Traditionalists, Democrats, and Jacobins in Revolutionary Brussels

Abstract

Three decades ago R. R. Palmer first suggested that all of the rebellions throughout Europe and the Americas at the end of the eighteenth century be considered as variations on a single revolutionary theme. In a twovolume study of the revolts, The of Democratic Revolution, Palmer traced the course of this revolutionary movement.2 According to his occasional collaborator, Jacques Godechot, this Atlantic revolution began in the English colonies of America a little after 1763, then spread between 1787 and 1789 to Switzerland, the Netherlands, and Ireland before coming to France. From France it rebounded to the Netherlands, and then overtook Rhineland Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Malta, the Eastern Mediterranean, and Egypt.3 Influenced by the ideas of the Enlightenment, these Dutch, French, English, Swiss, Belgian, American, and German revolutionaries all challenged the Old Regime. They sought to replace the privileged, closed or self-recruiting groups of men who had governed their societies for centuries.4 These democratic revolutionaries, according to Palmer and Godechot, struggled to establish a more open society based on the principles of equality and liberty. Twice in the midst of this Age of Democratic Revolution the Belgian people revolted to win their independence from Austrian rule. In the fall of 1789 pitchfork-wielding peasants and artisans drove the Austrian army, ministers, and governors-general from the Belgian provinces. The independent Belgian republic founded in January 1790 was short-lived; the Austrians returned within the year to reestablish their reign. In 1792