cceeded by tumultuous assemblages and
open insurrection. A lawyer of Brussels, named Vander Noot, put
himself at the head of the malcontents. The states-general of
Brabant declared the new measures of the emperor to be in opposition
to the constitution and privileges of the country. The other
Belgian provinces soon followed this example. The prince Albert
of Saxe-Teschen, and the archduchess Maria Theresa, his wife,
were at this period joint governors-general of the Austrian
Netherlands. At the burst of rebellion they attempted to temporize;
but this only strengthened the revolutionary party, while the
emperor wholly disapproved their measures and recalled them to
Vienna.

Count Murray was now named governor-general; and it was evident
that the future fate of the provinces was to depend on the issue
of civil war. Count Trautmansdorff, the imperial minister at
Brussels, and General D'Alton, who commanded the Austrian troops,
took a high tone, and evinced a peremptory resolution. The soldiery
and the citizens soon came into contact on many points; and blood
was spilled at Brussels, Mechlin, and Antwerp.

The provincial states were convoked, for the purpose of voting
the usual subsidies. Brabant, after some opposition, consented; but
the states of Hainault unanimously refused the vote. The emperor
saw, or supposed, that the necessity for decisive measures was
now inevitable. The refractory states were dissolved, and arrests
and imprisonments were multiplied in all quarters. Vander Noot,
who had escaped to England, soon returned to the Netherlands,
and established a committee at Breda, which conferred on him the
imposing title of agent plenipotentiary of the people of Brabant.
He hoped, under this authority, to interest the English, Prussian,
and Dutch governments in favor of his views; but his proposals
were coldly received: Protesiant states had little sympathy for
a people whose resistance was excited, not by tyrannical efforts
against freedom, but by broad measures of civil and religious
reformation; the only fault of which was their attempted application
to minds wholly incompetent to comprehend their value.

Left to themselves, the Belgians soon gave a display of that
energetic valor which is natural to them, and which would be
entitled to still greater admiration had it been evinced in a
worthier cause. During the fermentation which led to a general
rising in the provinces, on the impulse of fanatic zeal, the
t