1830.] The Netherlands. 435 



ordinances, and the Imperial arguments of horse, foot, and dragoons. 

 The French doctrines pleased him, and he published them to his 

 subjects ; but their application by his subjects had not entered into his 

 plans, and he put the practical reformers under arrest, sent furious 

 governors among them, and assisted the popular understanding by the 

 bayonet. 



His first operations on the Belgians were specious enough. He 

 proclaimed Toleration to the Protestants, clerical freedom from the 

 papacy, and a total change in the style of theological instruction. 



Nothing could be better, under other circumstances. But the 

 Belgians refused to receive instruction with this wholesale rapidity. 

 The Emperor felt himself insulted, and issued angry proclamations ; 

 the people retorted them still more angrily. Joseph carried on the 

 controversy in the Imperial manner, by ordering the disputants to be 

 shot the people adopted the argument, and fired on the Imperialists. 

 Reform was now in the field against Bigotry, both equally rash, ground- 

 less, and extravagant. Proclamations, and villages on fire, flying 

 governors and civil massacre, succeeded each other with natural rapidity ; 

 and Joseph at length, wearied of being beaten in reform by the Belgians, 

 in war by the Turks, in policy by the Russians, and in common sense 

 by all mankind, died ; leaving his brother Leopold to reverse all his 

 plans, and his nephew, Francis the Second, to lose all his provinces. 



France had in the mean time been busy with Holland. The Dutch 

 were fantastic enough to believe their French instructors, when they 

 told them that the liberty of the seas depended on the Dutch fleet ! 

 They threw themselves into the lion's jaws, and had the natural fate of 

 such enterprises ; England tore away their colonies, hunted their 

 fleet into its harbours, or destroyed them in sight of its shore ; stripped 

 Holland of her commerce, and left her on the eve of bankruptcy to 

 meditate on the wisdom of French philosophers. The peace of 1784 

 finished the naval struggles of the States. 



France was now to act for herself. Philosophy had laid the train 

 for blowing up the whole ancient fabric of royalty in all lands, and 

 her armies rushed out to finish the work of her wits, orators, 

 and political economists. The first explosion blew the Belgian 

 government into a million of fragments. Dumouriez, the true repre- 

 sentative of all republican generals, an intriguer, a lover of blood, 

 a daring soldier, and as reckless a robber as ever swept the treasury 

 of a land of opulent poltroons, threw himself on Belgium, frater- 

 nized with every body, panegyrized every body, and robbed every 

 body. Sixty thousand Frenchmen, wild as tigers, and mad for plunder 

 and the rights of man, burst upon the thirty thousand grave Austrians 

 who stood drawn up in parade order upon the memorable plain of 

 Gemappe. The Austrian hero was made by the strappado, the French 

 hero by the human passions, vanity, lust, robbery, and revenge. The 

 contest was over at once. The French plunged on the Austrians, 

 square, line, and column, cast them into flight as if an inundation 

 had burst upon them, swept them from the field, and in three short 

 hours extinguished the glory of the strappado, the cane, the picket, 

 and the cat-o'-nine tails. The old components of heroism were no 

 more. 



But Dumouriez was too much a republican not to be a knave, and 



3 I 2 



