Another success story in Napoleon's Empire was the fate of the nine
Belgian departments, fo rmerly in the Austrian Empire, which formed the
nucleus of modern Belgium. Capital generated by the sale of national
property and stimulated by Napoleon's huge internal market brought the
beginnings of Belgian industrialization, especially in shipbuilding, coal
mining and cotton manufacturing. It was the sale of national property and
its consequences that kept the bourgeoisie loyal to Napoleon. Curiously,
the Belgian peasantry were also pro-Bonaparte and this is something of an
historical puzzle, since, ferociously pro-clerical, the peasants stayed loyal
to the Church, did not buy its confiscated lands and were thus not
coopted into the Bonapartist economic nexus.
Matters were otherwise in Holland, ruled by his brother Louis, which
was as anti-Napoleon as Belgium was pro. Three things in particular led
to the debacle of King Louis's abdication in r8ro. In the first place Louis
tried to adapt the Code Napoleon to local laws and customs and for his
pains was severely reprimanded by Napoleon, who wrote sternly: 'A
nation of r,8oo,ooo inhabitants cannot have a separate legislation. Rome
gave her laws to her allies; why should the laws of France not be adopted
in Holland?' Even more seriously, Louis connived at contraband so as not
to ruin Dutch trade, and thus made Holland the weak link in the
Continental System. But what particularly infuriated Napoleon was
Louis's seeming inability to deal with the ultimately unsuccessful
invasion of Walcheren by British fo rces in July ·r8o9. In March r8ro he
ordered Louis to hand over to direct imperial rule all his lands south of
the Rhine; Louis, unable to stomach such humiliation, beat Napoleon to
the punch by resigning on r July.
Napoleon's dealings with Louis showed that, beneath the rhetoric
about European integration, he ultimately believed in brute force to
achieve his will. His correspondence, even when delivering justified
rebukes, breathed a spirit of contempt. The Emperor was impatient with
the fine points of Louis's arguments for moderation, and insisted that a
true ruler knew how to force his subjects to come to heel. On one occasion
when Louis appealed to the ideals of honour, justice and decency,
Napoleon snapped back: 'You might have spared me this fine display of
your principles.' He always believed in tough measures to cow a
recalcitrant population, arguing that the alleged brutality saved lives in
the long run, and even suggested that a little blood-letting was good for
the body politic. One of his most revealing letters was to Joseph in early
r8o8, when his brother was still King of Naples: 'I wish Naples would
attempt a rising. As long as you have not made an example, you will not
be their master. Every conquered country must have its rising.'
marcin
(Marcin)
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