He had, he declared, received instructions to that effect from his sovereign, who "had never ceased to give proofs of his sincere desire to coöperate in an arrangement and so assure to the best of his ability the blessing of peace to his peoples and to Europe, and he was still animated by the same sentiments."

It is almost incredible that the Dutch sovereign, when he used such language as the above, was already meditating an armed onslaught on the Belgians and their newly elected king, and had actually set his army in motion. Yet it was so. On August 4, his son, the Prince of Orange, invaded Flanders with a force of forty-five thousand veterans. Advancing rapidly, and with much strategic skill, he destroyed first the hastily collected force of General Daine near Haselt, towards the Meuse, and then that of King Leopold near Louvain. The Belgian army consisted of raw levies, and the force which invaded them had been equipped out of taxation paid by themselves. In a few days Belgium was prostrate, and the city of Brussels, in which King Leopold had taken refuge, lay open to assault.

Such a perfidious interruption of diplomacy by armed violence obliged the European congress to act. It took the plenipotentiaries by surprise, for the Dutch envoy, interrogated but a few days previously about the movement of troops in Holland, had assured them that they were intended to be used inside the country.

King Leopold had no way left of saving his new-born kingdom except to appeal for aid to the French government of Louis Philippe. The assent of England was obtained, and the French army instantly crossed the frontier in four divisions and reached Brussels just in time to save that city from occupation by the Dutch. Their invasion was checked, and their army was forced to retire into Holland almost as quickly as it came. At the same time the English fleet had been sent across the North Sea to menace the Dutch harbors, and the fear of an English landing materially hastened the king's retreat from an "impasse" into which combined obstinacy and bad faith had led him.

In spite of the clamors of a strong party in France in favor of the annexation of Belgium, as the only way of permanently excluding the Dutch oligarchy from renewing its schemes of reconquest, the French king loyally withdrew his army in the autumn of 1831, and a fresh armistice was enforced on the two countries. The conference of the five powers took advantage of the lull to draw up fresh bases for the independence of Belgium. In a new treaty of twenty-four articles they fixed these bases and dealt with the three points in regard to which there was most difference of opinion between the two little powers. The

Walloon or western half of Luxembourg was, with the assent of the Germanic confederation, given to Belgium, which in return gave up to Holland the northern half of the Limbourg province, along with the fortresses of Venlo and of Maestricht on the Meuse. Belgium was also content that Holland should retain her territory along the southern bank of the Scheldt opposite Flushing. She also consented to take over half of the old Dutch debt, which Holland had amassed before 1814. The new frontier gave Holland on the east side of Belgium a long, narrow enclave of territory along the Meuse, on the west side of which is situated the fortress of Maestricht. This strip lies between Belgium and Germany, and it was stipulated that the Belgians should use for moderate tolls the roads running across it, else their trade with Germany would be cut off.

In the Scheldt their trade could similarly be blocked by the Dutch, who continued to hold both banks of the river near its mouth. The treaty, therefore, confirmed to the Belgians their old right of fishing in the Scheldt, which was only fair considering that half the inhabitants of Antwerp were fishermen,-the right of passing their ships in and out of the North Sea in return for a fair contribution to the expenses of lighting and buoying the channel, and lastly, in return for a similar contribution, the right of passing their vessels trading with Germany through the Dutch channels which connect the waters of the Scheldt with those of the Rhine. Holland had already by a treaty, which for a while was kept secret, granted this right to all the states of the German confederation which border on the Rhine, yet her government professed itself to be outraged by such a stipulation when made in favor of Belgium, as if the latter could be properly denied a right already conceded to half the states of Europe.

The Belgians signed the twenty-four articles on November 15, and so the fundamental document assuring their future independence took the form of a treaty of twenty-four articles struck between themselves and the five great powers, which also solemnly guaranteed the new nation neutrality and inviolability.

The Dutch were no more tractable than before. Though numbering but two millions, they were more than ever determined to conquer and exploit nearly twice their number of Belgians. Their parliament continued to vote a war budget as enthusiastically as before. Their king assented to a brief armistice, but would not pledge himself not to resume hostilities on October 25, 1831, when it expired. To meet contingencies the British fleet had to be kept lying in the mouth of the Scheldt, and its presence alone extorted from William the surly admission that he

did not intend to resume the campaign for the present. Point by point he continued to fight the plenipotentiaries of the five powers, always hoping for something to turn up, for some general conflagration of Europe in the midst of which he could, unmolested, march his army back into Belgium and set his heel once more on the neck of those whom he persisted in regarding as his revolted subjects. It is to be feared that Russia in secret gave him countenance. She has in turn opposed the emancipation of Belgium, Hungary, and Italy, and nothing but the disasters incurred by her first in the Polish insurrection and subsequently in the Crimean War enabled the foundations of liberty to be laid in these three countries.

On January 30, 1832, the King of Holland, with the usual professions of a desire for peace and conciliation, took the initiative and laid before the conference the draft of a new treaty in which he studiously ignored the rights and even the existence of the new Belgian constitutional monarch, and with no small effrontery proposed that it should be substituted for the treaty of twenty-four articles, already ratified three months before, between that monarch and the great powers. Needless to say, this proposed treaty tied the King of Holland down to nothing, and left him loopholes for reasserting by force and whenever he chose, his claims to Belgium. It was clear that his real objection to the twenty-four articles was that they were definite, free from vagueness, and just, though not wholly just to the Belgian claims. Months slipped by, and by May 10 the treaty of twenty-four articles agreed to by the plenipotentiaries in London, seven months before, had won approval in Berlin and also in St. Petersburg, and the conference, regarding the matter as settled, proceeded to frame such a treaty to be ratified between Holland and Belgium as would at last establish friendly relations between them. Intractable as ever, the Dutch king produced afresh his old proposals, ignoring the Belgian king and quietly ripping up every arrangement so far arrived at.

The conference was long suffering, but the limit of its patience was reached. The time was approaching for coercion, for driving the Dutch by force out of the territory formally recognized no less by themselves than by Europe as Belgium, particularly out of Antwerp where General Chassé still menaced the townsmen from the citadel. The presence of his garrison, as may be imagined, kept everything in suspense, spread abroad among the traders and manufacturers a feeling of insecurity, and effectually impeded the prosperity of the busiest city in Belgium.

The Russian government, even, had grown weary of the unabated pretensions of the Dutch monarch, who in conversation with Count Orloff, its minister at The Hague, now refused to recognize even the

administrative separation and independence of Belgium as defined in the twenty-four articles, unless King Leopold were removed from his newly acquired throne and he himself put in his place. Once king of Belgium, always king of Belgium, was his motto. Leopold was only an interloper and a false pretender. Such sentiments, uttered at the eleventh hour, were too much even for Count Orloff. It was too openly a last extravagant device for evading the duty of signing the treaty of twenty-four articles, to pretend, as did the Dutch king, that he was, after all, the monarch contemplated by that instrument rather than Leopold. The refusal was communicated to the Tsar Nicholas at St. Petersburg and evoked from him the strongest of protests. Count Orloff was charged to remind the Dutch king that, in thus refusing to recognize the political independence of Belgium, he upset the bases already arrived at in the negotiations between himself and the powers. It was absurd, argued Count Orloff, to contend, as the Dutch king did, that the separation of Belgium. contemplated in instruments which he had himself signed as early as January, 1831, was to be a merely administrative arrangement and not a political separation. He was reminded that, when the election of Leopold was announced in June, 1831, his government had protested neither against the principle of the election nor against the no nination of Leopold as king, and that he had continued after that election to negotiate with the five powers, and thereby had implicitly sanctioned the step they had taken, that he had accepted it as the basis of the further negotiations. Lastly, this new and exorbitant pretension of William of Nassau, opposed to all the acts of the European congress, was also in contradiction to the language of his own ministers before his States General, was opposed to the wishes expressed with so much warmth and sincerity by the representatives of his nation.

The Tsar had shown so great a tendency to tergiversation that his counsel should have had double weight with King William. The latter, however, remained intractable, and Count Orloff, realizing that all his expostulations were vain and superfluous, resolved to quit The Hague, but before doing so made the following solemn declaration :

"His imperial Majesty, the Tsar, cannot dissemble the fact, and we say it with profound regret, that the Netherlands cabinet has irretrievably thrown away a last opportunity of terminating the Belgian affair in a manner conformable to its own interests; consequently its allies, in particular Russia, will but waste time in looking for further ways of being useful to it * * * The Tsar has loyally fulfilled towards his Majesty, the King of the Low Countries, the duties of a friendship at once frank and sincere. But he cannot forget the duties imposed on him by the

European alliance. He does not any longer recognize the possibility of henceforth lending his Majesty, King William, either support or encouragement. However perilous the position in which the king has now placed himself, and whatever may be the consequences of his isolation, his imperial Majesty, although with inexpressible regret, will have to silence the inmost feelings of his heart, and consider it right to let Holland bear alone the responsibility of the events which must issue from the situation."

These events were soon realized.

In a note addressed to Lord Palmerston on October 24, 1832, the Belgians affirmed their resolve, in case no coercive steps were taken by Great Britain and France, to make their decisions and the treaty of November 15, 1831, respected by Holland, to take the law into their own hands and at whatever risk try to compel the evacuation of the citadel of Antwerp and to expel the enemy from Belgian soil. Their note was not really required, for, only two days before, England and France, dispensing for the moment with the concurrence of the three other powers, agreed to take coercive measures against King William, unless by November 12 he should have withdrawn his troops from Belgian territory. The threat had no effect. He would not budge. Accordingly the two governments from that day forward laid an embargo on all Dutch vessels lying in their ports and ordered their cruisers to seize all Dutch vessels then at sea. Their combined fleets also took up positions in the Dutch estuaries, and blockaded the Dutch ports.

On November 15, the French army for a second time entered Belgium at Mons, under Marshal Gerard and two of Louis Philippe's sons. It was composed of fifty thousand infantry, six thousand cavalry, and a siege train, a larger force than was necessary in order to reduce General Chassé in his citadel at Antwerp, but not too large to meet contingencies which might arise, for King William had raised an army of one hunddred thousand men for service in Belgium, and had also mobilized his "landsturm" for internal defence. On November 30, began the siege of Antwerp. General Chassé defended himself heroically until December 23, when he had no drinking water left. He then capitulated, having lost ninety killed, three hundred and forty-nine wounded, two hundred and sixty-seven missing, while the French had lost one hundred. and eight killed, and six hundred and eighty-seven wounded. The fortress was handed over to the Belgians. The defenders refused to pledge themselves not to fight against Belgium, if they were released and sent back to Holland, so General Gerard had to march them back into France as prisoners of war.