Belgian Independence

JUL 21 1831 · 12:00

Gustaf Wappers, 'Episode of the September Days 1830 on the Grand Place of Brussels' (1835). Place: Brussels; the London Conference, 1830-1839 Figures: Leopold I of Saxe-Coburg, first King of the Belgians · Lord Palmerston, British Foreign Secretary, chairing London · Talleyrand, French ambassador to London · King William I of the Netherlands, refusing to sign until 1839 Risings in August, a Kingdom by July The Congress of Vienna had grafted the Catholic southern Netherlands onto the Protestant Dutch crown to form a buffer state against France. The arrangement lasted fifteen years. On 25 August 1830, a performance of Auber's opera La Muette de Portici in Brussels turns into a riot, which turns into a revolt, which turns by October into a provisional government declaring independence. The French July Revolution two months earlier has shown the season's pattern. The Great Powers convene at London in November 1830. The choice is to suppress the revolt (the conservative option, which Russia favors) or to negotiate a new kingdom (the British and French preference). The Polish November Uprising, which breaks out the same month, distracts Russia. The London Conference issues protocols recognizing Belgian independence in January 1831. Leopold I, a Saxe-Coburg widower of Princess Charlotte of Britain, accepts the throne and is crowned 21 July 1831. The Dutch invade ten days later in the Ten Days' Campaign; a French army drives them back. The Scrap of Paper The Treaty of London, finalized in 1839 once William of the Netherlands stops refusing to sign, contains the article whose afterlife is the moment's chief significance. Belgium is to be an independent and perpetually neutral state, with that neutrality jointly guaranteed by Britain, France, Prussia, Austria, and Russia. The Westphalian principle of sovereign immunity is here reinforced by an explicit Great Power covenant: this small state shall not be invaded by anyone, and any invader will face the others. Seventy-five years later, on 4 August 1914, German troops cross the Belgian frontier under the Schlieffen Plan. Britain invokes the 1839 treaty as its casus belli. German Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg reportedly asks the British ambassador whether Britain will make war for a scrap of paper. The First World War is fought, on the British side, on the proposition that yes, the scrap of paper means what it says. The Belgian guarantee of 1839 is the legal thread that draws the British Empire into the war the alliance system (see [[franco-russian-alliance-1894]]) makes structurally inevitable.