ORIGINAL CORRESPONDENCE FROM THE NETHERLANDS.
DEAR SPECTATOR, Bruges, Tuesday, September 28.
I LEST Brussels a few days after my last letter, dated, I think, on Friday the 17th; and from Bruges, a few days afterwards, I wrote you two or three lines of on dits : whether you would receive them in these uncertain times, or receiving, whether you would insert them in your "widely-circulated journal," I know not.* Be this RS it may, I have occupied myself in the interim with seeing all I could see and hearing all I could hear. Your London journals will have given you the general facts re- specting the siege of Brussels ; though they must have been, in the confusion of the last week, very irregularly and uncer- tainly supplied. The latest intelligence which has been received here is dated yesterday from Brussels : the troops are com- pletely driven out of the town ; to return again, it is thought, with still greater force, probably to be beaten again. Reinforce- ments have arrived for the citizens, in parties of sixty and a hundred armed individuals, from different quarters ; and the con- test is about to be resumed. No one can say what the issue is to be. The town appears to be considerably injured by the bloody strife of the last four or five days. The beautiful new street, the Rue Royale, has suffered greatly ; and the last news brings word that the palace of the States-General, a very fine modern building, is burnt down.
Bruges, as well as the rest of the towns, has had its day. On Sunday night, a mob of boys and idle fellows paraded the Brabant flag in some of the streets : this created some confusion ; and the military, who had been harassed with watching the town for some weeks, took the first opportunity of firing on the crowd. Several fell. This did not calm the population. The discharge was re- peated again and again, and continued till a late hour. By eight o'clock the next morning, the whole force marched out of the town, to the number of about twelve hundred men—it is said two thousand; but I had some opportunity of judging, for, having had occasion to leave the town of Bruges for Ostend shortly after the *firing upon the people commenced, I found, on my return the next niorning, the troops half-way between Bruges and Ostend, lying down in the road and in the ditches, their heads upon their knapsacks, and apparently in the last stage of fatigue. They were exceedingly anxious to ascertain from us the condition of Ostend, and mighty glad to learn, that in the struggles that had taken place there, the military had got the better, and that the place was quiet ; otherwise the unlucky battaillon wouli have been placed between two inhospitable towns, without a loaf of bread to eat or a bed to lie down upon. The victory of the Brugeois seems to have been cheap—if an expense of thirty or forty killed and wounded can be called so. The soldiers had been fourteen days without taking off their knap- sacks: they had lain down in their clothes, with their arms beside them, and that for no long space of time. They were completely worn out; and perhaps never having a very good heart in the business, they fairly gave it up before the night of Monday was over. In the early part of the evening, they fired pretty low; and looked certainly very martial as they patrolled the streets in a party of seven hundred strong, preceded by the sound
ft_ Ws presentedlthem to one of the Daily Papers.
of the trumpets, and frightening the citizens out of the streets be- fore them, as if by magic. It was, however, merely hocus pocus ; for the bourgeois had only slipped down alleys and within gate- ways ; and the instant the heavy tramp of the military had passed and the clang of the bugle fallen, then they came out of their burrows to assemble again in knots of twenty and thirty, to recom- mence their angry talk, and encourage each other with projects and threats of vengeance. I left the town at this time, about nine o'clock. The four discharges had killed and wounded ten or twelve. The populace knew that the military were exhausted ; and it was foreseen that if they acted with energy, the regiment could not hold out. At twelve the next day, we met the general who com- manded here, at the gates of Ostend. There was no struggle : the people required perpetual watching and continual dispersion, and the soldiers at length gave their officers to.understand the business must end. Several soldiers had previously been imprisoned for insubordination ; and there were also several others imprisoned for being concerned in the burning of M. SANDELIN'S house on occasion of the previous riot. The first use the people made of power, was to liberate these prisoners, and these only ; and they made each swear, before he was permitted to cross the threshold, that he would not engage in any project of pillage and plunder. This is an act that the Parisians would turn to account. Since the mob has been king, they have cormbitted no other violence, and done no mischief—unless it be a mischief, and that to them- selves, to get very drunk. Every man, high or low, without ex- ception, wears the revolutionary cockade; the Brabant flag floats on the different public buildings. Certainly the Belgic Revolution is a most extraordinary one : it is an enduring state of crisis : both parties are in array, face to face—nay, hand to hand, and yet nothing is decided. The King has attacked Brussels as if he wished to be defeated, or as if he were in utter ignorance of the whole business ; which perhaps is the real state of the case. A pretty king, where half his kingdom is without any government at all, as at Bruges—where every offi- cial person is run away ; and where, in the other half, as at Ostend, Mons, &c. ten or twelve liege subjects are shot by the night or week as it may happen !
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