Belgium, Volume II

Belgium, Volume II by James Emerson Tennent

Belgium, Volume II surveys Brussels and the principal industrial, artistic, historic, and strategic towns of Belgium before crossing into Prussia. In Brussels, the narrative describes the royal palace and the lavish but politically awkward palace of the Prince of Orange, whose furnishings remained after the Revolution before being removed to the Hague. It examines the Palais de la Nation, the organization of the Belgian legislature, electoral qualifications, and the removal of the Waterloo painting. The Park is recalled as the centre of the fighting of 1830, followed by a detailed eyewitness account of English visitors trapped in the Hôtel de Bellevue during the bombardment and street battles. The journey proceeds through Brussels’s limited manufactures and flourishing book trade to Antwerp. Antwerp is presented as a city of magnificent cathedral architecture, narrow fortified streets, commercial decline, and devotion to Rubens. Its former greatness as a trading and printing centre, the closing and reopening of the Scheldt, Napoleon’s immense naval projects, and the collapse of trade after separation from Holland are traced in detail. Statistics on shipping, ballast, silk, transit trade, smuggling, and the proposed railway competition with Dutch Rhine traffic support the argument that Antwerp’s apparent recovery is precarious. Antwerp’s artistic inheritance dominates the visit: the Museum, Cathedral, churches, Rubens’s tomb, works by Vandyke and other Flemish painters, and the public reverence shown to Rubens are described at length. The “Crucifixion,” “The Descent from the Cross,” and other paintings are praised for emotional power, action, and composition. The narrative also depicts Catholic worship, church ornament, relics, pulpits, and monuments, while judging many devotional displays critically. Antwerp’s citadel provides scenes from the revolutionary assault, General Chassé’s bombardment, and the later French siege, which inhabitants treated almost as a theatrical spectacle. From Antwerp, the traveller crosses the Scheldt, recounts Van Speyk’s destruction of his own gunboat rather than surrender, visits the inundated polder of the Tête de Flandres, and travels through Zwyndrecht, Beveren, and St. Nicholas. The account notes the economic usefulness attributed to local saints, the flax market, ballad-singers, and the crowded agricultural population. At Tamise, the severe condition of Belgian cotton manufacture is explored: long hours, shrinking exports, foreign competition, government purchases of surplus goods, smuggling, and the manufacturers’ unsuccessful demand for protection, a French commercial union, or entry into the German commercial league. Dendermonde is a quiet fortified town associated with Marlborough and Teniers. Mechlin is portrayed as clean, ecclesiastical, antique, and dependent on lace, flax, and trade. Its Archbishop Sterckx is treated as a powerful political churchman. The Cathedral of St. Romoald, its great tower, carillon, bells, monuments, Van Eyck paintings, and Vandyke’s “Crucifixion” receive attention, as do paintings by Rubens in other churches. The account then evaluates Belgium’s state railway system: its low construction costs, cheap fares, immense increase in passengers, occasional accidents, and uncertain financial success. Louvain appears diminished from its former wealth and university fame, though its Catholic university, brewing industry, extraordinary Hôtel de Ville, paintings, churches, and legends preserve its distinction. The narrative visits Terveuren and the deserted palace of the Prince of Orange, then Waterloo, where it condemns the Belgian Lion mound for damaging the battlefield and follows the remnants of Hougemont, La Belle Alliance, and Quatre Bras. Namur and the Meuse valley introduce more dramatic scenery, fortifications, Don John of Austria’s tomb, St. Loup, cutlery manufacture, coal, iron, and industrial transport. At Andennes, William Cockerill’s role in transforming Belgian machinery and paper-making is emphasized. Seraing, created around the former palace of the Prince Bishops of Liege, is represented as an immense integrated industrial town of mines, furnaces, forges, engines, and machine workshops. John Cockerill’s vast enterprises are admired for technical force but linked to excessive speculation and unstable markets. Liege is treated as commercially active but aesthetically unappealing, with a history of turbulent burghers and Prince Bishops. Its arms manufacture, flax mill, churches, university, and revolutionary violence are considered. Verviers, set in the beautiful valley of the Vesdre, is a woollen-manufacturing town whose workers also participated destructively in the Revolution. The woollen trade suffers from dependence on imported wool and the loss of French, Dutch, and German markets. The text condemns the joint-stock mania that consumed immense capital and led to failures after the Bank of Belgium suspended payment. The volume’s governing conclusion is that Belgium’s industrious, skilled, frugal mechanics and manufacturers have been gravely injured by the Revolution and the repeal of union with Holland. Its factories and machinery were developed for markets, colonies, and consumers no longer available to the independent kingdom. Railways, education, prizes, roads, canals, and government aid cannot supply the fundamental need: a market proportionate to Belgian productive power. Crossing into Prussia, the traveller notes smoother roads, German officials, orderly posting, easy passport procedures, and the first view of Aix-la-Chapelle, where the text ends amid its description of the city’s fading prosperity.

By James Emerson Tennent · First published 1841 · Genre: Travel Literature, History, Art History and Criticism · 5 chapters · 49,234 words

First lines

_The Palaces of Brussels_ -- Palace of the Prince of Orange -- Embarrassment of the government respecting it -- Description of the interior -- _Chambers of the Belgian legislature_ -- Palais de la Nation -- Constitution of Belgium -- Variable franchise -- Removal of the picture of Waterloo -- THE PARK -- Singular scenes of the revolution -- Curious account of the adventures of an English party at the Hôtel de Bellevue during the riots at Brussels -- _Works of the Société du Renard at Brussels_ -- The road to Antwerp -- Villas -- Old châteaux -- House of Rubens and Teniers -- The village of Vieux Dieux -- Appearance of the country -- _The tower of the cathedral_ -- Fortifications -- Narrow streets -- Palace of Napoleon -- The houses -- _History of Antwerp_ -- Festival of the ladies' eve -- Immense commerce in the sixteenth century -- Closing of the Scheldt in 1648 -- Projects of Napoleon for Antwerp -- Arsenal and locks -- _Trade from 1815 to 1830_

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Belgium · history · geography · European history · 19th century · political history · cultural history · regional study · society · government · historical narrative · economic history

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