1858 Belgium PM/son of French Officer Killed in Russia/Jewish medalist L.Wiener

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Charles Rogier  , born in Saint-Quentin  on  August  17  1800 and died in Saint-Josse-ten-Noode  on  May  27  1885 , is a Belgian  statesman  of liberal  tendency , member of the National Congress  , Freemason  1  and Belgian revolutionary.

Family and childhood  

Charles Rogier was born on  August  17  1800 (29 thermidor year VIII  ) in Saint-Quentin  ( France  ) in a family of Belgian origin. His grandfather (Joseph Firmin Nicolas Rogier), who was born in Renlies  ( Hainaut  ) in 1699  , established himself cloth merchant in Cambrai  in the middle of the xviii  th  century  . His father (Firmin Noël Albert Rogier), who married the  August  25  1788 Henriette Louise Joséphine Estienne was also a sheet merchant. In 1791  Charles's older brother Firmin Rogier was born  . Invested by election in 1791  , at the age of twenty-seven, as a municipal officer in Cambrai, Firmin Noël Albert Rogier still exercised them in October 1792  , during the training of the first volunteer battalions. Elected second lieutenant-colonel  of the th  battalion of the North, he successively commanded the places of Doullens  and that of Ham  , then he took part in the operations of the army of the Ardennes "A considerable spitting blood" (certificate of the medical officer of the th  North battalion, dated  September  16  1794 ) having forbidden him, at least temporarily, the profession of arms, he returned to Cambrai. The Thermidorian reaction  was rampant there. The lieutenant-colonel was accused of having seconded with too republican  energy the efforts made from 1792  to 1793  by the conventional  Le Bon  , the fierce "proconsul of Arras", to defend Cambrésis  against the Austrians  . This is even the origin of a slander  which, after weighing on his memory for several years, was taken up and exploited against his son Charles by Orange  pamphleteers from 1830  to1839  , and whose courts did justice in 1861  - 1862  by a severe condemnation imposed on the Journal of Brussels  , which had echoed it. The colonel, returning to civilian life, had transported the seat of his commercial affairs first to Saint-Quentin, where Charles was born in 1800, and then to Avesnes  . When, at the end of 1811  , a decree  by Napoleon  allowed soldiers dismissed for health reasons to return to the army if they had recovered their strength, he resumed service and left for Russia  in May 1812 , as director or inspector in food administration. He died, we do not know under what circumstances: all traces of him have been lost since the last days of November 1812  . A few months before the fall of Napoleon, his wife followed his elder son Firmin to Liège  , who had just been appointed elementary master at the imperial high school in that city. She had two other sons: Tell, doctor  and justice of the peace  in Trélon  ( canton  of Avesnes), died in 1859  , and Charles; two daughters: Henriette Eugénie, died in 1875  , and Pauline, died in 1902  . To create resources, Mrs. Rogier founded aboarding school  rue Sœurs-de-Hasque  and she was helped in her task first by the eldest of her daughters. The Rogiers therefore entered the Belgian family: article 133 of the Constitution  of  February  1831 stipulates that foreigners established in Belgium before st  January  1814  and continued to be domiciled are considered Belgians of birth 2  ,  3  .

Youth  Monument to Charles Rogier, commemorating the 75 th  anniversary of the independence of Belgium (1905), sculptor Camille-Marc Sturbelle  , in the park of Avroy  , Liège

Charles, who had made his first studies at the college  of Avesnes  , entered the imperial lycée  of Liège  in October 1813  in the grammar class: the grand master of the university had just granted him, by his decree of 28 August  , a half-boarder scholarship  . He proved worthy of official encouragement. The principal  of the school certifies, the  August  25  1814 , that "Charles Rogier did the first and second grammar lessons with great diligence and the greatest success, especially the last, in which he obtained the second merit prize, the first in Latin  theme  , the second in version  and similarly in verse, as well as an accessit in Greek   ; that he has always combined with the abundance of his resources a very well supported application, a lot of docility and a very good behavior ”. His eldest, Firmin  , led it in its early days. A strong affection, which lasted all their life, united the two brothers. Firmin having been appointed to Falaise  , then to Rouen , M. Charmant, a professor at the Lycée de Liège, wrote to him: "You were very necessary to Charles: this poor little man thinks of you whenever he has some sorrow". Charles, at seventeen, had finished his rhetoric with real success: this is evidenced by the program of the distribution of the prices of the royal gymnasium and first lower college of the city of Liège in 1817  . He said a word about it in a notebook of notes and memories: "I get four first prizes like my older brother in Douay  in 1809   ". He would have liked to immediately start studying law But his mother not being able to make for him the sacrifices which the attendance of the courses required, it requests resources for the private education, and receives private lessons and rehearsals to sons of family of his age Charles Rogier from 1817  to 1821  . His hobbies, he devoted them either to supplement by his readings the knowledge acquired in college, or to make verses. A great reader, he wrote down in notebooks the passages, the expressions, the very words that had struck him the most, with the reflections they had suggested to him. He had a marked taste for historical  and political  works , for books on philosophy  and pedagogy - either Latin or French - which offer a practical side, a practical side. The Emile  , for example, held several months. Rogier's notebooks show that he admired certain ideas of Jean-Jacques Rousseau  , but nevertheless remained critical of this philosopher. The works of Montesquieu  , The Causes of the greatness of the Romans and their decadence  , On the spirit of the laws  , the Essay on the manners  of Voltaire  , the Considerations on the French Revolution  of Madame de Staël  also attract all his attention 2  .

He cultivated poetry above all to console himself for the troubles and the sadness of his job as a coach. His little poem Les Vœux ou les Prières  obtained an honorable mention in the competition of the free society of emulation of Liège  in 1819   ; it was the same with his Elegy  on the last song of the poet  a year later. In a more important poem, La mort de Madame Roland  , in which his friend Néoclès Hennequin collaborated, emulation awarded a medal ( Mathieu Laensbergh  published it in full  in February 1825  ) 2  .

Rogier also helped his mother and older sister to manage the family boarding school  . As soon as he left rhetoric, he would have written the speeches that "dear mom" made in the price distributions. His family has carefully preserved the manuscripts of these speeches. To obtain the 2,000 francs  which the legal studies which he always intended to cost cost, Rogier ended up accepting a job of tutor  with the baron of Senzeilles, who lived a few leagues from Liège 2  .

Activities in the press (1824-1830)  Joseph Lebeau, one of the founders of Mathieu Laensbergh  .

Two of these friends, Paul Devaux  and Joseph Lebeau  , solicited his activity for a task quite different from that of tutor   : it was the foundation of a liberal  newspaper Devaux and Lebeau were lawyers   : the first was twenty-one, the second thirty. Rogier joins forces with them and his brother Firmin (who has returned to Liège since 1815  ),  March  10  1824 , to make appear in Liège, every day, at six o'clock in the evening, except Sundays and festivals, the Mathieu Laensbergh  , political, literary, industrial and commercial newspaper. The printer and publisher of the newspaper is a fifth partner, Jean-Paul Latour, to which each of the other four pays 300 francs to cover the first costs. The lawyer Félix van Hulst joined the company a fortnight later. On May 15,  Latour left it and it was to Henri Lignac, writer, that the administration and printing of the Mathieu Laensbergh  2  passed .

The need for "active collaboration" - this was one of the commitments made by the associates - forced Rogier to give up the life of the preceptorship. He remained nonetheless in free education: he gave rehearsals while studying law and collaborating with Mathieu Laensbergh  . His part in the publication of this newspaper - called Le Politique as  early as 1825  - whose influence on the 1830 movement  and the destinies of Belgium has been significant is important. Internal policy, analyzes of new productions and especially, under the signature of the “bourgeois of Saint-Martin”, the embellishments of the city, the improvements that the roads and hygiene require: this is the area where he generally confined himself . He liked to shake off Belgian apathy in electoral matters. He accused them of remaining too indifferent to the choice of their agents 2  .

This is the question of the election of municipal  and provincial  councilors  in the Netherlands  that Rogier addresses during his doctor of law exam on  July  29  1826 In the five theses annexed to the dissertation, he defends in particular that the widest publicity is to be desired in the prosecution and in the repression of crimes  and that publicity in matters of municipal and provincial administration is in accordance with public law  . Rogier makes a succinct picture of the electoral system of his time, he discusses the conditions required to be an elector and to be eligible, the causes of incapacity, the disadvantages of the law, the modifications that could be made to it. It requires, among other reforms, the direct election appears to be her only true representative system 2  .

He had therefore just completed the project he had designed to enter the Liège bar  . Many other projects haunted his brain. He wanted to reorganize the literature committee of the emulation society, of  which he had been appointed assistant secretary; to give new impetus to the work of the Greek committee which had been formed in Liège in 1825  , under the presidency of de Selys, and whose zeal seemed to diminish; push for the translation of Mathieu Laensbergh  in Brussels  or the creation in this city of a newspaper based on the plan and according to the principles of Mathieu   ; collect documents for an Election Manual   ; start publishingMemoirs of don Juan Van Haelen   ; create a weekly newspaper, La Récompense  , aimed at young people. Most of these projects will be implemented 2  .

The memoirs of Van Haelen  date from 1827  . Here are the circumstances under which Rogier entered into relations with the chief of staff of Mina  . Van Haelen, who came out of the clutches of the inquisitors in 1826  not without difficulty , came to thank the editors of Mathieu Laensbergh  for a most sympathetic article published in 1824  . On this occasion he had established fairly intimate relations with the Rogier family. He offered to provide Charles with the notes, documents and memories necessary for writing his memoirs. The events in which Van Haelen had been involved having caused a lively curiosity in the Netherlands and in France , one could hope that the supporters of liberalism would welcome a publication in which the excesses of despotism  and reaction  were painted Rogier had little to praise for the success of the book, according to letters from Renouard  , who published an edition for France, and from Tarlier, who published one for the Netherlands 2  .

But the success went to the Reward  , which wanted "to contribute to give birth or to develop in children useful knowledge, to make them understand and love rigorous homework". This was the goal set by the founders of this newspaper, Paul Devaux, Charles and Firmin Rogier, Lignac (  December  25  1827 ). Charles Rogier was made the proxy of the company; the administration of the newspaper was in the hands of Mademoiselle Henriette Eugénie Rogier. The editors of Mathieu Laensbergh  somewhat relaxed their serious studies of philosophy and administrative law  in the writing of articles intended for the instruction and education of the young age, articles of little scope, written in a simple and clear style and which, giving children more appeal to reading, should encourage them to study longer. They saw their efforts as well received in Holland as  in Belgium. Flattering praise came to them from all sides, even from official spheres 2  .

There had to come a time when politics would hurt the Reward  . The events would soon take on a character of gravity such that Charles Rogier would lose interest in the educational journal to better devote himself to the writing of Mathieu  and, more particularly, to the publication of his Electoral Manual  2  .

The Mathieu Laensbergh had continued to make much talk about him during the years 1827  and 1828  . His articles on the organization of the judiciary, on press freedom  and the stamp of newspapers were widely read, greatly commented and provoked increasingly lively discussions with ministerial bodies. When the legislative session of 1828  opened , Rogier ( Mathieu Laensbergh  of October 25 ) expressed the wish that, in the address in response to the speech from the throne, one should not limit oneself to childishly flipping ministerial sentences. "It would be beautiful," he said, "it would be a happy omen if the national spirit already began to manifest itself there." The government wanted to have the ten-year budget. On the eve of voting more than a billion in taxes (the total of the ten years of the ten-year budget exceeded 500 million guilders  ), the Second Chamber  was required to list its grievances and wishes: it had the right to demand wise reforms and good laws in return for such enormous sacrifices. Rogier would have liked to have asked the government by the Second Chamber for the abolition of milling, the reduction of taxes, the withdrawal of the decrees of 1819  and1822  who had in fact officially suppressed French  in all parts of Belgium where Flemish  was generally used, the re-establishment of the jury  , the disavowal of servile doctrine which refused to the provincial states  until the right to issue vows and who challenged them this independence of conscience that everywhere they demanded local magistrates 2  .

As the Catholic  newspapers complained, as much as Mathieu Laensbergh  , of the conduct of the ministry, as they demanded no less strongly than him the constitutional guarantees, the freedom of the press, the jury, the independent deputies, he formed between liberals  and Catholics a union  which was to secure victory for opponents of the government. The Mathieu  , became the st  January  1829  , the policy  , advocated union with a tenacity that nothing discouraged 2  .

Under the influence of the articles which appeared in the Courrier of the Netherlands  , in the Catholic  and in the Politics  , also under the influence of the irritation caused by the Claes, Ducpétiaux  , De Potter  trials , the union took shape. It first manifested itself in the organization of a universal petition  for the redress of grievances 2  .

Several of these grievances are indicated by Rogier in Le Mathieu  . The petitioners also complained of the Dutch taking over almost all jobs in government, diplomacy, the military, finance; ministerial disclaimer; especially the monopoly of education. They included the elite of the nation, the nobility, the most distinguished members of the bar, of commerce, of industry 2  .

The election for the provincial states, on which depended the appointment of members of the second house of the states general  , was scheduled for July. Rogier, through his electoral manual  , which appeared in February and was translated into Flemish in April, contributed greatly to the success of the opposition in Liège 2  .

The Courrier de la Meuse  proposed to form by subscription an insurance company against arbitrary dismissals, fiscal harassment and illegal acts of ministers. Rogier urged readers of the Politics  to subscribe. Faced with government repression, Rogier and his political  collaborators were not discouraged: "the persecutions, far from delaying the triumph of freedom", they said, the  May  1830 , "Will speed up the march". An election was to be held in early July for the appointment of delegates from the provincial states to the Second Chamber  . The campaign was waged with rare vigor by Rogier in his journal. The success of the two opposition candidates was somewhat his work. The prosecution of Liège undoubtedly wanted to take revenge on him and on the other editors of the Politics  of failure suffered by the governor of the province, de Liedekerke, who was entirely devoted to the ministry. The King's Prosecutor claimed to discover the "offense of insult or insult to the king" in these lines of Rogier: "This failure is a last warning to the power, that from now on any struggle tried by him within our provincial States does not reserve to him that the defeat " The lawsuit brought against Rogier and his collaborators was fixed at  August  31  1830 The unrest that broke out in Brussels six days earlier diverted the attention of the Liège prosecution: the king's prosecutor sent word to the editors of the Politics  that their case was postponed indefinitely 2  .

Role in the Belgian revolution (1830)  Charles Soubre  , Rogier at the head of the volunteers of Liège  (1878). Charles Soubre, Arrival of Charles Rogier and volunteers from Liège in Brussels  (1880).

Rogier had not concealed "living joys" ( Politics  of  August  1830 ) That caused him the fall of the authoritarian monarchy of Charles X  . As if he wished especially to mark that the enthusiastic homage to the combatants of the Three Glorious Years  ( July  27  , 28  and 29,  1830) was his own, he wrote, in the volume of his journal collection, at the bottom of the article, in larger print than usual: Ch. R… R. Since 1829  , moreover, he had taken the habit of remembering his articles in this way 2  .

Serious unrest broke out in Brussels on August 25  . They were known in Liège on the evening of the 26th  . The municipal guard took up arms. "A large number of young people, armed with hunting rifles, gather in the courtyard of the Palace,   " says Rogier in his notebook of notes and memories, "I take command of this improvised body." The commission of public safety constituted, by common agreement, by the governor  and the bourgmestre  , sends delegates to ask the king for the rectification of the grievances of the nation. But Rogier does not have much confidence in the success of this approach, since on the 28th  he wears the colors of Liège, red and yellow, at the town hall. The 1st  September at 5am, when we announced troop movements ofMaastricht andBois-le-Duc in Liege, he "takes possession of the St. Lawrence barracks near the citadel" (Notes and memories) 2  .

While Paul Devaux  and Joseph Lebeau  still hoped in the wisdom of the king, Rogier, like his brother Firmin  , considered going to Brussels. The people who wanted weapons to defend themselves against the Dutch, whose arrival was announced, took them from the manufacturer Devillers, to which Rogier issued a "receipt in the name of the people" (notes and souvenirs). "In the evening of September 2 , I put myself, adds Rogier, at the head of the workers and walks them in the city after having harangued them by recommending that they respect the properties and defend themselves with energy. Some asserted that the king had promised the administrative separation of Belgium and Holland. Devaux believed in it. Rogier does not believe it. Also, on September 4, at the announcement that an uprising broke out in Brussels and without waiting for the royal response, he left for the capital at the head of a battalion of three hundred Liege. Let us listen to it "Saturday September 4 in the evening ... My speech in the courtyard of the Palace ... I promise them freedom, glory, but not wealth ...". On September 7  , after crossing Hannut  , Jodoigne  , Wavre Auderghem  , where join a hundred and thirty men and two pieces of artillery from Captain De Bosse and where fate designates him to command the two troops, he enters Brussels, while the insurgents have just kept the Dutch army in check during four days 2  .

A proclamation from the king had brought down the hope of an administrative separation of the two countries and therefore led to the prospect of an armed struggle. Rogier responded with this agenda: "My brave comrades, order, union, discipline, loyalty, courage: that is the motto of the true Liege people. It will always be ours. "  With regard to this agenda, Rogier has reproduced, in his notes and memories, this poster of the Brussels public safety commission:" The Commission urges foreigners to return to their homes. She will take all necessary measures to maintain the dynasty and public tranquility. (Signed) Fél. by Merode  , Gendebien  , Rouppe  , F. Meeus S. Van de Weyer  . To imprint more energy on this Commission, and to get it out of diplomatic channels, Rogier, with around forty devoted men such as Van Meenen  , Ducpétiaux  , Jottrand  , founded the Central Meeting  , while reports were made ( 15 September  ) in the vicinity of Vilvoorde  and Tervuren  , the stars that William's  army sends, under the orders of Prince Frederick  , to bring the Brussels people to their senses. A first shock took place on the 18th between patrols of volunteers and gendarmes. The following day, a proclamation by the Commission, disavowing the conduct of the volunteers, was lacerated. On the 20th  , the Commission was dissolved by the people who broke down the doors of the town hall  . It is replaced by a provisional government of three members, De Potter  , d'Oultremont  and Gendebien, which does not take office. On the 21st  , no shadow of the government at the town hall. Prince Frederick, with 13,000 men and 52 guns, is only a league  from Brussels. Rogier, with volunteers from Liège and 200 or 300 Brussels residents, supports in Diegem , all day long, the fire of the Dutch avant-garde. The 22  takes place in skirmishes north and north-east of Brussels, in Evere  and in front of the gates of Schaerbeek  , Leuven  and Namur  . In the west of the city, a Dutch troop which tries to enter by the door of Flanders meets a popular reaction. In the narrow streets, a rain of objects, even from the furnaces, falls on the soldiers. But the order is not to shoot civilians. However, in the population, many believe that all is lost and a great confusion reigns in the city - it is a correspondent of the Politician who writes it - Everyone believed that all was lost. Brussels would have to rise to stop the march of Prince Frederick. None of the politicians, none of the leaders of the revolutionary movement count on it. "The day before the day on which Brussels was attacked," wrote Félix de Merode, October 15,  1830  , to the Courrier des Pays-Bas  , "I expected no resistance; convinced that there was no longer any current means of acting for Belgian independence, I had decided to seek refuge on French  soil  ”. The desperation of Félix de Merode can be explained. An eyewitness - one of the Tournai  volunteers - the future General Renard , established that the Dutch would have been able to take Brussels without a blow after the day of September 22 ... "In the night of 22 to 23   ", he said, "there were not forty armed men on guard. We were perhaps not three hundred disposed to the resistance and scattered over a long stretch. There were no leaders, no power, no plan, no leadership. ” On the morning of the 23rd, while the Dutch army, vainly harassed by the shooting of volunteers, entered along the boulevards in the Park , Rogier and several of her friends, whom a proclamation of Prince Frederick (September 20) particularly aimed at, reserving all its rigors for "fighters foreign to the city", while she granted pardon to the Brussels fighters, will, as Félix de Merode and Jottrand, seek refuge in France. It was only in the afternoon that Brussels finished rising and the people bravely stood up to the Dutch at the gate of Flanders  and the gate of Laeken  . Rogier was in the forest of Soignes  , near Braine-l'Alleud  , at three o'clock, when he heard the cannon in the direction of Brussels 2  ,  3  . His reaction was immediate:If we fight in Brussels, I go there.

The Provisional Government of Belgium  .

It was around seven in the evening when Rogier returned to Brussels. His friends from the former safety commission, overthrown on September 20, spoke of entering into negotiations with Prince Frederick. “Since Brussels is determined to fight, no submission! Said Rogier. On the 24th  , at daybreak, on the proposal of a few men no less resolute than he, assembled at the town hall, he entered an administrative commission of which the Brussels residents learn the constitution, an hour later, by this proclamation which is in his hand: “For two days Brussels has been devoid of any kind of constituted authority; popular energy and loyalty have taken its place; but all good citizens understand that such a state of things cannot last without compromising the city and the triumph of a cause whose success from yesterday is assured. Citizens, guided only by the love of the country, have provisionally accepted a power which they are ready to hand over to more dignified hands as soon as the elements of a new authority are assembled. These citizens are Baron Emmanuel Vanderlinden of Hoogvorst  , of Brussels; Charles Rogier, lawyer in Liège; André Jolly  , former engineering officer. They have as secretariesF. de Coppin  and J. Vanderlinden  , from Brussels. - Brussels, September 24, 1830 ". Vanderlinden was, on the 25th, appointed treasurer and replaced as secretary by the lawyer Nicolay  2  .

Rogier's memories are especially precious here for the story: "September 24: Our relationship with the Bank is Société Générale): We ask for 5,000 guilders  for the public service  , she brings 10,000, very surprised of our moderation ... In the evening I bring Van Haelen  and get him to take command ... He accepts on the condition that, if he comes to perish, we will take care of his wife and child. The same day he wrote the decree decreeing the burial in Place Saint-Michel, which became Place des Martyrs , brave men who had succumbed or who would succumb in battle, he announced the victory: "Belgian blood will stop flowing ... the enemy is in the greatest disorder" (agenda of September 25). In the morning of the 26th  , the administrative commission, in which Gendebien, Van de Weyer and Félix de Merode entered, who had returned to Brussels on the evening of the 25th  , took the name of Provisional Government. The heroism of the Belgian volunteers under the leadership of Van Haelen ends up being right for the tenacity of the Dutch. Foreign volunteers flocked, exiles engaged in combat like French soldiers like the one who became General Chazal  or General Mellinet For three days, enemy regiments taking refuge in the Park surrounded by the palaces (Palace of Parliament, Royal Palace, Palace of the Prince of Orange) will be shelled by a small artillery installed in the main barricade of Place Royale, but also riddled with shots fired by volunteers occupying the houses in the streets surrounding the position. As of September 25, they unleashed demoralizing musketry for the soldiers sheltered in the shallows of the park and behind the trees. But outings of volunteers launched in order to take the park will be repelled by the organized fires of a troop remained disciplined. However, on the night of 26  to 27 , the Dutch army will quietly withdraw and Rogier to write to his family, on the evening of the 27th, that there was no longer a Dutch soldier in Brussels 2  .

It was a question of consolidating the victory. It was important not only to organize the army to "fight outside", but to organize the civil administration, the judiciary and the finance administration. Rogier, with de Merode, Van de Weyer and De Potter (called to the Provisional Government on the 27th), was part of the central committee responsible for this task, as rough as it was delicate. The various decrees issued by the government, pending the meeting of the National Congress  fixed for November 10  , gave satisfaction to the wishes that Rogier, his friends and his allies had expressed in the press: such as those who established freedom of education  , freedom of association  ,freedom of religion  , the freedom of the press  , the abolition of censorship  , advertising budgets towns  , the addition of capabilities  to the electorate census  2  .

In the middle of October serious disorders having erupted in the Borinage  , the provisional government entrusted to Rogier the task of going to suppress them. He acquitted himself quickly and well: "A few good words to all these good people," he wrote to his colleagues on October 22  , "are better than a hundred thousand gunshots." As soon as he returned to Brussels, he received another mission: that of maintaining order among the national troops made up of Belgian rallies from the royal army. Following the glorious battles of Walem  and Berchem  , they drove the Dutch back to the citadel of Antwerp Building on their successes and rid of the officers who had chosen to remain loyal to the King of Holland, they displayed an indiscipline very dangerous for their cohesion. Besides, the cause of the revolution was far from being won in Antwerp. A significant part of the population was sympathetic to the government of William. Most of the administrative officials were still with him. Rogier showed no less decision, composure and tact in Antwerp than in the Borinage. The situation became terrible there, on October 27  , when General Chassé , commander of the citadel, invoking that certain volunteers had not respected an armistice, made bomb the city. Rogier ran the greatest dangers during the five days he spent in Antwerp where, exercising a kind of dictatorship on behalf of the Provisional Government, he managed to put an end to hostilities and to rally many Belgian opponents to the Belgian cause that the bombing had set up against the Dutch presence 2  .

Political career 

To the National Congress (1830-1831)  The Duke of Nemours, candidate for the throne of Belgium?

At the National Congress  , where the district of Liège  sent him (the sixth out of nine deputies), he played a secondary role 4  . He gave, on November 12  , on behalf of the Provisional Government  , reading the following declaration: "The Provisional Government, having received notification of the constitution of the National Congress, comes to hand over to this legal and regular organ of the Belgian people the provisional power which since October 24,  1830 , in the interest and with the consent of the country. He deposited on the president's desk the collection of acts and orders that the necessity of the circumstances determined him to take ”. To Rogier's declaration, here is the response made by the office of the assembly: "The National Congress, appreciating the great services that the Provisional Government has rendered to the Belgian people, has asked us to show you its keen appreciation and that of the Nation of which it is the organ. He also instructed us to express to you his desire, his very will, to see you retain executive power until otherwise provided by Congress. ” All the members of the Provisional Government, except De Potter  , submitted to the desire, to the will of Congress 2  .

In the session of the 17th  , wanting to foil the hopes of the Orange  party which boasted of reconstituting the government of William  with the help of Russia  and Prussia  , Rogier insisted that the independence of Belgium: it was proclaimed the following day unanimously 2  .

On the form of government, Rogier hesitated. In the beginning of October, by political necessity than conviction monarchy  , he had fought in the meetings of the Provisional Government, the proposal of De Potter wanted to be proclaimed as soon as possible the republic  . "Let's wait for Congress," he said. In his notes and memories, one reads: “At the Congress, I prepare a speech inclining to the Republic. This speech was not made. The arguments of his royalist friends, Lebeau  , Devaux  , etc., rallied him to the cause of the constitutional monarchy which was voted by 174 votes to 13. It was especially the reasons of economy and the dangers of heredity from the point of view of incapacity and vices, which he invoked in the prepared speech 2  .

Rogier did not attend the Congress session where the exclusion of members of the Orange-Nassau family  from all power in Belgium was voted by 161 votes to 28 November 23  ). He was then on a mission. He and his colleague Jolly  had been instructed to go and inspect the various corps of troops established in the south and west of the country. As a conclusion to the investigation which he and Jolly carried out, he drew up a proclamation of the Provisional Government to the army, where we read: "Remember that the Belgian army  must henceforth be only a free and citizen army always ready to push back the tyranny of the foreigner and to protect the freedom and the independence of the fatherland "(  December  1830 ). It goes without saying that one of the bodies which he had inspected with the greatest care during his mission was the corps of volunteers from Liège, whose government decree had just formed the nucleus of a battalion of riflemen  (it was the colonel  ) 2  .

There remained the very serious question of choosing a sovereign. Rogier knew what was happening in Paris  through his brother Firmin  whom, on November 18  , the Provisional Government had charged in an informal capacity with a diplomatic mission and who was officially appointed, on December 20  , first secretary of Belgian legation when the Government sent Gendebien  and Van de Weyer  with King Louis-Philippe  . Guizot  affirms, in his Memoirs , that Louis-Philippe and his advisers were determined to support independent and neutral Belgium and to pretend nothing more: it was the opinion of the most important politicians, such as La Fayette  , with whom the brother of Rogier maintained close relationships since his arrival in Paris. The French cabinet  did not show a great frankness towards the delegates of the provisional government as for the choice of our sovereign, which was going to proceed the National Congress in the first days of 1831  . He probably did not want the Duke of Leuchtenberg  at any price because of its imperial origin. To make it fail, he gave the Belgian delegates to understand that he would like to see the Congress make his choice over the Duke of Nemours  . Rogier, whose name had been put forward for royalty by some politicians who wanted to pay homage to his eminent services and his noble character, Rogier spoke on February 2 in favor of the French prince, because this choice offered, especially from the point of view of the interests of trade and industry, more positive, more numerous, more assured advantages than the choice of Leuchtenberg. The Duke of Nemours, son of an elected and popular king, raised in the plebeian principles, would, according to him, bring to Belgium the alliance, the friendship and the market of France and would associate it, without l 'follow it, to the fate of this glorious country. Such a choice would be a guarantee for Belgian independence. He admitted that he had hesitated for some time before speaking. “Childhood memories tie me to France and I had scruples about talking about a French prince here. But I saw old and pure Belgians defending the same prince and then my scruples were lifted ”. On the second ballot,February 4  ). Seven days after the constitution  was promulgated 5  . Louis-Philippe having, for fear of the powers, refused the crown for his son, the Congress called to the regency  Baron Surlet de Chokier  , its president. The task of the Provisional Government was accomplished (February 24, 1831) 2  .

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