Belgian Revolution

The Belgian Revolution (French: Révolution belge, Dutch: Belgische Revolutie/opstand/omwenteling) was a conflict which led to the secession of the southern provinces (mainly the former Southern Netherlands) from the United Kingdom of the Netherlands and the establishment of an independent Kingdom of Belgium.

The people of the south were mainly Flemings and Walloons. Both peoples were traditionally Roman Catholic as contrasted with Protestant-dominated (Dutch Reformed) people of the north. Many outspoken liberals regarded King William I's rule as despotic. There were high levels of unemployment and industrial unrest among the working classes.

On 25 August 1830, riots erupted in Brussels and shops were looted. Theatergoers who had just watched the nationalistic opera La muette de Portici joined the mob. Uprisings followed elsewhere in the country. Factories were occupied and machinery destroyed. Order was restored briefly after William committed troops to the Southern Provinces but rioting continued and leadership was taken up by radicals, who started talking of secession.

Dutch units saw mass desertion of recruits from the southern provinces and pulled out. On September 27, a newly formed Provisional Government in Brussels declared independence and called for the election of a National Congress. King William refrained from future military action and appealed to the Great Powers. The resulting 1830 London Conference of major European powers recognized Belgian independence. Following the installation of Leopold I as King of the Belgians in 1831, King William made a belated attempt to reconquer Belgium and restore his position through a military campaign. This Ten Days' Campaign failed because of French military intervention. The Dutch accepted the decision of the London conference and Belgian independence in 1839 by signing the Treaty of London.

After the defeat of Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815, the Congress of Vienna created a kingdom for the House of Orange-Nassau, thus combining the United Provinces of the Netherlands with the former Austrian Netherlands to create a strong buffer state north of France; with the addition of those provinces the Netherlands became a rising power. When the United Kingdom insisted on retaining the former Dutch Ceylon and the Cape Colony, which it had seized while the Netherlands was ruled by Napoleon, the new Kingdom of the Netherlands was compensated with these southern provinces.

The revolution was due to a combination of factors, the main one being the difference of religion (Catholic in today's Belgium, Protestant in today's Netherlands) and the general lack of autonomy given to the south.

Other important factors are

Catholic partisans watched with excitement the unfolding of the July Revolution in France, details of which were swiftly reported in the newspapers. On 25 August 1830, at the Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie in Brussels, an uprising followed a special performance, in honor of William I's birthday, of Daniel Auber's La Muette de Portici (The Mute Girl of Portici), a sentimental and patriotic opera set against Masaniello's uprising against the Spanish masters of Naples in the 17th century. After the duet, "Amour sacré de la patrie" (Sacred love of Fatherland), with Adolphe Nourrit in the tenor role, many audience members left the theater and joined the riots which had already begun. The crowd poured into the streets shouting patriotic slogans. The brawls and violence continued for several days, with protesters capturing key points in the city including the Parc de Bruxelles and the Palais de Bruxelles. The Belgian rebels began to organize and fortify their positions in preparation for further confrontations with Dutch forces. The following days saw an explosion of the desperate and exasperated proletariat of Brussels, who rallied around the newly created flag of the Brussels independence movement which was fastened to a standard with shoelaces during a street fight and used to lead a counter-charge against the forces of Prince William.^{[citation needed]}