere, local assemblies petitioned
for annexation to France. Voting was by acclamation, and under strong pressure
from the most radically minded, but the numbers present in the assemblies were
proportionately higher than in the Statist elections at Brussels.^14 Requests for an-
nexation came in also from the clubs at Ghent and Mons in January 1793.
French policy therefore entered a third phase. There had been a first stage in
which an independent Belgian republic was contemplated, with matters left largely
to Dumouriez. There had been a second stage in which a program of revolutionary
confiscation was adopted, for the period of wartime occupation, and arising from
fear of Dumouriez and from the needs of military supply. In the third stage it
seemed that there could be no assurance of French interests in Belgium except by
permanent annexation. The convocation of the primary assemblies throughout
Belgium, anticipated since November, took place in February 1793. It is difficult to
make any estimate of their tendency. Neither Belgian nor French historians have
claimed that the proportion of voters really favoring annexation was very high. For
modern Belgians it is a source of national embarrassment that any significant
numbers voted for union with France at all. The matter is confused by the fact that
Miss Tassier, while insisting that only a small minority favored annexation, offers
figures which seem really to indicate the contrary. She seems to have made the
error, common enough, but surprising in so exact a worker, of comparing the num-
13 Ibid.
14 For the rather unsatisfactory figures see Tassier, 261–62 for Liège, and 170 for Brussels.