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20-538: On 18 August 1789, Jean-Nicolas Bassenge and other democrats arrived at the Hôtel de Ville of Liège. They demanded the dismissal of current magistrates in favour of two popular burgomasters : Jacques-Joseph Fabry and Jean-Remy de Chestret . The citadel of Saint Walburge fell into the hands of the rebels. The Prince-Bishop , César-Constantin-François de Hoensbroeck , was brought back from his Summer Palace in Seraing to ratify

40-717: A republic. One of the first acts of the republic was the introduction of the "Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen of Franchimont " on 16 September 1789. The document was heavily influenced by the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen introduced in August 1789 but contained several important differences: Jean-Nicolas Bassenge Jean-Nicolas or Nicolas Bassenge (24 November 1758, in Liège – 16 July 1811)

60-559: The Battle of Turnhout on 27 October 1789. The rebels, supported by uprisings across the territory, soon took control over much of the territory and proclaimed independence. Despite the tacit support of Prussia , the independent United Belgian States , established in January 1790, received no foreign recognition and soon became divided along ideological lines. The Vonckists led by Jan Frans Vonck advocated progressive and liberal government, whereas

80-616: The Council of the Five Hundred in Paris (on which his younger brother also served - that brother later became sous-préfet for Montmédy and a member of the Corps législatif). Like many moderate republicans, he supported the 18 brumaire coup which brought Bonaparte and had no notion that Bonaparte would later make himself emperor. He gained a seat on the Corps législatif and defended his republican ideas in

100-715: The Décade philosophique , a scientific and literary journal headed by Pierre-Louis Ginguené and Amaury Duval. He then retired from political life in 1802 and returned to his birthplace, where he was made curator of the city library. He was also a member of the Société d'émulation de Liège . He died unmarried on 16 July 1811 and his permanent secretary spoke his funeral elogy on 12 September that year. Bassenge's poems, letters and stories were posthumously published in two volumes as Loisirs de trois amis by his friends Henkart and Regnier in 1822. Austrian Netherlands The Austrian Netherlands

120-608: The Statists , led by Hendrik Van der Noot , were staunchly conservative and supported by the Church. The Statists, who had a wider base of support, drove the Vonckists into exile through terror . By mid-1790, Habsburg Austria ended its war with the Ottoman Empire and prepared to suppress the rebels. The new Holy Roman Emperor , Leopold II , was also a liberal and proposed an amnesty for

140-633: The Austrians reinstated the prince-bishop in Liège. Bassenge was excluded from the resulting amnesty and had to flee to France again, with many of his fellow liberals. In Paris he was put in charge of drafting the proposal for Liège's merger with France and then presenting it to the National Convention . At Sedan in 1791 he prepared an address from the inhabitants of Liège to Leopold II, Holy Roman Emperor , in which he protested against his arbitrary reaction to

160-630: The Liège revolution. In 1792 Bassenge returned to Liège with Charles François Dumouriez 's French troops, which had captured the principality of Liège and the Austrian Netherlands from the Austrians, but the French defeat at the battle of Neerwinden forced him back into exile in France until 1795. Whilst in Paris from 1792 to 1795 he allied himself with the Girondins and was imprisoned and threatened with

180-580: The autonomous and wealthy Duchy of Brabant and County of Flanders . In the aftermath of rioting and disruption in 1787 known as the Small Revolution, many opponents took refuge in the neighboring Dutch Republic where they formed a rebel army. Soon after the outbreak of the French and Liège revolutions, the émigré army crossed into the Austrian Netherlands and decisively defeated the Austrians at

200-518: The guillotine during the Reign of Terror , until the Liége exiles intervened in his favour and won him Robespierre 's support. On his release he returned to Liège on France's final annexation of it in 1795, becoming commissioner general to the executive directory within the departmental administration of Ourthe (one of the three departments created from Liège). In 1798 he was elected to represent that department in

220-503: The leaders of the liberal forces ranged against the prince-bishop. The Estates put him in charge of pleading their case before the imperial Reichskammergericht at Wetzlar, then in Berlin and finally at the congress of Frankfurt - he failed in his mission. The Société des amis de la liberté et de l'égalité de Liège then gave him the task of editing a report on the question of a merger with France, in which he supported such action. In December 1790

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240-414: The nomination of the new officials and to abolish the unpopular Règlement de 1684 . Several days later, de Hoensbroeck fled to the city of Trier in modern Germany. The Holy Roman Empire condemned the Liège revolution and demanded the restoration of the ancien régime in the prince-bishopric. The radical mood in Liège led to the proclamation of a republic, three years before France proclaimed itself

260-445: The prince-bishop François-Charles de Velbrück . Exhausted by the minor persecutions his poetry suffered, he left for Paris, where he became friends with the most famous writers of the era. After Velbrück's death, conflict broke out between the new prince-bishop César-Constantin-François de Hoensbroeck and the people of his principality. Putting his pen at the service of his fellow citizens, Bassenge published pro-liberal pamphlets and at

280-814: The province in 1797 through the Treaty of Campo Formio . The Eighty Years' War (1568–1648) later led to a division of the Low Countries between the Dutch Republic in the north and the Southern Netherlands, which later became Belgium and Luxembourg. The area had been held by the Habsburgs, but was briefly under Bourbon control in the War of the Spanish Succession . Under the Treaty of Rastatt (1714) which ended that war,

300-541: The rebels. After defeating a Statist army at the Battle of Falmagne (22 September 1790), the territory was soon overrun and the revolution was defeated by December. The Austrian reestablishment was short-lived and the territory was overrun by the French in 1794 (during the War of the First Coalition ) after the Battle of Fleurus . The Council of State acted as government, and formed the council by imperial consent: 1794

320-528: The remainder of the Spanish Netherlands was ceded to Austria. Administratively, the country was divided into four traditional duchies , three counties and various lordships . In the 1780s, opposition emerged to the liberal reforms of Emperor Joseph II , which were perceived as an attack on the Catholic Church and the traditional institutions of the Austrian Netherlands. Resistance grew, focused in

340-422: The same time studied the history of Liège, giving extracts of his historical research in his Lettres à l'abbé de P... (1787–1789). An ardent defender of republican ideas, Bassenge returned to his birthplace on the outbreak of the revolution there in 1789, to support the insurgents. There he was elected as a deputy for the third estate in the conferences of the three orders and he, Fabry and Chestret quickly became

360-645: Was a politician from the Principality of Liège . He was active in the Liège Revolution then the French Revolution . From an upper-middle-class family, he studied at the collège at Visé , headed by the Oratorians . In 1781 he prepared La Nymphe de Spa for abbé Raynal, a letter in which he made an apologia for Enlightenment philosophy. This brought him much difficulty, despite the protection he enjoyed from

380-638: Was the territory of the Burgundian Circle of the Holy Roman Empire between 1714 and 1797. The period began with the acquisition by the Austrian Habsburg monarchy of the former Spanish Netherlands under the Treaty of Rastatt in 1714. It lasted until Revolutionary France annexed the territory after the Battle of Sprimont in 1794 and the Peace of Basel in 1795. Austria relinquished its claim on

400-535: Was the third year of the War of the First Coalition . The Austrians gave up on contesting the Low Countries after the Battle of Fleurus (26 June), and left them to the French. After three months of military occupation, on 15 October a Central High Administration of Belgium was installed. On 1 October 1795 the departments were activated and the definitive annexation started, liquidating the Belgian Governing Council, which ceased on 22 November. France annexed

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