LUXEMBURG AND HER NEIGHBOURs:..
Miss Ptersesi has written an interesting and useful book about Luxemburg, the little country which has given much trouble to statesmen in the past, and which will engage the attention of the Allied Governments at their Peace Conference. The axis' ting Grand Duchy is about the size of Northamptonshire, and its population of two hundred and fifty thousand is no more than that of an ordinary industrial town. Yet, as it Iles between Belgium, Germany-, and France, it has acquired a political importance out of all proportion to its slender dimensions, and lies formed the subject of numerous diplomatic bargains, without any consideration, we need hardly say, for the wishes of its people. The Grand Duchy is a fragment of the old Duchy, which grew up in the Middle Ages round the impregnable rook on which the oily of Luxemburg is built. The Duchy was an outlying part of the Holy Roman Empire, and in the fourteenth century three of its Dukes—Henry VII., Charles IV., and Wenzel —wore the Imperial crown. Henry VIL's son, John of Luxem- burg, is remembered as the blind King of Bohemia, who ended his life of knight-errantry- by charging into the English ranks at Crecy ; the tradition according to which the Black Prince adopted as his own the blind King's crest of ostrich feathers and motto is almost certainly baseless. In the fifteenth century ),hilip of Burgundy acquired Luxemburg by purchase. When ris sou, Charles the Bold, fell at Nancy in 1477, and his great project of a Middle Kingdom from the North Sea to the Alps vanished for ever, the heiress Mary, marrying Maximilian, the future Emperor, gave to the House of Hapsburg all the Burgundian possessions, except Burgundy itself, which was annexed by France. Philip, son of Maximilian and Mary, married Joanna of Castile, and their son, Charles V., thus inherited the realms of Spain, of the Hapsburgs and the Burgundian, and became the master of Europe. Under the Hapsburg rule, Luxemburg was naturally reckoned as one of the Seventeen Provinces of the Low Countries. When, at the death of Charles V., the vast Hapsburg possessions were parted between the Spanish and the Austrian branches, the Low Countries fell to Spain. Philip II. contrived to stir up the Netherlanders to revolt, but the Southern provinces, remaining faithful to the old religion, gradually returned to their allegiance, while the Protestant North went its own way. Thus the seven- teenth century found what we now call Belgium a loyal Spaniels dependency, of which Luxemburg, always a devout country, formed part. Louis XIV., ever nibbling at the Spanish Nether- lands, annexed Thionville and Moatmedy and twice occupied Luxemburg, but in the end the Duchy went with the other Spanish provinces to Austria by the Treaty of Utrecht. It shared their fate when, before the Revolutionary armies of France, the Hapsburgs fled from the Low Countries. Luxemburg under the Republic and the Empire was the French Department of Forests.
The Duchy's troubles began anew with the Congress of Vienna. That Congress of "bosses," in President Wilson's phrase, thought tit to reunite all the Netherlands. after two centuries of separa- tion, under a King of the House of Orange-Nassau. But the Congress made a special arrangement with regard to Luxemburg. Prussia wanted the Duchy, but ceded it, leas some of its eastern districts, to King William in return for his Nassau lands. The Duchy, raised to a Grand Duchy, was to become a member of the German Confederation, and Luxemburg was to have a Prussian garrison. It was to be regarded as a family estate, like the fide in Nassau, and was to pass to the German aide of the Orange-Nassau family if King William or a summer of his had no male heir. However, King William treated Luxemburg as an ordinary province of his kingdom. Luxemburg, like the other Southern previrsoes, sent representatives to the States- General at the Hague. Luxemburg, like the rest of Belgium, revolted against the harsh and tactless Dutch rule in 1830, and Luxembargers took an active share in the choice of Leopold of Saxe-Coburg as the first King of the Belgians. For some years Luxemburg regarded itself as an integral portion of Belgium.
• huzeirsbary had her h'etghboure. By Bath Putnam. rondos: Putnam.
Idea 'sal
But in 1839 the Powers in their wisdom derided that King William us must regain part, if not the whole, of his Grand Duchy. The people protested earnestly but in vain. Luxemburg was divided ; the larger but lees populous western portion, including the Ardennes, was assigned to Belgium, while the eastern portionwas to constitute a Grand Duchy for King William under the same conditions as in 1815. At the same time part of Limburg was taken from Belgium and given to the King and Grand Duke as compensation for the loss of Western Luxemburg. It was a thoroughly immoral transaction in the old diplomatic, fashion which Berlin and Vienna cherished to the last. The unhappy Luxembsugers, who detested Germany and whore, official language was and still is French, suffered a further humiliation when their next King, Waliam H., insisted on in- cluding the Grand Duchy in the German Customs Union in 1843. On the other hand, when a local company built a railway and became bankrupt, the French " Compagnie de l'Est " took over the line in order to promote French interests. The defeat of Austria at Sadowa in 1866 and the oollapse of the old German Confederation raised anew the Luxemburg question. Napoleon III., desiring to profit by the confusion, proposed to buy the Grand Duchy from the Dutch King, and the King agreed. Bismarck, however, raised difficulties, and Napoleon, unwilling to make war for so small an object on the eve of the Paris Exhibition of 1867, agreed to a compromise. A Conference of the Powers, meeting in London with Lord Stanley, the future Lord Derby, in the chair, decided that Luxemburg, no longer attached to Germany save through the Customs Union, should form a perpetually neutral State under " the collective guarantee of the signatory Powers," and that the Prussian garrison should evacuate the capital, the fortreee of which was to be dismantled. Am Lord Stanley explained at the time, the " collective guarantee" was worthless because it meant "that in the event of a violation of neutrality all the Powers who signed the Treaty may be called upon for their collective adieu," so that it was "a ease, so to speak, of limited liability." During the Franco-Prussian War the Frenoh railway officials committed a technical breach of Luxemburg's neutrality. After the war Bismarck demanded a large indemnity or the transfer of the railway concession to Prussia. The other guarantors of the Treaty of 1887 looked on while Bismarck forced the tiny State to give up its railways. Germany pledged herself by Treaty in 1872 "never to use the Luxemburg railways b1r the transport of troops, arms, materials of war, and munitions . . . in any way incompatible with the neutrality of the Grand Mushy." But that Treaty has, since August, 1914, suffered the fate of many other " scraps of paper " with German signatures.
The tie between Holland and Luxemburg was severed in 1890, when King William LH. died. His daughter Wilhelmina suc- ceeded him as Queen of Holland, but Luxemburg, under the old Nassau family pact which was confirmed by the Congress of Vienna, passed to the nearest male heir of the Nassau family, Adolph of Nassau-Weilburg. This Grand Duke had lost his capital of Wiesbaden and his provinces to Prussia in 1866, and had taken refuge with his Hapsburg allies at Vienna. Prussia, however, did not oppose his acquisition of Luxemburg, foreseeing that he would be a useful agent for Germany. Adolph died in 1905 and his son William in 1912. As there remained no male heir in either branch of the Orange-Nassau House, William's eldest daughter, Marie Adelaide, a girl of twenty, was recognized as Grand Duchess. Unfortunately for her, her German friends at the outbreak of war violated the neutrality of Luxemburg, occupied the whole country, and treated it as a German province. The people sympathized with the Allies ; thousands of the young men fought for.France or Belgium, and many who remained at home suffered at the hands of merci- less German Generals and offieiala. The position of the Grand Duchess has now become almost impassible. Belgium has lost no time in asking that Eastern Luxemburg may be reunited to Western Luxemburg as a Belgian province, llud the request can hardly be refused. The arbitrary partition of 1839, against which the Lausesiburgers protested so strongly, cannot prevail against the long historical connexion between Belgium and Luxemburg, from the fifteenth to the nineteenth century— a eonnexion reinforced by hands of race, language, religion, and commerce. Germany lies no just claim to the emu:dry. and France does not raise a claim. As the little Grand Duchy cannot stand alone, its union with Belgium would be a solution satisfactory both to Belgians and to Luxemhurgeza.
Previous page
