Eight Articles of London
Encyclopedia
The Eight Articles of London, also known as the London Protocol of June 21, 1814, were a secret convention between the Great Power
Great power
A great power is a nation or state that has the ability to exert its influence on a global scale. Great powers characteristically possess military and economic strength and diplomatic and cultural influence which may cause small powers to consider the opinions of great powers before taking actions...

s: United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland was the formal name of the United Kingdom during the period when what is now the Republic of Ireland formed a part of it....

, Prussia
Prussia
Prussia was a German kingdom and historic state originating out of the Duchy of Prussia and the Margraviate of Brandenburg. For centuries, the House of Hohenzollern ruled Prussia, successfully expanding its size by way of an unusually well-organized and effective army. Prussia shaped the history...

, Austria
Austria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...

, and Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...

 to award the territory of current Belgium
Belgium
Belgium , officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a federal state in Western Europe. It is a founding member of the European Union and hosts the EU's headquarters, and those of several other major international organisations such as NATO.Belgium is also a member of, or affiliated to, many...

 and The Netherlands to William I of the Netherlands
William I of the Netherlands
William I Frederick, born Willem Frederik Prins van Oranje-Nassau , was a Prince of Orange and the first King of the Netherlands and Grand Duke of Luxembourg....

, then "Sovereign Prince" of the United Netherlands. He accepted this award on July 21, 1814.

Background

In early 1814 Napoleon I of France
Napoleon I of France
Napoleon Bonaparte was a French military and political leader during the latter stages of the French Revolution.As Napoleon I, he was Emperor of the French from 1804 to 1815...

's empire
First French Empire
The First French Empire , also known as the Greater French Empire or Napoleonic Empire, was the empire of Napoleon I of France...

 was reeling under the onslaught of the Allies. The Netherlands, annexed to the Empire by the Rambouillet Decree of July 9, 1810, had already been evacuated by the French occupation troops. In that country power had been assumed by the eldest son of the late last Stadtholder
Stadtholder
A Stadtholder A Stadtholder A Stadtholder (Dutch: stadhouder [], "steward" or "lieutenant", literally place holder, holding someones place, possibly a calque of German Statthalter, French lieutenant, or Middle Latin locum tenens...

 of the former Dutch Republic
Dutch Republic
The Dutch Republic — officially known as the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands , the Republic of the United Netherlands, or the Republic of the Seven United Provinces — was a republic in Europe existing from 1581 to 1795, preceding the Batavian Republic and ultimately...

 on December 6, 1813, under the new title "Sovereign Prince." In the former Austrian Netherlands
Southern Netherlands
Southern Netherlands were a part of the Low Countries controlled by Spain , Austria and annexed by France...

, conquered by France in 1794 and annexed in 1795, the Allies made quick progress also. This presented the problem of what to do with this country. The thirty most prominent families of Brussels expressed the wish to restore the old Governorate-general of the Austrians, and this was provisionally instituted by the Allies in February, 1814, as their military government. However, Austria itself expressed little interest in resuming its rule. Therefore the Allies in the secret annexes to the Treaty of Chaumont
Treaty of Chaumont
The Treaty of Chaumont was a rejected cease-fire offered by the Allies of the Sixth Coalition to Napoleon Bonaparte in 1814.Following discussions in late February 1814, representatives of Austria, Prussia, Russia, and Great Britain reconvened a meeting at Chaumont, Haute-Marne on 1 March 1814...

 provisionally apportioned the country to the new Dutch state. This was further formalized in the Treaty of Paris
Treaty of Paris (1814)
The Treaty of Paris, signed on 30 May 1814, ended the war between France and the Sixth Coalition, part of the Napoleonic Wars, following an armistice signed on 23 May between Charles, Count of Artois, and the allies...

 of May 30, 1814, in which Belgium on the left bank of the river Meuse
Meuse River
The Maas or Meuse is a major European river, rising in France and flowing through Belgium and the Netherlands before draining into the North Sea...

 was apportioned to the (future) Netherlands (whereas the fate of the right bank area was to determined later). How this was to be structured was, however, still to be decided, while certain expectations had been raised by the representatives of the Belgian people at Chaumont in February, that also needed to be honored in some way. These "loose ends" were taken care of in the protocol that came to be known as "The Eight Articles of London."

The Protocol

The gist of the protocol was determined by the Sovereign Prince himself in a letter of May 16, 1814 to his minister of Foreign Affairs, baron Van Nagell. Van Nagell put this text in the form of a diplomatic note that the British ambassador in The Hague, Lord Clancarty, conveyed to the British Foreign Minister Robert Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh
Robert Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh
Robert Stewart, 2nd Marquess of Londonderry, KG, GCH, PC, PC , usually known as Lord CastlereaghThe name Castlereagh derives from the baronies of Castlereagh and Ards, in which the manors of Newtownards and Comber were located...

 on May 25. Castlereagh and William I were both in Paris for the signing of the treaty at the time. William sent a final draft of the Convention
Treaty
A treaty is an express agreement under international law entered into by actors in international law, namely sovereign states and international organizations. A treaty may also be known as an agreement, protocol, covenant, convention or exchange of letters, among other terms...

, as edited by Clancarty's Dutch colleague Anton Reinhard Falck
Anton Reinhard Falck
Anton Reinhard Falck was a Dutch statesman.He studied at the University of Leiden, and entered the Dutch diplomat service, being appointed to the legation at Madrid, Spain...

, to the ministers of the other three Great Powers, Metternich, Nesselrode
Karl Nesselrode
Baltic-German Count Karl Robert Nesselrode, also known as Charles de Nesselrode, was a Russian diplomat and a leading European conservative statesman of the Holy Alliance...

, and Hardenberg
Karl August von Hardenberg
Karl August Fürst von Hardenberg was a Prussian statesman and Prime Minister of Prussia. While during his late career he acquiesced to reactionary policies, earlier in his career he implemented a variety of Liberal reforms...

 on May 30. The treaty was signed by the representatives of the four Great Powers on June 21, 1814 in London with only a reversal in the order of the articles 7 and 8.

The text of the Articles follows:

Article 1 The union shall be intimate and complete, so that the two countries shall form only a single state to be governed by the Fundamental Law already established in Holland, which by mutual consent shall be modified according to the circumstances.

Article 2 There shall be no change in those articles of the Fundamental Law, which assure to all religious cults equal protection and privileges, and guarantee the admissibility of all citizens, whatever be their religious creed, to public offices and dignities.

Article 3 The Belgian provinces shall be in a fitting manner represented in the States General, whose sittings, in time of peace, shall be held by turns in a Dutch and a Belgian town.

Article 4 All the inhabitants of the Netherlands thus having equal constitutional rights, they shall have equal claim to all commercial and other rights of which their circumstances allow, without any hindrance or obstruction being imposed on any to the profit of others.

Article 5 Immediately after the union the provinces and towns of Belgium shall be admitted to the commerce and navigation of the Colonies of Holland upon the same footing as the Dutch provinces and towns.

Article 6 The debts contracted on the one side by the Dutch, and on the other side by the Belgian provinces shall be charged to the public chest of the Netherlands.

Article 7 The expenses requisite for the building and maintenance of the frontier fortresses of the new State shall be borne by the public chest as concerning the security and independence of all the provinces of the whole nation.

Article 8 The cost of the making and upkeep of the dykes shall be at the charges of the districts more directly interested, except in the case of an extraordinary disaster.

According to a protocol signed at the same time, the Powers based their decision to dispose of Belgium on the right of conquest
Right of conquest
The right of conquest is the right of a conqueror to territory taken by force of arms. It was traditionally a principle of international law which has in modern times gradually given way until its proscription after the Second World War when the crime of war of aggression was first codified in the...

. They expressed their desire to bring about the most perfect "amalgamation" of the two countries; they invited the Sovereign Prince to accept the Treaty, and an appointment as Governor-General for Belgium, and take steps in a liberal spirit to bring about the desired amalgamation. William accepted this charge on July 21, 1814

Aftermath

William appointed a lieutenant-governor-general of the Belgian provinces on August 1, 1814. He subsequently tried to get the assent of the (carefully selected) representatives of the Belgian people to the Dutch constitution, but encountered opposition from those who were suspicious of designs to undermine the position of the Catholic Church in those provinces. While this process of negotiation dragged on, Napoleon escaped from his exile on the island of Elba
Elba
Elba is a Mediterranean island in Tuscany, Italy, from the coastal town of Piombino. The largest island of the Tuscan Archipelago, Elba is also part of the National Park of the Tuscan Archipelago and the third largest island in Italy after Sicily and Sardinia...

, which started the "Hundred Days
Hundred Days
The Hundred Days, sometimes known as the Hundred Days of Napoleon or Napoleon's Hundred Days for specificity, marked the period between Emperor Napoleon I of France's return from exile on Elba to Paris on 20 March 1815 and the second restoration of King Louis XVIII on 8 July 1815...

"). This period of turmoil prompted William to proclaim himself King of the Kingdom of the Netherlands
United Kingdom of the Netherlands
United Kingdom of the Netherlands is the unofficial name used to refer to Kingdom of the Netherlands during the period after it was first created from part of the First French Empire and before the new kingdom of Belgium split out in 1830...

 on March 16, 1815. While the danger of a Napoleonic restoration still existed, days before the Battle of Waterloo
Battle of Waterloo
The Battle of Waterloo was fought on Sunday 18 June 1815 near Waterloo in present-day Belgium, then part of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands...

, which took place on the territory of the new state, the formation of that state was homologated
Homologation
Homologation is a technical term, derived from the Greek homologeo for "to agree", which is generally used in English to signify the granting of approval by an official authority...

, that is, certified, by the Final Act of the Congress of Vienna
Congress of Vienna
The Congress of Vienna was a conference of ambassadors of European states chaired by Klemens Wenzel von Metternich, and held in Vienna from September, 1814 to June, 1815. The objective of the Congress was to settle the many issues arising from the French Revolutionary Wars, the Napoleonic Wars,...

 on June 9, 1815. After Napoleon's defeat on June 18, the process of approving the constitution by the Belgians was finally forced by the expedient of counting abstentions, and the no-votes that were cast because of religious concerns, in a plebiscite on August 18, as "tacit approval." This allowed William to be inaugurated formally as King of the new kingdom on September 21, 1815.

Sources

Colenbrander, H.T. (1909) Ontstaan der Grondwet, deel 2, 1815, Martinus Nijhoff (1907) The Cambridge Modern History. Vol. X The Restoration, New York, The MacMillan Company

External links

Besluit van den 6den december 1813, no., 7, houdende aanvaarding van de souvereiniteit der Vereenigde Nederlanden, door z. k. h. den heere prince van Oranje-Nassau, enz., enz., enz. - Proclamation "Sovereign Prince"Grondwet voor de Vereenigde Nederlanden 1814 - Dutch Constitution of 1814Grondwet voor het Koningrijk der Nederlanden 1815 - Constitution of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands of 1815
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