436 Chapter XVIII
was radicals outside the government, like Marat, who demanded a true revolution-
izing of the United Provinces. It was at this time also that the Dutch émigrés in
Paris founded a journal, Le Batave, which, somewhat following the line of Hébert’s
Père Duchesne without the vulgarity, remained for several years one of the chief
organs of advanced doctrine. Pressures of popular and of international revolution
thus converged against those in power.
The December decree was to be applied, at least in the sense that the French
would keep the sources and channels of Dutch wealth under their own control.
Serious conflict between the French and Dutch could be foreseen.
Dumouriez became increasingly desperate. Not only had the French Conven-
tion taken the management of affairs out of his hands, but the Austrians began a
counter- offensive, reoccupying Maastricht and Liège. Insurrection against the
French spread through Belgium, redoubled in vehemence by the expectation of the
Austrian return. The French, fearing the worst, now began to loot the country in
earnest. They and their Belgian supporters plundered and desecrated the churches,
regarding the clergy as the most implacable of their enemies. Priests said that any-
one shooting a Frenchman would go to heaven. There were murders on both sides.
Hastily returning from Holland to Belgium, Dumouriez tried to check the vio-
lence and the outrages. He denounced the radicals, ordered agents of the Conven-
tion out of the country, and tried to appease the clergy, still pursuing the idea of a
middle way, to lay a broad base on which his Belgian republic could be built. He
was in extreme need of a personal military victory. Only by another great battle, as
at Jemappes, could he dominate the Belgian Statists and Democrats, and stand up
against the French Convention.
On March 18 he accepted battle with the Austrians at Neerwinden. But this
time he lost. He made an unauthorized armistice with the Prince of Coburg.
Everything must now be settled in Paris. The Convention, for months, had had
good reason to distrust his intentions. His political friends in France—Lebrun,
Brissot, and others—were getting increasingly into trouble. Some of them had
shown hesitation at the execution of the king; and Robespierre, leading the emerg-
ing group called the Mountain, had in fact used the king’s trial to discredit them,
to expose them as political irresponsibles who, having started the war, could not
wage it in the true interests of France, of the new France which the Revolution was
to create, and in which the demands of popular revolutionaries must somehow be
satisfied.
Dumouriez therefore loudly denounced the radicalism reigning at Paris. He be-
came a “moderate.” Despairing of the republic, he even saw himself as a “General
Monk,” in the image of the English Cromwellian who had paved the way for the
restoration of King Charles II. He openly tried to persuade his army to follow him
to Paris to put down the Jacobins. The troops refused. It seemed that the rank and
file, given the choices, still favored the Revolution. There was clearly now nothing
left for Dumouriez in France but the guillotine.
He therefore gave himself up to the Austrians, like Lafayette before him. The
Austrian army, crossing into France, laid siege to Condé and Valenciennes.
The defection of Dumouriez produced violent repercussions in Paris. If Du-
mouriez was a traitor, it seemed that anyone might be. No one could tell whom to